Opinionated MSM Community Feedback Summary

11.2k sats \ 72 comments \ @ek 2 Apr meta

Opinionated MSM Community Feedback Summary

Prelude

This might be cringe since I am not exactly sure how to best make this part of our internal debate around MSM and v2 of it public without making it possibly cringe but it's important enough for me to risk cringe. If it's cringe, direct your cringe at me, lol.

I think it might be cringe since it puts SN (the company) in a weird public spot. This makes it clear that the team is not aligned in all decisions—even though it should be obvious that's not always the case and maybe that would be even more weird. Even though we all work on SN, we're still individuals with our own visions for it.

I actually had a discussion with @k00b about something else yesterday where he essentially encouraged me to have my own vision. I realized I used to have one but at some point, it must have changed to me trying to predict what @k00b's vision is. Maybe because I was trying to avoid conflict? Or because I was taking on a subordinate role and felt whatever my vision for SN is, it must be inferior to his due to my lack of professional experience? I don't know but that's another topic.

I think that was prelude enough. I thought about editing some tone in the original internal message but I figured it would be better to leave it as is. Would just take more work from me and it wouldn't feel as honest as possible.

Original Message

First of all, sorry that I didn't write something into #debate about MSM last week to discuss it in more detail. I intended to but it wasn't easy to find the right words instead of just "I don't like it and I can't tell you exactly why". But with the new iteration, it got easier thanks to the new load of comments about it and afaict, again mostly against it [0]. So here's my feedback summary (I don't want to write or burden you with a wall of text):

I think paying 36 stackers more compared to March is better but I think it's still too competitive. I think this was and still is my main argument against monthly rewards (at least in this competition format and maybe I didn't articulate myself well before).

It's hard to summarize all comments against MSM on SN but I'm going to try it anyway: I think the ones who mention that they don't like it essentially don't like it because it draws too much attention away from what SN was before [1]. Daily rewards were like a nice side-effect of contributing on SN but not the main driver of contributions. They were like:

Hey, thanks for contributing and oh, btw, here's a daily reward.

It was a fast feedback loop and it felt more like an addition to the zaps you received from the community anyway. Therefore, the main driver was interacting with the community itself and zapping or getting zapped, reading or posting content and replying. The reward was just a confirmation of how valuable your contributions on that day were. It was also a nice reminder about SN every single day. They were also private by default.

This competition style with a public leaderboard seems to turn the community against it each other: hider vs non-hiders, "popular" content vs "unpopular" content, being on the leaderboard ("the popular people") vs not ("the newbies").

I am honestly not surprised that MSM has not lead to more registrations since when you join SN and you see only 64 (now 100) will get paid, you're not going to feel like:

Hey, I am going to commit a lot of time this month so I can maybe get on the leaderboard and get a few thousand sats even though I don't really understand how the ranking system works.

(not to mention that even if you're not a new stacker or a very old stacker, you still don't understand how the ranking works)

Competitions can be fun but they can also be very toxic and actually make something less fun that was fun before (making a profession out of a hobby for example).

In my (probably not very humble) opinion, we're overestimating the long-term impact of MSM on the metrics instead of MSM just being a new thing that hadn't finished its first loop yet.

Additionally, rationalizing decisions solely based on metrics makes us look very corporate and detached from the community:

The Good

The number of stackers earning for their posts and comments hit all-time highs (up 13% and 11% respectively in March)

The number of stackers spending sats hit an all-time high (up 4% in March)

The number of items created hit an all-time high (up 23% in March)

The number of comments/post hit an all-time high (up 29% in March)

The number of zaps hit an all-time high (up 26% in March)

We had our second biggest month of sats spent on zaps (up 25% in March)

Mentioning only that registrations weren't up in "The Bad" also feels like a slap in the face of everyone who commented against it. All arguments against it were ignored in this section ...

The Bad One metric which remained flat in March is the number of new stackers signing up to SN. We have a few experiments planned to target this specifically, which we hope will incentivize more signups and help stackers earn more for their referrals.

... and were only acknowledged with this sentence in the final note:

The Stacker News team has been closely monitoring feedback and data from Million Sat Madness, and has been debating the right approach to rewards both internally and on SN.

From the start this was jammed down everyone's throat without stacker's input.

— @siggy47, #489540

I don't want to downplay the metrics and that we did receive more and better content (also acknowledged by some comments) but I don't think that's worth "sacrificing" the sense of community that we've built up so far. I think we're focusing too much on improving metrics. They should just be proxies for other things that are harder to measure like the direct feedback of stackers (old or new).

The last month has not only pitted the community against each other but also us against the community since we seem to be too focused on improving metrics and are ignoring everything else.

[0] maybe the ones who like it aren't commenting as much but I don't think that's the case (personal feeling, not based on anything tangible or also can't explain well)

[1] It doesn't even seem to matter if they benefit from MSM or not. We mentioned our goal is to reward the top 100 stackers more, but did they even want more rewards? Was "we are not rewarding good content enough" really a problem that was serious enough to motivate drastic changes to rewards?

Summary of Discussion

Following this message, there was some discussion between @kr and me.

Here is my summary of it:

Registrations

registrations numbers have been at 800 new stackers/month since 2022
neither daily rewards nor MSM impacted registrations
biggest driver of registrations has been paid advertising (for example, running ads on Fountain)
we're planning to do more paid advertisement

Long Tail of Rewards: New Stackers vs Sat Farmers

long tail means "sat farmers" are more likely to get rewards
people spinned up multiple accounts to earn a bigger chunk of the daily rewards long tail
only participating in contests like Meme Monday or Fun Fact Friday was enough to get daily rewards
with monthly rewards, sat farmers who only participate on a few days per month fall behind more regular stackers
monthly rewards might be a "nuclear option" against gaming of rewards
maybe "how many stackers should get rewards?" is the wrong question and it should be "which stackers should get rewards?"
how does a missing long tail of rewards impact new stackers? do they prefer a challenge with a public leaderboard or do they feel excluded and demotivated?
even with monthly rewards, bar is still pretty low to earn rewards

Essentially, the question here might be:

What is more important: Inclusion or Competition?

Inclusion means a long tail of rewards for new stackers but also means less rewards for regular stackers. Some of these rewards then also actually go to "sat farmers" which hurts SN from two directions: good content gets rewarded less while bad content from sat farmers is rewarded more.

Competition on the other side makes the SN experience evolve more around rewards which can be too much but rewards content that most like ("good content") more. Competitions can be fun for competitive stackers but they can also get toxic and lead to turning against each other.

Awareness of Rewards

rewards should be viewed as a bonus but are they?
people outside of SN dismiss daily rewards: "why should I care about a few sats per day" even when told it can be 4-5 digit amounts per day
having one big reward pool for a month grabs more attention outside of SN than smaller pools every day
paying out one big chunk of rewards grabs more attention inside of SN than paying out smaller chunks every day (even if it leads to mostly the same amount per month)
amount of daily rewards for great stackers ("the unspoken club") were opaque to new stackers
daily rewards were often a surprise: surprises are nice but not knowing about daily rewards is bad
can there be too much awareness of rewards?

Wrap Up

I hope this makes it clear that we're not unaware of the controversy around MSM but daily rewards also had their issues which might not have been as obvious as the issues with MSM.

I definitely look forward to less centralized planning from our side and more competition between territories with their own individual reward policies instead of forced competition between stackers by us but we're not there yet.

view all related items

630 sats \ 4 replies \ @grayruby 2 Apr

I think the idea was good, the execution was ok at best, subpar at worst.

I don't think it should have been extended a second month even though the changes (more stackers, less top heavy rewards) are improvements. I think the idea of having a March Madness once a year style tournament where everyone goes crazy is a good one and should be kept as an annual event. If the SN team really likes the engagement it creates maybe do a one week version every quarter along with the big tournament every March.

In my opinion the MSM event was great for existing power users but no so much for less frequent stackers and new users.

I guess it comes down to what the SN team's goal is in creating the Madness. If it is to enhance engagement amongst the already engaged it was highly effective. If it is to entice less engaged stackers to be more engaged it was probably moderately effective at first and less effective in the second half of the month. If it is to entice new stackers to join it wasn't very effective at all because new people really didn't have any chance to rank anywhere in the standings that would amount to a large reward payout at the end of the month.

In my opinion, I think you can still reward power users but have a structure that is conducive to bringing in new stackers who hopefully eventually become power users. I recognize it's a delicate balance especially if you want to keep doing a good job limiting spam and not rewarding sats farmers.

Anyways, those are my thoughts.

Cheers, GR

82 sats \ 1 reply \ @Fabs 2 Apr

"I don't think it should have been extended a second month even though the changes (more stackers, less top heavy rewards) are improvements. I think the idea of having a March Madness once a year style tournament where everyone goes crazy is a good one and should be kept as an annual event. If the SN team really likes the engagement it creates maybe do a one week version every quarter along with the big tournament every March. In my opinion the MSM event was great for existing power users but no so much for less frequent stackers and new users."

I can wholeheartedly second this.♥️

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 3 Apr

Same!

71 sats \ 1 reply \ @nym 2 Apr

I felt the same way. What if it was done weekly instead of monthly? That would give a little more immediate satisfaction of getting rewards?

6 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 3 Apr

I like that idea too

349 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 2 Apr

The #1 priority should be to keep the harmony of SN, on SN.

If you try to make it (more) competitive by introducing a leader board and strictly reward people based on their placement on said leaderboard, then it could lead to said harmony going under in the long run, as competition can attract some very unwanted types of behaviour.

The daily rewards were a nice personal type of reward, as in:

"you did well that day by providing value, in one way or another, to other users of SN, and therefore you're rewarded extra. Keep it up."

I can't quite put my finger on why I dislike MSM now, but I'd gladly take the former system above it, for I feel that it'd serve SN as a platform, as well as it's users, better in the long run.

1395 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Apr

1

I want to raise another thought on the "Who should get rewards?" question. I didn't regularly get rewards for months after starting to use SN. I had to figure it out, but I liked the content available here and the interactions were great. I got by on the zaps from my posts and comments.

Are we sure that the people whining about not getting rewards have any inclination towards being valuable members of this community?

At some point I broke through and I've seen several other people rise rapidly. This isn't some sclerotic old boys club that's shutting people out.

2

On the broader issue of monthly rewards, most of the biggest "beneficiaries" of the contest don't seem to be very fond of it. In fact, I'm not aware of anyone who's a big advocate for it. It does seem worth asking "Who is this for, then?" and "What is this for?"

We scrambled like maniacs to win a huge prize, so no wonder the metrics were up. It was artificial though and not as satisfying as the previous regime.

70 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 3 Apr

I think I can be considered as one of those Stackers who rose rapidly. I would never have thought that I would be placed top 10 in the Leaderboard here. What’s more, I live in Asia, so my time zone automatically screws me up theoretically haha.

I can remember the turning point that got me to spend more time on SN. It was @DarthCoin who specifically extended an invitation for me to go hang at the Saloon. I think it made me feel acknowledged - which is nice in this fast growing platform.

I think at the core of it all, people care less about rewards if the emotional dividends they reap make them feel that expending their life energy here is worth it

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Apr

You are exactly who I had in mind for both fast riser and people who get screwed by the timezone.

392 sats \ 18 replies \ @siggy47 2 Apr

Thanks for the post. It's good to get a sense of the thought process "from the other side." That reminds me of something I haven't mentioned in all my complaining. Part of what I really enjoy here is the sense of guys like you, @k00b, @kr also posting and earning. Whether it was reality or not, it felt more like a community than a business. There didn't seem to be two sides, even if there was. Another thing that bugs me is that you guys won't be incentivized, at least in ways we can see, for great content. Everyone knows the 3 of you are great stackers, whether you're management or not. I'm glad I can zap your post, but who gets the sats? I liked when that answer was you.

139 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

There didn't seem to be two sides, even if there was.

I didn't realize there were two sides either until @ek shared this yesterday. I didn't even realize we had made a decision, or chose a side, as I had thought of it as investigating a guess.

262 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr 2 Apr

i got this wrong in the Million Sat Madness v2 post, but the team will be competing alongside everyone else this month (like we did under the daily rewards system).

i remember the daily rewards were quite nice on my big posting and commenting days, but i found it hard to communicate to other stackers that it was possible to earn a significant number of sats for regular contributions.

i think shining a light on total rewards amounts for all to see is a net positive, though i know some will disagree here.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Apr

I'm glad to hear that. I get that the optics won't be great if k00b wins the grand prize, but you guys are some of the best contributors and I'd rather you be in the mix.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 2 Apr

i got this wrong in the Million Sat Madness v2 post, but the team will be competing alongside everyone else this month (like we did under the daily rewards system).

April fool ? #489323 👀 Anon users should be able to participate in the MSM contest 🤠

16 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 2 Apr

Not an April Fools joke, i got it wrong

179 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek OP 2 Apr

Another thing that bugs me is that you guys won't be incentivized

I see your point but I think our incentive to post on SN was never stacking sats via rewards anyway. We stack sats via SN in different ways, lol. I just didn't like that we were missing out on the MSM experience. Knowing how SN feels for the average stacker is more important than rewards.

I'm glad I can zap your post, but who gets the sats? I liked when that answer was you.

That's still the case. They are also immediately withdrawn to my node via autowithdrawals like a true freebie bot :)

96 sats \ 11 replies \ @grayruby 2 Apr

I didn't mind they weren't included in the contest portion but I think if it changed their posting, commenting and zapping habits as to not have too much impact with their zapranks then it was a net negative for the overall quality on SN to not have them engaging as usual.

71 sats \ 10 replies \ @siggy47 2 Apr

Apparently they are included from this month going forward.

112 sats \ 9 replies \ @grayruby 2 Apr

Yes, I see KR on the list.

20 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 2 Apr

April fool ?

#489323 👀

228 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

No @ek told me last week he thought it was weird we weren't getting rewards, so I added us back. I either miscommunicated it or @kr forgot we had talked about that when he made the announcement.

53 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek OP 2 Apr

Yes, I mentioned it together with my "we're more corporate and detached from the community now" point.

update: We can keep it more challenging for us though (haven't checked the code yet). Even though I talk about "MSM is too competitive", I do like challenges haha

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 2 Apr

anon should be able to participate in the MSM contest 🤠 Any winnings from anon would go towards the next reward pool.

20 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 2 Apr

Let the conspiracy theories commence! What if he wins? Nobody gave something like that a second thought pre MSM.

75 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 2 Apr

I got my money on k00b

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 2 Apr

He's the Klaus Schwab of SN.

75 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 2 Apr

I thought he was Klaus' brother Charles.

view replies

147 sats \ 11 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

I'm glad you shared it!

I think it's still too competitive. I think this was and still is my main argument against monthly rewards.

I'd like to dig in here if you don't mind. What amount of competition is good? What can we expect to see when there's too much of it?

Competitions can be fun for competitive stackers but they can also get toxic and lead to turning against each other.

Do we have evidence of this or is it a hypothesis? I think it's a reasonable hypothesis, but if it's more than that, I'm curious where/how stackers are getting toxic toward each other.

10.4k sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby 2 Apr

My main evidence is introspective, so perhaps not that useful.

MSM definitely changed how I interact on SN in ways I think were toxic.

Pre-MSM

posted things when I had a cool idea
checked SN frequently, but not always every day
zapped things I thought would do well or that caught my personal attention
commented when I couldn't help myself (conversation was so interesting I just had to jump in)
kept my total stacked hidden on my profile
didn't really pay attention to how much other stackers stacked

During MSM

posted every day, sometimes even when I had to stretch for content (even resorted to recycling some old content)
checked SN at an unhealthy frequency
zapped the top 10 or so "all-star" stackers whenever they posted without waiting to read their posts, somewhat often I never got around to reading them
compelled myself to drop a comment on any thread a thought would be popular even if I didn't have anything that fruitful to say.
felt grumpy/suspicious about movements on the leaderboard - especially about the hidden stackers do they really deserve that spot? I bet they are gaming it somehow.

All in all, I didn't like how my use of SN was changed by the competition. Maybe I should have stronger principles or more self control or something, but I don't.

I think I will return to my old way of using/enjoying SN, but it's gonna take a little rewiring of my brain.

I totally agree with @grayruby that it could be a great once a year kind of thing.

As I've said before though, SN is one of my favorite places on the internet with and without MSM. So don't take the above as criticism. I wrote it more as documentation of what was going on inside the mind of one stacker.

101 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

This is case study is great! Thanks score-sby! :)

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 2 Apr

I hope I didn't make it sound too bad. It's funny how competition changes behavior. It definitely brings out a less pleasant side of me.

(To be fair, most of my family won't play board games with me because I believe in using the whole field of weapons at my disposal to achieve victory - including those that are not traditionally considered "a part of the game")

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

I would've never guessed you have such a strong competitor in you, but that's my fault for projecting every which way!

208 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 3 Apr

@Scoresby's sibling comment is fantastic. Here's a less fantastic factoid:

I tried not to look at the leaderboard at all. I think I looked at it twice? and then never again. It stirred up a bunch of the competitive feelings that others have mentioned and that I didn't want. Even afterward, I noticed that there was like a dark tide urging me to try to compete. But I avoided that.

FWIW, I'm a super competitive person, though I try not to be bc it's been almost entirely destructive. So maybe others could walk the line in a way that I can't.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 3 Apr

I'm super not-competitive which is probably why I'm so blind to this. Thanks for double tapping that!

157 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek OP 2 Apr

I'd like to dig in here if you don't mind. What amount of competition is good? What can we expect to see when there's too much of it?

I think competition is fine as long as it's more about fun and learning.

Imo, SN should be like a football game between friendly teams where learning how to get better is the reward and not actually winning. So it shouldn't be like a world championship where winning seems to be the only thing that matters (at whatever cost).

For example, games have this common problem where players "optimize the fun out of a game". The fun is no longer playing the game but finding the best strategy and exploiting it until it's no longer fun.

Comparing MSM to a "world championship" is a hyperbole but I hope it made my point more clear.

Do we have evidence of this or is it a hypothesis? I think it's a reasonable hypothesis, but if it's more than that, I'm curious where/how stackers are getting toxic toward each other.

I didn't bookmark the threads where I noticed this (maybe I should start) but imo a prime recent example is this post and this reply from @siggy47.

Maybe @siggy47 can share more of his experience of MSM if he doesn't mind? I think he was the prime target in this discussion since everyone suspected him to be hiding at the top.

So you could say I have evidence while it's still a hypothesis since I can only guess from @siggy47's comments how "toxic" MSM was and v2 might still be.

218 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 2 Apr

That's certainly an example, although I think there was too much of a mutual respect among all of us for it to really get ugly. I consider those guys my friends. But it's a good point to raise. I could see things from their perspective. There seemed to be a lot at stake. From my perspective I had chosen to hide my stats a few months earlier. Nobody cared until MSM.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

I think competition is fine as long as it's more about fun and learning.

It seems like competitions are never only about fun and learning, but the competition SN probably wants should maximize both. So perhaps the answer to "What can we expect to see when there's too much of it?" is that fun and learning decrease.

I'm curious how that would show up, good or bad, on SN.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 2 Apr

So perhaps the answer to "What can we expect to see when there's too much of it?" is that fun and learning decrease.

Ah yes, I didn't answer that question directly but I agree.

I'm curious how that would show up, good or bad, on SN.

I think it shows up indirectly when there is consistently more discussion about rewards.

However, it's hard to tell if the current increase of discussion about rewards since MSMv1 is really related to less fun and focus on learning since naturally, there will be more discussion right after changes and the bigger the changes are, the longer the discussion continues.

Since v2 isn't that big of a change from v1 compared to v1 to daily rewards, it will be interesting to see how the amount of discussion evolves over the month.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

I think it shows up indirectly when there is consistently more discussion about rewards.

I guess we could count the number of posts and comments about MSM. I'd love something more direct though. The line between the dots of something specific being discussed often and the site being less fun and educational is faint for me but I also don't have suggestions that aren't indirect in their own way. Most of the suggestions I'd make would be the indirect measures this post correctly identifies as indirect!

The challenge is interesting though. How can we measure fun? How can we measure learning?

I've discussed measuring learning here before, but I didn't have any great ideas. The best one I had was measuring the deviation of people's zaps from their personal standard in comment threads.

40 sats \ 0 replies \ @frostdragon 2 Apr

Thanks for the transparency! Really appreciate that you guys are trying to work out the issues. Definitely seems like there's a balance to be had between the competitive and inclusion aspects, because they're both important. I think we're circling it.

121 sats \ 2 replies \ @Car 3 Apr

Thanks for sharing this @ek!

I think your points are spot on and something I never saw the whole time, until you pointed it out today.

This competition style with a public leaderboard seems to turn the community against it each other: hider vs non-hiders, "popular" content vs "unpopular" content, being on the leaderboard ("the popular people") vs not ("the newbies").

This is a great point, having just done a competition with Top Builder, it really didn't start getting really competitive until the last and final round. Also keep in mind this was a competition going on for 3 months. The point I am driving to is the only outcome during the 3 months that I kept reiteretaing to the teams competing was their could only be one Top Builder. That was the goal that every one knew from the beginning. So no surprises or reason to get upset.

The problem with MSM was I am not sure what the main goal was? Internally or Externally? Also could be wrong as I have a terrible memory for these kinds of things.

If it was competition for the sake of competition that's awesome or experimenting for experimentation sake that's also fine.

But it should be opt in, that would solve a ton problems. Allowing the stackers that want to play MSM can continue doing that and the ones that don't just continue on as normal.

This also falls inline with the cowboy hat game as well that only a few stackers play.

The thing that makes stacker news unique is the experiments. So I will always say keep experimenting. This just a comment I am adding based off of what you shared.

But I think the underlining insight you brought to the table @ek is that the sn community all gets something different from sn. The hard part is trying to solve what can you add or take away that doesn't affect other stackers experience using sn.

113 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 3 Apr

it really didn't start getting really competitive until the last and final round

How did this show?

The problem with MSM was I am not sure what the main goal was? Internally or Externally? Also could be wrong as I have a terrible memory for these kinds of things.

@Undisciplined mentioned something similar here:

On the broader issue of monthly rewards, most of the biggest "beneficiaries" of the contest don't seem to be very fond of it. In fact, I'm not aware of anyone who's a big advocate for it. It does seem worth asking "Who is this for, then?" and "What is this for?"

I think we wanted to approach multiple things with it:

attract new stackers with more prominent rewards (one big pool of monthly rewards vs many smaller daily pools)
prevent sat farmers to get a chunk of rewards via shorter tail of rewards / more competitive rewards
competition between stackers should bring better content
more rewards for better content

So this was intended for SN (growth + better content) and stackers who consistently create good content (more rewards) while simultaneously getting rid of stackers who were only here to game the daily rewards (shorter tail of rewards).

Allowing the stackers that want to play MSM can continue doing that and the ones that don't just continue on as normal.

Yes, this is similar to what someone who wants to stay anonymous mentioned to me:

They don't like SN to be a competition but since others are now more competitive, they feel sucked into this competition to keep up with them and not get left behind. So essentially competitive stackers make everyone else feel pressured to also be competitive, at least to some degree.

Opt-in might solve it but if there is enough money on the table that is only eligible if you opt-in to a more competitive SN, I don't know why one would not opt-in. Not opting in and "optimizing the fun out of SN" requires discipline that some might not have (as @Scoresby mentioned here). So it's essentially still "sucking stackers in" which sucks (pun intended).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Apr

I appreciate the point about reducing sat farming by truncating the tail, but there's so much less volatility in the monthly contest that I think it's actually much easier game. That's a different issue, but it's another variety of disingenuous engagement.

There may have been better content last month, but I think it was basically the result of a little economic bubble.

if there is enough money on the table that is only eligible if you opt-in to a more competitive SN, I don't know why one would not opt-in

Maybe splitting the rewards pot between normal rewards and the competition can be a best of both worlds scenario. It would reduce the rewards going to sat farmers, so there should at least be less of that activity, and the people who want privacy will still get rewarded without having to be in a public competition.

100 sats \ 7 replies \ @Scoresby 2 Apr

What is the purpose of rewards on SN?

I've always assumed that they are a way to incentivize content curation and moderation (read zaps) on the site.

Posting and commenting carry their own incentives. But zapping, being anonymous, is really just a "out of the goodness of my heart" kind of thing...

...unless you get rewards for zapping good content.

Rewards provide the incentive for zaps. It's pretty incredible really. One of the several strokes of absolute genius at SN.

17 sats \ 6 replies \ @0b1CoinObi 3 Apr

But zapping, being anonymous, is really just a "out of the goodness of my heart" kind of thing...

The zapping when you are anonymous is a more unscrupulous way of zapping your own posts and gaming the system, especially for bounties. Maybe anon can't zap when the post contains a bounty.

15 sats \ 5 replies \ @Scoresby 3 Apr

I wonder how well that works. I'm not sure how SN handles @anon 's trust score.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @0b1CoinObi 3 Apr

I can understand there being an Anon, but this can lead to abuse of the anonymity that this provides and @anon trust score is meaningless.

Maybe @anon can't zap, they can only post. No gaming the bounty's or your own posts
To post anonymously costs 100 sats. Maybe this could be raised to make sure if you really want to post anonymously then you have to pay big. 200 / 300 sats

Just some ideas to close down the @anon loophole

15 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby 3 Apr

@anon can zap, it's just paying a lightning invoice.

I don't think @anon is a loophole.

However, @anon trust score isn't meaningless. I think (might be wrong on this but don't have the time right now to look it up) zaprank is affected by the trust score of people who zap you.

So if you were to use @anon to zap your own posts, it would only be beneficial if @anon had a good global trust score.

108 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek OP 3 Apr

using this reply to reply to multiple things in this thread

So if you were to use @anon to zap your own posts, it would only be beneficial if @anon had a good global trust score.

@anon zaps have no effect on ranking since they are excluded from the web of trust.

If you use @anon to zap your own posts, you only game the system psychologically since we do show your zap visually in the total sat amount but it's not relevant for ranking. So if someone scrolls through recent, this might have an effect on them.

Zaps from @anon also fund the reward pool since 10% go to it instead of the author (like any other zap). That's what is meant with "sybil resistant" in the FAQ:

To make this feature sybil resistant, SN now takes 10% of zaps and re-distributes them to the SN community as part of the daily rewards.

If you zap @anon, 100% go into the reward pool.

To post anonymously costs 100 sats. Maybe this could be raised to make sure if you really want to post anonymously then you have to pay big. 200 / 300 sats

I am not sure if the first sentence is a statement or a suggestion? If it's a suggestion, that's already the case: comments cost 100 sats. Posts cost 100x the normal fee so depending on the territory, this might be pretty high.

Example for ~bitcoin:

I thought for a long while that @anon is actually too expensive but I get corrected over and over again by all the existing usage of @anon, lol.

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 3 Apr

Thanks for the info, @ek! Cool to have it all in one place.

Clearly @anon isn't too expensive, but tbh I have never used it, so I'm not really speaking with skin in the game.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0b1CoinObi 3 Apr

Thanks, good to know that it can't be used to game the system

133 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 2 Apr

Thank you for sharing this. I think back to when I started with crypto and how the whole idea behind it was transparency which to me is still a key aspect of it. As someone who is still pretty new, I did have one post that received a daily award in Feb. before the MSM started.

Since I am new and esp. as I try to establish myself here I will say MSM kinda of made me lose interest for a week or so because I wasn't on the leaderboard and knew I wasn't going to be anywhere near it. Since I try to write all of my posts and put in effort it's harder to post frequently enough to land on the leaderboard. Now to fix this I am not sure but like you highlighted neither system was perfect.

46 sats \ 4 replies \ @frostdragon 2 Apr

I'm going to have to go through past posts to try to get a better understanding of how MSM actually works... Like, are AMAs included? I feel like those typically rack up enough sats/generate incentive on their own, and don't necessarily need to be included. But maybe they aren't included, I don't actually know.

The reason I wouldn't include those is, it makes it easier for newbies to compete.

Maybe splitting MSM into separate competitions could help with that kind of thing...

40 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek OP 2 Apr

Like, are AMAs included?

Yes they are. One great post is still enough to get a nice chunk of rewards.¹

don't necessarily need to be included

Why not?²

This is a good prompt to mention that I am worried about having too many exceptions and that the system is already too complicated.

For example, I wish there was a way to back trace why @hn was in the top 21 for so long but there isn't. The trust graph between every stacker on which the consensus ranking and thus rewards depends is unfortunately not a simple linear equation that is trivial to reverse.

I feel like we need to mention more raw numbers instead of "nice chunks" since it's subjective but it's just too convenient ↩
I see I wasn't patient before replying, haha ↩

67 sats \ 0 replies \ @frostdragon 2 Apr

That's interesting about hn...

I'm assuming zaps play a large part in MSM (again, I need to take the time to see what's already been posted about it, because I'm not super familiar with the ins and outs), in which case a single post could probably launch you into the top 50, if not higher. That seems to be somewhat against the spirit of the incentivizing frequent high quality posts from daily stackers via this competition. Imo. AMAs will typically make more in a day than most stackers will in a week if not longer, especially now that daily rewards are gone... So like - I feel like the incentive for AMAs is already there.

Additionally, AMAs typically seem to come from users who aren't necessarily active community participants. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! MSM just feels more like a community participant competition.

But I agree with you that things need to be kept relatively simple. Sounds like it's an issue if you can't reverse engineer how leaderboard placement happens, but I also understand that keeping users from gaming the system is complicated.

I work in cybersec and think through loophole prevention everyday (specifically in appsec, but also more generally in security architecture)... happy to consult if you guys want a fresh set of eyes.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @frostdragon 4 Apr

Ok so... @ek - today's AMA is a good example imo. Love Dhruv, love that he's here, love that he's participating in the community, hope he sticks around, but... Dude jumped to the top 20 in his first (and possibly only?) post, bypassing the AMA territory fee, and likely won't stick around. I feel like the ~30k sats from zaps is completely fair, but I feel like the MSM placement should be nerfed. That's just me, and I don't actually feel that strongly about it - it just seems out of place, and I can see how that would be anti-motivating to new stackers.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 2 Apr

yes, AMAs are included - all posts and comments count towards million sat madness

94 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 2 Apr

I wasn't a fan of the MSM.

Anything that smacks of some kind of scheme where you need to know a ton of strategy in order to get anything out of it (like airlines miles), is not something I want to take up brain space with. I was happy getting my little daily rewards and was looking forward to getting them again.

On the other hand, I do support experiments in incentives. But I wish the experiment had ended.

25 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 2 Apr

I really appreciate the openness and honesty. One thing I saw from watching the community discussion of MSM during the event was that there was an assumption by everyone -- folks enjoying it and folks who hated it -- that it was a one-off. That definitely contributed to some of the reactions yesterday and since, and I think if there'd been a way to not surprise folks (especially on a day associated with pranks and jokes), that might have made at least part of the messaging go down better, or at least give folks more time to adjust.

(Obviously, having a huge bug hit that day didn't help.)

63 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 3 Apr

As much as I enjoyed MSM last month, being competitive and all, I was looking forward to it ending. I mostly broke even, the sats I spent are the ones I earned. Before March, I was sometimes turning a small profit.

And even though I've visited SN on and off during the last 3 days, I feel much less the drive to post. Let's see if it comes back when I think of some good content to share. I understand the reasons to repeat it, I also follow the frustrations posted here. No perfect solution... satfarmers will get gradually more creative at gaming the system. I think in the end it'll be a game of innovating and alternating the reward system regularly so that it stays enjoyable for everyone.

63 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 3 Apr

I made a more substantive comment already, but also want to say it's really awesome that you wrote this post, and the calibre of discussion on it is fantastic and makes me appreciate ya'll and SN even more.

278 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 3 Apr

Thank you for this! I’m late for this post-mortem. It took me some time to gather my thoughts.

I expected SN to announce the nyms of all 64 Stackers at the end of MSM. Having 90k sats suddenly pop up in my wallet was euphoric ngl, but the radio silence surrounding the closure was anti-climatic, especially since MSM was launched with such fanfare. I expected poppers n streamers n balloons on an official post by SN! 🥳

Ofc now I know that the team was preoccupied with the bug issue, but I suggest that the closure of April’s SMS be regarded as a celebratory event (even if the novelty has worn off) so that the team gets more mileage out of it haha.

I think the competition isn’t as fun for me because I still don’t know who got first second third. I finally figured out why @Darthcoin kept saying that this competition was rigged. I think he meant that it’s only fair to compete if everyone’s identities were revealed at some point in time. I don’t want to lose to concealed identities. I want to properly congratulate the winners n maybe throw them some sats. This is a community event n should be recognised as such. If Stackers care more about their privacy, that’s fine - but they shouldn’t be allowed to join MSM. Period. It spoils the fun for me n I suspect, many of us. That’s why I really appreciate how @Scoresby n @0xbitcoiner revealed their placing.
I think it isn’t so true that Stackers who post every day will automatically get into the top 100. I mean, I post in several territories n notice that there are Stackers who post exclusively in a territory. The folks who post their photos every day on ~Photography are quite unlikely to break into the top 100, I think. Another example may be ~Music. There just aren’t that many zaps ⚡️. But shouldn’t the contributions by these niche Stackers be rewarded in some form?
MSM has made me realise my values more clearly. It’s more fun for me if the system were inclusive. I think I felt happier on days when I got an unexpected 6-8k sats for Daily Rewards because Sensei managed to wrestle those sats from EVERYONE participating. Sensei in the House, yoz. Sorry to degenerate into frat boy immaturity but that was really my mental state haha

My two sats’ worth

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 4 Apr

You are right.

34 sats \ 5 replies \ @siggy47 2 Apr

Can I make a suggestion? Clearly management wants once monthly rewards. Why not do that without limiting winning stackers to any number? Why 64? Why 100? Everyone gets what they earn, including new stackers.

166 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 2 Apr

I think that goes into the discussion if long tail of rewards are net good or bad.

Am I right @kr?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 2 Apr

yeah that is one concern i have.

one other consideration is the satisfaction one gets from winning something. is it as fun if literally everyone gets a trophy?

personally, i find success more rewarding when i have to work for it and when success is not certain from the beginning, but a challenge.

i think it’s important to echo the point you made in your summary @ek, the bar is pretty low to become one of the top 100 stackers as is.

i don’t know of any stackers who regularly contribute decent content and zaps and are going to miss out on rewards.

201 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

Clearly management wants once monthly rewards.

Just in case for the record: there hasn't been a decision made by "management" other than "let's do it again to rule out if the improvements/harms were caused by its newness."

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Apr

"let's do it again to rule out if the improvements/harms were caused by its newness."

Awesome! That's the reason I've been giving everyone as to why it made a lot of sense to do it a second month.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 2 Apr

I stand corrected

53 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 2 Apr

good summary, looking forward to seeing more experimentation around reward policies too

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 3 Apr

Great write up! This is all an interesting experiment. Not sure I like being researcher and subject simultaneously.

Opinionated MSM Community Feedback Summary

Prelude

Original Message

Summary of Discussion

Registrations

Long Tail of Rewards: New Stackers vs Sat Farmers

Awareness of Rewards

Wrap Up

1

2

Footnotes