As a non-regular baby user, this frightens me! I worry that, if this were real, people would take earning bitcoin from posts far too seriously. The system also seems a little complex, especially as Hubski already takes a little while to get down pat. It's a neat idea, though. Perhaps, if this did become real, you would only get an "account" after you've filled your wheel once? Though users should be free to just hit a "donate" button at any time.
I agree. That is the biggest downside that we predict. The 'hubwheel first' idea is an interesting one. We are going to have plenty to discuss when this is over, I am sure.I worry that, if this were real, people would take earning bitcoin from posts far too seriously.
This occurred to me, too, but I'm reminded of this xkcd comic. While it can definitely be corrupted, what if all this does is produce posters obsessed with sharing high quality content? I find this experiment fascinating and am optimistic.
I'm worried about this cheapening the content, more than anything. I love hubski the way it is, but I'm afraid that, as it gets bigger, people will start posting easily digestible content that doesn't promote thoughtfulness...which becomes a slippery slope when you add in monetary rewards. I don't want Hubski to become Reddit, and we know how that karma system has promoted frequent low-quality posts for the sake of, "Karma-Whoring." I'm afraid that giving money to users for posting something popular could lead us down that same path.
This is very early in the testing process, but already I find I'm a bit more stingy with my boops and shares knowing I have a finite amount of funds to give out. If I know I'm giving away my hard earned money with every share, I want to make sure it's spent on quality content. I suppose a problem would arise if a majority of users felt their money is better spent on content featuring memes and tired jokes instead of articles on current politics and technology, for example. Thankfully those type of users are sparse on Hubski.
I think another aspect is that I don't really know how much each of these bits is worth. Like, I've been told, but that has no real meaning since I got them for free. At first I was just giving out 4 bits per boop (awesome sentence), but then my bit count went up by a ton after only a few boops. I felt that social pressure to adjust my valuation of bits and give out more per boop. Once it's tied to a dollar value, I wonder how I'll actually react. I'm trying to pretend, but it's hard since it's just not my money.
I'm doing a 100 bits per boop (bpb?) right now. I figure that should allow me to run through the 35000 bits I have in the two weeks we have. Or at least a large portion of them. The 35000 bits corresponds to about 10 real dollars. I could see myself investing 10 bucks in Hubski every two weeks.
Ooh, that makes me think of something that could (potentially) make this work, in that even if people put money in, there's a hard limit to how much you can put in per month, for example. That way people will remain somewhat stingy with who they award because they can only do it so much in a month, and it could help prevent the value of it from cheapening and people wouldn't have much reason to make pandering posts. Still wouldn't solve all issues concerning that, though, I realize after writing this out.
It's certainly possible. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but my hope is the expense to the user up-hubbing results in some restraint. Whether it's credit I've received or paid for, I'll think twice about sharing a cute picture of a cat or up-hubbing a witty but low effort comment. In a world with no down votes, having a small expense to sharing a link hopefully steers users toward posts they find valuable rather than merely amusing.
I thought about this too but couldn't get past the "pay to win" model. If, for example, hubski gets super popular, what's to stop an ad agency from buying 1,000,000 and flooding the site? Credits are cheap and $5000 is a drop in the bucket of a major ad campaign.
What's stopping them from creating a bunch of accounts and doing that now? These bits are buying you anything. We're not saying you can't share if you don't have money. Interactions are remaining the same but now your vote has a bit more value.
Oh, I was replying specifically to the idea that submissions should cost some nominal amount of bits.
Honestly, it could work really well, I'm merely trying to express my fears. I hope that the system goes exactly how mk and friends have planned, I'm just a bit too cynical. If this system went live, I would certainly buy in for a small amount just to feed the system and support hubski.
This seems the most likely downfall of this approach. Still, it seems odd that the low quality content would have the advantage when there is a greater cost associated with it proliferating it. No doubt, there may be a stronger incentive to produce it now. If these factors are at play, I wonder how they will balance out. That said, the motivation to experiment like this is because we want to create something that can scale and maintain its integrity and purpose. Other funding models aren't well-aligned. IMO it's an open question if we can find a better one, but this will likely help us in the search.
Of course! Which is why I'm glad we're doing this experiment in the first place--I want to see how this plays out. I don't think hubski has reached the critical mass of popularity where the content starts declining in popularity, and this system may work very well with how the community currently exists. I'm a little excited to see what direction this gets taken--it could be awful, or it could be really cool!
I'm going to ramble this out: With the current mechanism the worst thing that can happen is nothing, the best thing that can happen is you get bits. This makes me think I could pander. Muting offers a nice counterbalance as I can flood feeds with shit posts before I'm silenced on a majority of the site, but as the community grows and the common denominator lowers, that might change. But that's a potential future, so we'll set that aside. This will get us, hopefully, a nice boost in content but I wonder what will happen to the level of shares. With actual currency tied to the action, I myself feel more gollum-y, clutching my bits to my chest in search of things that I value, making me want to be less cavalier with my shares. Probably a good thing. I'm going to put my imaginary bits towards an increase in posts with a decrease in shares. Though this does open the door for some interesting "markets". What if it cost bits to post? What if it cost bits to add community tags? What if the current community tag wasn't the one with the most users, but with the most bits? What if badges were automatically worth 100x's boops were worth? You're teetering on the edge of making a free market of community content and the gulf below is vast and awesome. EDIT: oh man, now my mind is going crazy with this. You could make entire stock markets for content. You could tie the popularity of a tag to the number of bits it costs to post to that tag, or to vote in that tag. You could allow authors to set bit bars on their content, forcing people to pay to play. You could create a "karmadecay" that applies a modifier to every bit of content, making reposts progressively more expensive. An actual "karma market" where currency has variable values is such a powerful concept. I'm nerding out right now.
Another idea on this: I could see bits congregating at greedy points - folks who post a lot, get booped a lot, but have their donations set to zero. In time this would create bit pools and stagnate the economy. It's not a pressing concern as the community is still small, but I wonder what effects an expiration date on bits would have.
There was some musing a while back about what a Hubski marketplace might look like. Half baked idea, but it sparked some decent conversation.
More ideas: This one falls under granular control, so I don't think it has merit for hubski in its current form but I think there's something in it. I've been doing writing prompts. If I wanted to hold a week long contest where solid entries get 500 bits, I'd have to adjust my bit rate every time I went back to the thread (because that's just too much to give to everyone). Some way to limit my donations to tags, or posts on my own threads. Maybe even a currency separate from boops. Imagine a golden hubwheel appears only when you have bits. you can vote regularly or with bits, your choice.
That's one of my concerns, as well. I like the idea of hiding the bit donation stuff until you've filled a wheel, i.e. gradually introducing complexity. I wonder if a paragraph or two explaining how it works on the donation settings page would help, or just make it worse.The system also seems a little complex
Gradually making Hubski complex could be just as bad as introducing this right off the bat. A lot of people come and go, aren't sold at first, or are disillusioned before really getting into Hubski. I know I've left at least once thinking I wouldn't visit again. If we keep making this minimalist aggregator more and more complicated, it loses any edge or value it currently has– it gets harder for the new user to reach the community that makes Hubski great.
I agree that we need to take away as much as we add. At least it should feel like it from a user's perspective. The cognitive load is just a bit higher than it ought to be IMO. That's part of the reason why we removed auto-personal tags, the gains didn't seem worth the added complexity. That said, a bit of an intimidation factor isn't always a bad thing. It's a balancing act.
I just gave you 15 bits. It's like a whole. .004 cents! I was similarly worried about this, but the fact that you get bits by posting and sharing and the amount of money we are talking about is so small and so passive, I don't know. I don't see it being a worthwhile money making venture for individuals at this point. Furthermore, Hubski users do a good job of sharing content that encourages discussion, even if it isn't something they don't strictly agree with. I really hope this model encourages people to be more thoughtful, post and comment more, and engage with each other more. It would never work on reddit because it would increase the amount of low-fi content and reposts that float around and it would be hypothetically possible to game the system and actually make a relatively substantial amount of money. People would game it to game it. Because our community is much smaller and much more focused on longer form content and high quality discussions, I don't think we are going to go down that path right now.) How many bits do you have now?
31.5 bits! Kind of feels like an arbitrary number for me right now. Like Fahrenheit temperature. What does it all mean?! I think the "right now" is a huge part of this whole thing. The community is good, the focus is discussion, and it isn't particularly easy to game Hubski (if at all) without a cultural shift. In the long term though, how will this translate? Will we be able to recognize if a pivot is in order?
I hope so. Hubski has birthed and killed features like there is no tomorrow. Personal tags. Editors. The possibility of revamping community tags again due to assholes using it to anonymously attack. We don't really pivot over here—we just sort of flow based on what is necessary at any given time. This is one of the reasons we are doing this with fake bits - to see what happens. To see if people start to see their behavior changing and whether or not that is a positive or a negative for the larger community. FYI, I heard about the idea for the first time last night. About a million thoughts ran through my head, "what if it does..." and "what if people start...". I was looking for areas for it to fail. Luckily, mk already had it ready to go and so we said fuck it. Let's go. Let's get answers. Let's see what happens. If this works - truly works - it'll be so fucking awesome. If it encourages people to be awesome and gives everyone the ability to donate to Hubski while participating in Hubski, that is amazing. Furthermore, the utter passivity of it is wonderful. Donation micro-transactions like Gratipay and other bitcoin tipping services force users to take an action in order to contribute to things they find valuable. That's where those things fail. You don't have to be okay to make money, you have to game the system, A/B test, include calls to action, to get people to take the action you want them to take. Passivity it key to micro transactions. My absolute favorite thing about this is you don't have have money to contribute to Hubski. By providing value to the users of Hubski - posts that are insightful, comments that are thoughtful, you gain bits. By passing those along to other people who do similar things and giving a portion to Hubski, you have contributed to our costs and make Hubski a better place. A lot of my original questions about this mechanism revolved around "cashing out" because, the bits are bitcoin and your bits could be turned into real money for you, the Hubski user. As I think about it more, I don't foresee the current subset of users cashing out though. I think people will throw in $5 or $10 or whatever they have, and it'll trickle down throughout the community and eventually end up in Hubski's pocket. But it's all passive and before it goes to pay for our servers, it goes to make Hubski a better place. It also means that you don't have to donate anything but time and posts and comments and, in the end, that holds the same weight as someone who just bought $5 in bits. I know my thoughts are all over the place. In the end, I'm just really excited.Will we be able to recognize if a pivot is in order?
I guess that won't matter anyway. Folks that are into those sort of exchanges will fade into the background all on their own. By being solely open to likeminded viewpoints is likely just going to insulate them from the rest of a vibrant community experience won't it?