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310 sats \ 6 replies \ @elvismercury OP 28 Mar \ parent \ on: Some thoughts on SN rewards meta
Many interesting thoughts in this post, but lunch is not infinitely long.
This is the bizarre beauty and horror of Keynesian beauty contests, as I linked in the writeup: the fallout from being rewarded by what other people are rewarded for. Here's a thought experiment:
Imagine that SN were visited by a user who posted My Little Pony fanfic. The current SN readership suggests these posts would not be richly rewarded, although who can say. And this fictional user would reasonably say: well, they don't appreciate my genius here, fuck this noise.
Is that a bad outcome? Under what circumstances would it be a bad outcome?
Being slightly less ridiculous, I have posted things that were a ton of work that were not well-rewarded. I admit to feeling kind of annoyed, like my internal model that I am a valued member of this place had been violated. So then what?
- Do I tune my interactions, in order to win better rewards?
- Do I persist, even though people don't value those kinds of things, in the hopes that I will discover an audience for them and they will eventually come to be valued?
- Do I say: well, this isn't that place for that.
You can make a case for any. Which one you do depends on what you're after, I suppose -- the old "find the right objective function" thing @Undisciplined just mentioned.
Is that a bad outcome? Under what circumstances would it be a bad outcome?
It is a suboptimal outcome if the incentive model disincentivizes a subset of users who deeply yearn for my little pony content to not zap the author.
If there are no users who have such yearnings, it is not suboptimal.
Anyone interested in a betting pool for when we see a my little pony territory?
Being slightly less ridiculous,
ridiculous things lead to interesting thoughts. In all seriousness, I wonder what it means for a community to be able to sustain a sub-community of bronies. Most people view that behavior as completely untenable, so its likely not possible in smaller communities. Or are bronies so unique that they can't be defined as a sub-community, but rather a blight on existing communities that are simply tolerated so as to not break the law?
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Anyone interested in a betting pool for when we see a my little pony territory?
I'm guessing it won't be till the oft-hypothesized re-jiggering of how much territories cost, unless some rich Brony truly has a passion project. Which I am here for, if any such person is lurking.
In all seriousness, I wonder what it means for a community to be able to sustain a sub-community of bronies.
Good question -- there must be some sufficient size where it can be viable on a general-interest site, or a site with another interest that is not Bronies. I've been pleasantly surprised by the activity my territory ~mostly_harmless gets, which is not as fringe as MLP, but which is also not even about any particular topic, more a way of being.
And yet people show up! So maybe whatever the carrying-size required for Bronies is, we're at it?
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I have posted things that were a ton of work that were not well-rewarded.
Do you have an example, because that probably means I missed it?
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Oh you sweetheart. I guess it pays to whine :)
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Thinking principally of this one in the Capital Formation series.
To be clear, you should be playing me the world's smallest violin, because I earned almost 4k sats on that. But it's also true that I worked on it every day for a week, let's say ... 3 hours of work to compile, edit, etc. [1]
I did / do those things (and everything here) mostly for myself, but I can't lie and say it didn't take the wind out of my sails a little bit.
[1] If it doesn't seem like it contains 3 hours of work, that's testament to me being ... obsessive about some stuff.
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Looks like I had already given it my standard great post zap and it's up to 13k now.
I think there's a small cadre of people who put posts over 10k and it's somewhat random if they'll see your post quickly.
Darth mentioned to me that he circles back through and gives big zaps to posts that generated a lot of good comments.
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