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If you dislike your status on a forum, it's easy enough to start a new psuedonym, especially on reddit. I know kleinbl00 has complained about people recognizing

If you dislike your status on a forum, it's easy enough to start a new psuedonym, especially on reddit. I know kleinbl00 has complained about people recognizing him across screennames, but then perhaps it's time for a new one, or a change in writing style. I think the benefits of a reputation outweigh its negatives though. It won't keep the truly prolific users happy (karmanaut, PDub, kleinbl00, etc), but it will motivate more people overall, I assume. It is important to have an easy means of becoming anonymous for expressing controversial opinions, however. Perhaps instead of Slashdot's "post as anonymous" checkbox, there could be a "thread psuedonym" button when you want to be anonymous, but hold a coherent discussion.

thaumaturgy 16y ago
> If you dislike your status on a forum, it's easy enough to start a new psuedonym, especially on reddit. Since you mentioned him specifically, I'll mention that kleinbl00 has on several occasions responded to this with varying degrees of, "that's not fair", "I don't want to", "I don't think I should have to", etc. ... of course, he usually puts it a little more colorfully. > I think the benefits of a reputation outweigh its negatives though. kleinbl00 has actually put this as well as I could, so I should just let him talk about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/gdig1/everybody_wants_to_take_the_idols_down_a_notch/c1mw4bf http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/gdig1/everyb... What you're actually looking for, I think, is accountability: some way for bad behavior to have consequences. Unfortunately, in pseudo-anonymous environments like Reddit (and HackerNews), developing a reputation through score or activity or what-have-you can have downsides for the person with the reputation, and you still don't get the accountability you want. It really is the wrong solution to the wrong problem. Likewise, you also say, > ...but it will motivate more people overall, I assume. ...but in a field where we have relatively few experiments to study, this is one experiment that has already been tried. Reddit already uses this, and the only difference you really get in user behavior is that some of them choose to switch to a new account every once in a while. That might be a good game, but again, it's poor conversation.

thaumaturgy 16y ago

> If you dislike your status on a forum, it's easy enough to start a new psuedonym, especially on reddit. Since you mentioned him specifically, I'll mention that kleinbl00 has on several occasions responded to this with varying degrees of, "that's not fair", "I don't want to", "I don't think I should have to", etc. ... of course, he usually puts it a little more colorfully. > I think the benefits of a reputation outweigh its negatives though. kleinbl00 has actually put this as well as I could, so I should just let him talk about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/gdig1/everybody_wants_to_take_the_idols_down_a_notch/c1mw4bf http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/gdig1/everyb... What you're actually looking for, I think, is accountability: some way for bad behavior to have consequences. Unfortunately, in pseudo-anonymous environments like Reddit (and HackerNews), developing a reputation through score or activity or what-have-you can have downsides for the person with the reputation, and you still don't get the accountability you want. It really is the wrong solution to the wrong problem. Likewise, you also say, > ...but it will motivate more people overall, I assume. ...but in a field where we have relatively few experiments to study, this is one experiment that has already been tried. Reddit already uses this, and the only difference you really get in user behavior is that some of them choose to switch to a new account every once in a while. That might be a good game, but again, it's poor conversation.