4 ms·

Monetary incentive actually decreases quality, in situations like this. It devalues altruistic contributions (see: Drive: the surprising truth about what motiva

by maaku 13y ago

Monetary incentive actually decreases quality, in situations like this. It devalues altruistic contributions (see: Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us)

clamprecht 13y ago
Maybe. But the bounty has also gotten the bug a lot of attention (case in point, this HN post). All it takes is one developer who happens to be an expert in this area to see the bug and say, "I know exactly what is causing this!" and go fix it. What's the saying - "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" or something.
fudged71 13y ago
Absolutely. I was just at a demo day where a group was making a Stack Overflow clone with monetary incentive and they didn't agree with this point.
- twistedpair 13y ago
  Even in my day job, I'd happily pay someone $20 who had the experience to clarify some annoying nuance of XYZ framework. Sure, I could keep digging through the API docs for another hour to find it, but they could answer it in 15 seconds. I'm certain I could be similarly helpful to others. Why isn't SO doing this yet?
  - argonaut 13y ago
    The point is that many people who would have otherwise answered your question on SO out of sheer goodwill would not answer questions if paid $20 to answer questions, a motivational phenomenon that has some empirical support in psychology.
  - darkmighty 13y ago
    Psychological altruism bias notwithstanding, I think bounties sure have their place -- perhaps not side-to-side with altruistic ones as to not interfere with them: SO tends to get a lot of attention on interesting questions, and very few otherwise. This leaves an opportunity for low interest, high personal value questions, the dual of SO. There would still be a void for low interest low value questions, but reaching those is asking too much.
  - chaz 13y ago
    Check out http://www.airpair.com/ http://www.airpair.com/, https://helpouts.google.com https://helpouts.google.com, and https://www.liveninja.com/ https://www.liveninja.com/. I haven't used any of them, but I think potential in this space, especially outside of the tech space.
_delirium 13y ago
I've definitely found that for myself, especially for smallish amounts of money. If it's enough money that I can justify it as freelancing, then it's a different category entirely: I'll do a good job in return for being paid. But I'd rather do things I'm interested in without any money involved (writing Wikipedia articles, answering questions I know something about, etc.) than chase $2 bounties. That ends up making it feel not like an interesting hobby, but like a low-paid job, like spending all day on Mechanical Turk. As a proprietor of such a system you also end up with a whole category of new bad behaviors, as people try to maximize their hourly pay by finding ways to game the system, getting the most payout for the least input.
- maaku 13y ago
  One thing that does work is turning it into a game: non-monetary reputation points, badges, etc. No surprise, this is what stackoverflow has pioneered (and Wikipedia should take note).
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I actually tend to find those pretty demotivating/bad-behavior-inducing as well. Reputation in the actual sense is one thing (getting a reputation for being a good contributor), but I really dislike karma/points-style "scorekeeping" and up/downvotes. Fortunately on HN nobody takes it seriously, or it could be a problem. Wikipedia does have miscellaneous scores and badges, of which I find the badges awarded by community members as recognition of a contribution most useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABarnstars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABarnstars There's also just raw counts of contributions, which everyone takes with a large grain of salt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_article_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_... You can also click "thank" next to specific edits, which just sends the person a notice that someone appreciated their edit. That I think is useful, but I'm not sure how useful it would really be to keep a score of "number of thanks" or whatever. The point is just to say "hey someone noticed you did a good job here and appreciates it" to give some encouragement, not to keep score of who got thanked more. And finally many people just collect vanity "hey look at what I've done!" lists, which can be a nice way of reflecting on your contributions and feeling good about them. Many people's User Pages are like that, or you could do it externally like e.g. http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume

by maaku 13y ago

Monetary incentive actually decreases quality, in situations like this. It devalues altruistic contributions (see: Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us)

clamprecht 13y ago

Maybe. But the bounty has also gotten the bug a lot of attention (case in point, this HN post). All it takes is one developer who happens to be an expert in this area to see the bug and say, "I know exactly what is causing this!" and go fix it. What's the saying - "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" or something.

fudged71 13y ago

Absolutely. I was just at a demo day where a group was making a Stack Overflow clone with monetary incentive and they didn't agree with this point.

twistedpair 13y ago
Even in my day job, I'd happily pay someone $20 who had the experience to clarify some annoying nuance of XYZ framework. Sure, I could keep digging through the API docs for another hour to find it, but they could answer it in 15 seconds. I'm certain I could be similarly helpful to others. Why isn't SO doing this yet?
- argonaut 13y ago
  The point is that many people who would have otherwise answered your question on SO out of sheer goodwill would not answer questions if paid $20 to answer questions, a motivational phenomenon that has some empirical support in psychology.
- darkmighty 13y ago
  Psychological altruism bias notwithstanding, I think bounties sure have their place -- perhaps not side-to-side with altruistic ones as to not interfere with them: SO tends to get a lot of attention on interesting questions, and very few otherwise. This leaves an opportunity for low interest, high personal value questions, the dual of SO. There would still be a void for low interest low value questions, but reaching those is asking too much.
- chaz 13y ago
  Check out http://www.airpair.com/ http://www.airpair.com/, https://helpouts.google.com https://helpouts.google.com, and https://www.liveninja.com/ https://www.liveninja.com/. I haven't used any of them, but I think potential in this space, especially outside of the tech space.

_delirium 13y ago

I've definitely found that for myself, especially for smallish amounts of money. If it's enough money that I can justify it as freelancing, then it's a different category entirely: I'll do a good job in return for being paid. But I'd rather do things I'm interested in without any money involved (writing Wikipedia articles, answering questions I know something about, etc.) than chase $2 bounties. That ends up making it feel not like an interesting hobby, but like a low-paid job, like spending all day on Mechanical Turk. As a proprietor of such a system you also end up with a whole category of new bad behaviors, as people try to maximize their hourly pay by finding ways to game the system, getting the most payout for the least input.

maaku 13y ago
One thing that does work is turning it into a game: non-monetary reputation points, badges, etc. No surprise, this is what stackoverflow has pioneered (and Wikipedia should take note).
- _delirium 13y ago
  I actually tend to find those pretty demotivating/bad-behavior-inducing as well. Reputation in the actual sense is one thing (getting a reputation for being a good contributor), but I really dislike karma/points-style "scorekeeping" and up/downvotes. Fortunately on HN nobody takes it seriously, or it could be a problem. Wikipedia does have miscellaneous scores and badges, of which I find the badges awarded by community members as recognition of a contribution most useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABarnstars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABarnstars There's also just raw counts of contributions, which everyone takes with a large grain of salt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_article_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_... You can also click "thank" next to specific edits, which just sends the person a notice that someone appreciated their edit. That I think is useful, but I'm not sure how useful it would really be to keep a score of "number of thanks" or whatever. The point is just to say "hey someone noticed you did a good job here and appreciates it" to give some encouragement, not to keep score of who got thanked more. And finally many people just collect vanity "hey look at what I've done!" lists, which can be a nice way of reflecting on your contributions and feeling good about them. Many people's User Pages are like that, or you could do it externally like e.g. http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume