7 ms·

that don't follow the rules (as they see them The rules are exactly what is gamified via the points and badges system. You can’t fault anyone for responding to

by gaius 8y ago

that don't follow the rules (as they see them The rules are exactly what is gamified via the points and badges system. You can’t fault anyone for responding to the incentives they are given, when explicitly set out by the site owners via that system. The personalities attracted by it are the ones that made it successful, by design. Otherwise it would be just another Yahoo Answers. The “rules” only changed after those contributors had made it a success. Some of those people apparently feel it was a “bait and switch”.

crispyambulance 8y ago
> You can’t fault anyone for responding to the incentives they are given, when explicitly set out by the site owners... Oh yes you can! I remember stackoverflow in the early days and it was useful from the beginning. Sure, there were always some persnickety zealots who acted as self-appointed police "protecting" the community from subjectivity and duplicate questions with all the sensitivity of a clock-maker wearing oven mitts. In the last 5-6 years, however, it has been overrun with such strange behavior. One can't simply ask a question unless it meets an unreasonably high standard-- and even then perfectly good questions get slapped down for no reason at all.
- gaius 8y ago
  SO literally gives you a reward in the form of a badge for your profile the more you flag questions! They give you a badge for downvoting, a badge for editing... The root cause for all these behaviours lies with whoever dreamt up those badges and chose what to award them for.
  - yifanl 8y ago
    Worse than the badges is that the more points you have, the more features you get on SO. Which could be a positive (it certainly makes sense that the most engaged people should be the community moderators), but when combined with how points are earned, it would naturally lead to weirdness like the swaths of downvoting, reporting and totally unnecessary grammar edits.
    - wool_gather 8y ago
      There's a (fairly low) lifetime limit on receiving points for edits. Once you've earned the editing privilege, you no longer earn points. And you lose a point if you downvote an answer.
  - mark-r 8y ago
    How many people use badges as incentives? I completely ignore mine, except for the gold ones that let me mark a duplicate without waiting for anybody else. And I'm always careful to be 100% sure before I do.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  SO loves those "click-bait" questions. I.e., "why does this weird thing happen in C++." 99% of the time, these questions are nothing more than trivia, AND they are posted by a person who already knows the answer and is just gaming for 10k+ upvotes. All while asking or answering a legitimate question is likely to be worth maybe 2-3 upvotes and risks getting down voted into oblivion.

by gaius 8y ago

crispyambulance 8y ago

> You can’t fault anyone for responding to the incentives they are given, when explicitly set out by the site owners... Oh yes you can! I remember stackoverflow in the early days and it was useful from the beginning. Sure, there were always some persnickety zealots who acted as self-appointed police "protecting" the community from subjectivity and duplicate questions with all the sensitivity of a clock-maker wearing oven mitts. In the last 5-6 years, however, it has been overrun with such strange behavior. One can't simply ask a question unless it meets an unreasonably high standard-- and even then perfectly good questions get slapped down for no reason at all.

gaius 8y ago
SO literally gives you a reward in the form of a badge for your profile the more you flag questions! They give you a badge for downvoting, a badge for editing... The root cause for all these behaviours lies with whoever dreamt up those badges and chose what to award them for.
- yifanl 8y ago
  Worse than the badges is that the more points you have, the more features you get on SO. Which could be a positive (it certainly makes sense that the most engaged people should be the community moderators), but when combined with how points are earned, it would naturally lead to weirdness like the swaths of downvoting, reporting and totally unnecessary grammar edits.
  - wool_gather 8y ago
    There's a (fairly low) lifetime limit on receiving points for edits. Once you've earned the editing privilege, you no longer earn points. And you lose a point if you downvote an answer.
- mark-r 8y ago
  How many people use badges as incentives? I completely ignore mine, except for the gold ones that let me mark a duplicate without waiting for anybody else. And I'm always careful to be 100% sure before I do.
mywittyname 8y ago
SO loves those "click-bait" questions. I.e., "why does this weird thing happen in C++." 99% of the time, these questions are nothing more than trivia, AND they are posted by a person who already knows the answer and is just gaming for 10k+ upvotes. All while asking or answering a legitimate question is likely to be worth maybe 2-3 upvotes and risks getting down voted into oblivion.