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He has displayed some very poignant insight into his own behavior in that particular online community. I was able to take away some good lessons about my own ac

He has displayed some very poignant insight into his own behavior in that particular online community. I was able to take away some good lessons about my own activities elsewhere. It's definitely important to keep your ear to the ground, as he has apparently learned. I don't think I've read a lot of what he's written; An article or two over the last several years, maybe. That said I have an image created in my mind about the kind of person he is (very self-promotional) but this has shown me another side of the guy. Something I can relate to. Good on him for being humble enough to lay his own flaws out there for everyone to see.

StavrosK 16y ago
Isn't the TL;DR here "I was basically being a Karma whore"? It sounds like he was mostly trying to get upvotes rather than answer the questions...
- coderdude 16y ago
  That wasn't my take-away. He answers a ton of questions and made a conscious effort to maximize his return on that work (in this case, karma). He knew how to get what he wanted, but in order to get what he wanted he still had to be helpful in the process. If he wasn't being helpful then he wouldn't have gotten the votes in the first place. If he actually wasn't being helpful but yet still received a lot of votes then that is a flaw in the community's voting habits. For example, people automatically up-voting him because of who he is after seeing other people do that countless times "so he must be insightful, right?" The guy knows how that place works so it seems logical that he might make the most out his time spent on there. There are power players in every community -- even this one -- who can relate to Scoble in this regard. His problem was that he was playing too hard IMO. This ticked a lot of people off. Now, he does mention that some of his practices were annoying to other community members. That was also his flaw.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    The definition of karma whoring isn't posting irrelevant things just for upvotes, it's focusing on getting upvoted rather than answering. His posting low-quality questions quickly just so he can get upvoted while refining them, posting irrelevant pictures just so the posts look nicer, etc, all points to karma whoring, not just answering a lot.
    - coderdude 16y ago
      >The definition of karma whoring isn't posting irrelevant things just for upvotes, it's focusing on getting upvoted rather than answering. Why is there a negative stigma around wanting karma and seeking it out even in the case where you're being helpful? It seems as though karma is something good to have but if you want it, that's bad. This seems similar to how wanting to be cool makes you so uncool. >His posting low-quality questions quickly just so he can get upvoted while refining them, posting irrelevant pictures just so the posts look nicer, etc, all points to karma whoring, not just answering a lot. Fair enough, my definition of karma whoring might be a bit off from the norm. I always took it as trying to gain karma from a community while basically doing nothing to further the quality of the community. I wasn't aware from his post that the pictures he was adding to the answers were entirely irrelevant. I must have missed where he said that (and I don't use Quora).
      - StavrosK 16y ago
        I don't use quora either, I just saw his example post where the photo seems to be an airport whereas the post is about some other issue. There's a difference between being minimally helpful to maximise karma gain and being helpful and getting karma as a side-effect. The things he posted weren't about getting the highest quality posts possible, they were about getting the highest amount of upvotes. The fact that he posted low quality answers to gain karma while he refined them is a prime example of that, in my opinion. If you just care about helping you don't do that. Karma is a reward for helpful users, it's not the goal (that's why you can't redeem it for anything). When users act in this way it stops being an indicator of helpfulness and turns into an indicator of who's the best at raking in karma.

StavrosK 16y ago

Isn't the TL;DR here "I was basically being a Karma whore"? It sounds like he was mostly trying to get upvotes rather than answer the questions...

coderdude 16y ago
That wasn't my take-away. He answers a ton of questions and made a conscious effort to maximize his return on that work (in this case, karma). He knew how to get what he wanted, but in order to get what he wanted he still had to be helpful in the process. If he wasn't being helpful then he wouldn't have gotten the votes in the first place. If he actually wasn't being helpful but yet still received a lot of votes then that is a flaw in the community's voting habits. For example, people automatically up-voting him because of who he is after seeing other people do that countless times "so he must be insightful, right?" The guy knows how that place works so it seems logical that he might make the most out his time spent on there. There are power players in every community -- even this one -- who can relate to Scoble in this regard. His problem was that he was playing too hard IMO. This ticked a lot of people off. Now, he does mention that some of his practices were annoying to other community members. That was also his flaw.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  The definition of karma whoring isn't posting irrelevant things just for upvotes, it's focusing on getting upvoted rather than answering. His posting low-quality questions quickly just so he can get upvoted while refining them, posting irrelevant pictures just so the posts look nicer, etc, all points to karma whoring, not just answering a lot.
  - coderdude 16y ago
    >The definition of karma whoring isn't posting irrelevant things just for upvotes, it's focusing on getting upvoted rather than answering. Why is there a negative stigma around wanting karma and seeking it out even in the case where you're being helpful? It seems as though karma is something good to have but if you want it, that's bad. This seems similar to how wanting to be cool makes you so uncool. >His posting low-quality questions quickly just so he can get upvoted while refining them, posting irrelevant pictures just so the posts look nicer, etc, all points to karma whoring, not just answering a lot. Fair enough, my definition of karma whoring might be a bit off from the norm. I always took it as trying to gain karma from a community while basically doing nothing to further the quality of the community. I wasn't aware from his post that the pictures he was adding to the answers were entirely irrelevant. I must have missed where he said that (and I don't use Quora).
    - StavrosK 16y ago
      I don't use quora either, I just saw his example post where the photo seems to be an airport whereas the post is about some other issue. There's a difference between being minimally helpful to maximise karma gain and being helpful and getting karma as a side-effect. The things he posted weren't about getting the highest quality posts possible, they were about getting the highest amount of upvotes. The fact that he posted low quality answers to gain karma while he refined them is a prime example of that, in my opinion. If you just care about helping you don't do that. Karma is a reward for helpful users, it's not the goal (that's why you can't redeem it for anything). When users act in this way it stops being an indicator of helpfulness and turns into an indicator of who's the best at raking in karma.