No karma numbers, no contests, no bribes

"Any complicated moderation system that makes its algorithms public is eventually going to fall victim to gaming. So my advice is, if you're going to use a community moderation system, make it as invisible as possible. No karma numbers, no contests, no bribes. Rely on social capital and quality content to get your community talking, and develop a system that helps you moderate without a lot of fanfare. The bottom line is, if you take away the scores, it's hard to play the game."

Or why we can not lift the skirts of the JoS moderation system.

http://designforcommunity.com/essay8.html

via

http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2003/10/13/powazek_on_moderation_and_secrets.php

Just me (Sir to you)
Monday, October 13, 2003

There was an online community I was a member of for umm, umpity-ump years that had a .desocialise command.

If some loose tongued ruffian polluted the space he could be .desocialised such that nothing they contributed would be seen by the others but he could see his own drivel.

Eventually this electronic version of being sent to Coventry bored them enough to go away.

Simon Lucy
Monday, October 13, 2003

Hrmmm, I wonder who .desoc'd me ...

Alyosha`
Monday, October 13, 2003

It sounds like dishonest censorship to me. If each user had a desocialize button for his own views then that would be fair, but it would make weird reading on the threads.

Stephen Jones
Monday, October 13, 2003

Anyone seen Alyosha lately?

Johnny Bravo
Monday, October 13, 2003

i used to work on an enormous online community. if someone was reaally annoying, we just made the site appear broken to that user. bogus error messages, etc. it worked very well, but not sure the site is still doing things that way.

rz
Monday, October 13, 2003

I don't think keeping the algorithm secret helps very much.  We know it doesn't work for cryptography, and we can see that it hasn't worked for Google either.  If the discussion area is small, and thus there's little incentive to "desocialize it", then fine.  But if it starts to matter, then whatever your policy is, it's almost certain that people will figure out how to abuse it.

Foolish Jordan
Monday, October 13, 2003

Another thing you can do is limit damage. If you are at an online community site for the company, and not to spewing drivel, you shouldn't have access to the entire community as a listening audience. Perhaps 5 other friends who are on concurrently is the idea you want here. Although it would be immensely fun to wall() to everyone on your MSN Instant Messenger contact list--you can't. It was suppose to be about company and friendship--not spamming your friends.

Li-fan Chen
Tuesday, October 14, 2003

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