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483 sats \ 24 replies \ @shyfire 12 Sep 2022 \ on: Satsoverflow - earn bitcoin for answering questions bitcoin
To really work the answers need to be free IMO. I'm not going to buy an answer I haven't seen.
This! Just use the same model as Stacker News - people pay for upvotes, but you can see the text before paying for it. It's OK to charge for asking questions, though.
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What if:
- you are stuck on a programming bug at work
- you have a deadline to finish your program
- someone has answered the question you need, and the answer already has 10 upvotes
Would you buy the answer in that situation?
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Quite a corner case, you'll hit this situation in very rare circumstances, if ever.
Most likely you'll never gain enough traction because you'll be repelling 9 out of 10 users with this policy. That's what I suspect.
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Maybe. But the current model implies 10 people paid for an answer out of interest when they had no deadline (or incentive to upvote). All this happened before my hypothetical deadline. If I found myself on this scenario, I'd just use SO.
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Yeah, I can't even get to the point where I would upvote something because it feels too risky to pay for a shit answer.
On the other hand I would happily tip/pay to upvote helpful answers.
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Try looking at the user "Total earned" and "Weighted rating" fields under the answer.
That should give you a good indication of whether the answerer has a history of giving good answers.
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I think that helps but it still feels like too much friction for me personally, as a casual viewer.
Maybe it's only an issue because I don't feel like I need an answer for any of the questions on there enough?
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I think your point stands IMO.
The solution is reputation but reputation doesn't exist because no one is paying because no one has reputation. It is circular.
If the thought is that paid answers will win - fine. But you need to bootstrap reputation which will be hard if users have to pay, risking money, to assign reputation.
The incentives here make assumptions about a robust reputation system existing while also preventing a robust reputation system from forming.
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This is the same dynamic that exists on darknet markets. New sellers have to establish a reputation before they can gain traction and sell in large quantities.
Usually new sellers start with low prices, and then they raise prices after they have built up reputation.
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Don't they escrow on dark net markets?
Yeah, too much friction.
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The use case for this app is mostly people who are searching for answers to specific questions. So I think they will be motivated to pay if they are desperate enough for the answer.
But I agree, there is too much friction with the payment right now. I'm working on integrating WebLN/Alby, so it will be a one-click payment.
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It's not the payment that is the friction, it's the requirement to pay before seeing the answer
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TANSTAAFL :)
I think there is a use case for that, but you're potentially sacrificing the casual use case, which might be necessary to build up a userbase.
People on stack overflow already spend a lot of effort answering questions for little tangible personal gain already, why? Seems like that open model with tipping for upvotes like SN would be great by itself/maybe all you need to do.
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I personally believe that the answerer should be able to decide their price, not ask for tips. Make it a true fair market.
I like to see all the answers. Often the unchosen answer or a less upvoted answer turns out to solve my particular problem. But I wouldn't want to open chests to find gold that way. It gets in the way of inquisitive processes like the process of elimination.
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What if all of the answers had a flat price of 100 sats? Would you be willing to do a single click for each individual answer if you didn't have to think about the variations of the price?
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I think I would be fine with 100 sats per answer with single clicks.
Btw, do search engines pick up the information from answers, or just the questions?
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Only from questions.
The questions are rendered server side (Server-side rendering), so they get indexed by search engine crawlers. The answers are rendered on the client side, so even if unlocked, they would not get indexed as well.
That's why there is a user rating system. Even when a question has zero upvotes, you can still see the seller rating, which is calculated from the total history of their sales.
So if you see an answer with zero upvotes, but the user has 500k sats in total sales, and a 90% positive rating, you have a good chance that his answer will be good.
It's the same principle used for darknet markets, the seller can rug-pull you, but they will ruin their reputation.
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