3 ms·
> "For me, it was never about the money but rather about the Kaggle points" Accumulated integer counts that represent social value and/or standing encourage de
by floatingatoll 7y ago
> "For me, it was never about the money but rather about the Kaggle points"
Accumulated integer counts that represent social value and/or standing encourage destructive behavior.
- nefitty 7y agoIt’s so fascinating to see how easily a human brain can be hijacked by status. I wonder if there’s a way to harness that power for improving individual performance...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gdsdfe 7y agoThere is and it's very effective ... A company I worked in briefly used to have this badge system to honor people that go the extra mile at work, and people were very keen on getting those even though it didn't have any financial compensation behind it
- marta_morena 7y agoUm that is kindof missing the point. A badge is nothing more than a number expressed in symbols, so you demonstrated just another variation of how to hijack the brain, even if you just read an article showing it to you with numbers... If "improving individual performance" means to you that you perform better at your job, you are already lost.
- gdsdfe 7y agoI'm sorry but if performing better at your job doesn't improve your individual performance, you need another job!
- mmhsieh 7y agoNapoleon Bonaparte: “Give me enough medals and I'll win you any war”
- quickthrower2 7y agoAlso true if you exclude the bit about medals.
- harry8 7y agoAnd this is why everyone in Russia speaks french to this day!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- guelo 7y agoElementary shchool teachers use it all the time. Just some stickers and a leaderboard in the classroom and it works wonders for behavior and achievement.
- geomark 7y agoI have noticed that it doesn't have much effect after a while. The students are like, meh, someone gets an award every week, and eventually it rolls around to my turn unless I really screw up. The effect on parents seems bigger, which is a good thing, I suppose, since parents then give their kids to some positive feedback.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoThats only if the points are simply participation awards. They only have value if winning them is not for granted.
- thrwaway69 7y agoFor monthly things, it does have some effect. I participated in some of them before due to the visibility. People from your class may know you but others, not so much. In the absence of time and other signals, management would often pick someone who is highlighted to represent something. A lot of big people at those events generally don't mind giving contact information to young kids asking for help as much. From there, you can effectively build a nice list of people that you can leverage in future for your resume or career. It's like free consultation you otherwise would need to buy later.
- geomark 7y agoInteresting idea. I have a very confident and talkative kid who is not shy about approaching adults. I bet he could collect lots of contact information.
- djannzjkzxn 7y agoIndeed, such mechanisms exist in the form of raises, promotions, bonuses, etc.
- smogcutter 7y ago...he said, and then refreshed HN.
- floatingatoll 7y agoPropose HN: 'Countless' experiment – hiding all karmic integers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267 Perhaps someday we'll get a week without them.
- sillysaurusx 7y agoNo chance. HN’s goal is to have every effective programmer in the world checking it at least once a week. Anything that gets in the way of that is de facto bad. (I’d love to be surprised, though.) You can get the same effect with a Tampermonkey script I wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200 It even scrambles the karma count in your profile, so there’s no opportunity for karma to affect you.
- bitexploder 7y agoEverything in moderation, right? Including games we play for imaginary Karma. I must say, though, I generally like the way HN does it. It isn't nearly as in your face and I don't find that motivates my behavior very much.
- Consultant32452 7y agoIf I get too many positive karma posts in a row I start worrying I'm censoring myself too much. Positive karma usually means I'm just saying the most mainstream thing and that's boring.
- floatingatoll 7y agoThe proposal is to see if site behavior changes as a whole when integers are removed. Individual opt-in doesn't permit such a test, nor does permitting opt-out.
- oefrha 7y ago> Be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up. Jeff Atwood on Coding Horror. (He can't be the first person to have said this, though.)