147 sats \ 11 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr \ on: Opinionated MSM Community Feedback Summary meta
I'm glad you shared it!
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?
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.
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.
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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")
@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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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