A good pattern/solution to the social web user issue of point whoring? [closed]

Question

Take any social website like Digg or Stack Overflow that somehow lets users reward points for stories, questions, etc..

What happens is quite similar to the process that lead to the rise of tabloid newspapers that feed only headlines and no content to its readers.

Users are usually smart enough to figure out strategies to maximize their point rewards regardless of whether that strategy harmonized with the goal of the website or not.

I identify the following problems

• People will swamp more general and more entertaining questions with answers. Answering more specific questions requires actual domain knowledge.
• Getting most points is often tied to involving most users. Given a random web crowd this unfortunately means mostly generic, subjective, argumentative and unspecific entries.

As the creator of a social website you have the unique chance to influence social behavior towards a favorable direction. I think that the influence the system has on the behavior of the people far outweighs the initial seed of users.

I'm interested in patterns/solutions that aim to solve this problem in terms of:

• ranking algorithms
• expert systems
• limiting/creating ways of social interaction
• information that is provided/hidden

In particular, given the perspective of Stack Overflow, how could one solve entries like "What's your favorite programmer cartoon" become the most popular entries (I pick this one because it is a good example for the undesired phenomenon).

Answer 1

The most important lesson with regard to the design of any social computing is that community dynamics problems cannot be solved purely by technological means.

In other words, whatever the solution you implement, if you have users to whom getting points (or trolling or getting involved in flame wars or whatever other disruption) is more important that participating in the community, that is what they will do.

When designing the solution, you "simply" have to make sure that there are sufficient benefits (badges, entertainment, information, rewarding feedback) in place for people who aren't in it just for the points. Then, if you are very lucky, you will attract the right kind of people.

This may seem trite, but it is one of the most importat results of CSCW research (Olson and Olson, 2000): unless users are prepared to collaborate/play fair/be productive, then no amount of technology is going to solve that problem.

Answer 2

This isn't fundamentally different from asking what's the best way to stop people from cash whoring in real life. Looking at it in that context, I suspect the only way to stop this behaviour is to remove the opportunity ie don't use points (or money).

The problem is that if you do that, there's no quantifiable reason to get out of bed.

Points and cash both measure social status and ability to influence others. Ability to sequestre resources is a primary sexual selection criterion, which is why greed is so powerful; it is a direct sublimation of the sex drive.

Answer 3

I find the voting system that Stack Overflow uses to be quite good. Other people essentially judge you as an expert or not. And the good answers bubble up to the top.

I'd stray away from punishing people who don't get voted for, and maybe have some threshold for those who get consistently voted down, losing points.

That said, with popular topics most people won't be bothered sorting through the flack to find the diamonds in the rough. So you are going to lose some good answers.

Also Stack Overflow seems to punish people who post lost of unvoted answers... My score went down after posting this as I have a few posts with 0 votes.

[Update]

In response to comments: I think if you want more specific answers you have to dig deeper and look at a questions for a particular tag. I think the recent post What's your favorite “programmer” cartoon? has shown that people will swamp more general and more "entertaining" questions with answers as they are more like procrastination. Answering more specific questions requires actual domain knowledge.

As for why my score went down it may have been a bug. My score went from 91 to 81 when I posted this answer and then rose to 111 after that. As I'm not privy to the algorithm that Stack overflow uses, I assumed that that was what had happened.

It might just have normalised my score.

[Update 2]

I think that social networks have to police themselves. They are owned and run by the community by their very nature. Just looking at the AACS Revolt that happened on Digg last year is proof enough that you can't control it.

The trick is to have enough users who will mod down the garbage and mod up the good stuff.

Perhaps hiring a number of moderators who can do this full time, or even just giving a few people who have proven themselves to be good citizens moderator rights, with extra weight on their moderation, most people online live for this kind of recognition and some might be willing to do it for free as they will have become members of some kind of social networking elite.

The question is how do you stop them from abusing this power? As Stan Lee is fond of saying: With great power comes great responsibility.

Answer 4

It's probably hard to have a completely workable solution. Essentially, if the reason people attain points has a positive effect on the community, then point-whoring will increase the quality of the community over time. Would a measure that decreases the rate at which points grow in proportion to the number of points attained be workable?

(i.e first 100 points are 'normal', next 100 take 20% longer to attain, etc)