Rambling Preamble

There's a lot of conversation right now about the MSM competition. I also feel like I've noticed some behavioral changes amongst stackers. That leads me to reflect on what this contest is showing us about the SN rewards structure.
Many of us have written about how the rewards structure here is largely responsible for cultivating this very unique internet community. I've written many times about how people are really short-changing themselves by not taking advantage of the reward incentives: i.e. you can come out ahead by zapping content you like liberally.
There's plenty of room for improvement, of course, and one of the things I most value about being here is that the development team talks with us openly about our ideas for improvements. (I was very interested in experimental econ in graduate school, but don't get to flex my mechanism design muscles in my current job.)

Actual Point

That's a lot of preamble to get to my point. Million Sat Madness seems to be causing stackers to examine the particulars of the reward system more carefully, and that might be a problem.
The reward system Stacker News uses is a form of Keynesian Beauty Contest: our rewards aren't really based on zapping and making the best content. Our rewards are based on zapping and creating the content that other users zap the most (slight oversimplification).
I often say "Outcomes follow incentives" and Keynesian Beauty Contests are known to have a flawed incentive structure (assuming the goal is to elicit honest responses about what people like the best).
When people were being super miserly with their daily zaps, this wasn't an issue. However, I feel like I've noticed a shift in zapping habits that conforms with the expectations of a Keynesian Beauty Contest. If the goal is to zap posts that you think will get lots of zaps, then there are certain people who are a safer bet to zap, like @kepford or @Natalia, and you might not zap other posts even though you liked them. If you're trying to zap the "best" comments, then you might try to zap good responses to @k00b or @elvismercury, since they're really generous comment zappers, but ignore equally good comments left on other people's posts.
Please note that I'm not saying any of those creators shouldn't be getting zapped a ton. I'd still love to see people zapping them more. I drew them from the set of stackers whose work I most value and who I've noticed other people also highly value.
Part of why I think this might be showing up for MSM, but not for the daily rewards, is that the larger sample size is reducing uncertainty in the outcome greatly. On any given day, I might have one of the best performing posts or comments. However, over the course of a month, there's a near certainty that I won't. That means there's a disincentive to zap my content. Or, stated differently, the marginal benefit of zapping my content is less than the marginal benefit of zapping other content of a similar quality.

Possible Solution

There's probably a super clever and elegant idea in mechanism design that solves this incentive problem, but I'm not aware of it.
I really like the idea of rewarding creators more for having the top content over a longer span of time, so I don't actually think the best answer is to go back to daily rewards. I also think the monthly rewards are more fair to international stackers who get slightly screwed by time-zone issues.
What I do think would largely head off this incentive issue is making the incentives more difficult to game. My suggestion is to split the reward pot into rewards over four different timespans:
  • 25% rewards paid out daily
  • 25% rewards paid out weekly
  • 25% rewards paid out monthly
  • 25% rewards paid out yearly
That way there's an incentive to zap content you think is good, but not best-of-the-month good, because it still might get you some daily and weekly rewards. There's also more incentive to zap great posts even more, since at the end of the year those rewards might be very large.
I also think some form of randomization could be used to make the daily rewards are a bit more fair across time zones.
I'm curious to hear what you all think.
Million sat madness convinced me to use the platform a lot more. Incentives seem to be intact. If there's cigarette money on the table, the Bugle will be there
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I'm definitely engaging more than lurking nowadays
My zaps have become more thoughtful
I'm earning more sats than before
Opt in SN mini games like a mini million sat madness would be cool, and not as intrusive for some freaks.
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SN is an addiction now. They created a monster.
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The addiction is the elephant in the room. The dopamine boost going from the standard mainstream "likes, loves & reactions" reward to actual money zaps cannot be underestimated. Not sure if some people realise the power of this.
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Maybe a better structure would have been
  • 40% daily
  • 30% weekly
  • 20% monthly
  • 10% yearly
with leaderboards for monthly and yearly, only. It's not opt in, but most of the rewards are fairly short term. I like the idea of opt in but don't have any idea how that would practically function.
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If the goal is to zap posts that you think will get lots of zaps
I vaguely remember reading something like this and thought I must be misinterpreting it because it seems like such an obvious miss. If it is a month long thing, then it doesn't matter much. But if this is true in general, it is a huge mistake, something that would probably have me stop using SN.
It is entirely possible I am hoping SN turns into something different than what the founders want, though. Which is fine, it just means it would not be for me.
The rewards, in my view, ought to incentivize a diversity of content, when content is created, and etc.
@elvismercury recently had a post (last week maybe) where he pointed out thursday morning posts get the most zaps, to me that implies thursday morning posts ought to receive the least amount of daily rewards.
Here is a very quick, knee jerk reaction as to how I would structure rewards:
It would be a function of what area it is posted in, and the distribution of zaps within that topic.
E.g., suppose posting in bitcoin on thursday morning eastern time zone has the highest average zaps per post at 5000. Posting in oracle at 2am eastern might get the lowest average zaps per post at 100. If a post in Oracle at 2am gets 1000 zaps while a post in bitcoin thursday morning gets 5000, the oracle post ought to be rewarded more. The oracle creator just produced content that is 10x better than average while the bitcoin creator produced average content. Maybe this is how they do it for posts already
Rewarding which posts I zap is effectively subsidy, so any system that weights my zaps non-uniformly obfuscates market signals. It is a huge swing and a miss. A swing and a miss that will potentially lead to SN becoming something I hope it doesn't in a different post.
I would also not give anything other than daily rewards. One exceptional post ought to be rewarded. Assuming SN gets bigger - giving rewards based on the entire month could have people waiting to post until the end of the month. I am not in the running this month so I would be better off waiting until next month to publish a post that I think will do well.
Here is the other thing - this is comment 122. It is nearly pointless to post it if my goal is to get zapped. I would be far better off creating my own post with a reference to this one.
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@elvismercury recently had a post (last week maybe) where he pointed out thursday morning posts get the most zaps, to me that implies thursday morning posts ought to receive the least amount of daily rewards.
You're right that I said that and posted on Thu bc of it, but @davidw did the actual research. I don't want to take credit for his work.
Here is the other thing - this is comment 122. It is nearly pointless to post it if my goal is to get zapped. I would be far better off creating my own post with a reference to this one.
That's probably true. This reply will also be similarly dis-advantaged. My attitude, aside from moving that post to Thu, is generally to not think about any of this at all, and it makes me enjoy the SN experience a lot more.
I work in an industry where we offer incentives to people to do stuff, and the prevailing wisdom is similar to something someone said earlier in this convo, that people need to understand exactly how the incentives work, that they have to be dead simple, or people will complain. That may be true, and maybe in my industry we have to care about it, but I've always been tempted to say something like:
Our reward algorithm rewards you for making enduring contributions to SN. What that means is complicated, and is always changing, but if you add value, you'll be rewarded for it.
It would turn off people who were trying to maximize, surely. But is anyone really here mainly to earn sats? Or rather: is anyone really here for that reason that anyone would miss if they stopped coming? Honest question. I suppose unanswerable.
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Our reward algorithm rewards you for making enduring contributions to SN. What that means is complicated, and is always changing, but if you add value, you'll be rewarded for it.
Very well stated. That's what I was trying to communicate to various people throughout these comments.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @davidw 21 Mar
Here’s the research post #441843 if interested. Thanks for the shoutout @elvismercury. I’m sure this is already evolving however, even since the post was made.
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I'll be very interested in a follow up, if anyone want to do the work.
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waiting to post until the end of the month
Meant to say waiting to post until the month ends, as in a new month begins
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Msm is fun, but I do hope we return to our daily scheduled programming (SN rewards roughly how they used to be pre March 2024).
I'm not sure there is a need for the longer time spans. I enjoyed the daily reward schedule because it didn't feel like a race or a competition.
I'm sure I was aware that daily rewards were a competition and that there was a person who got the largest percentage of the rewards pot but it felt much more like that was in tune with what you posted, zapped, and commented.
I never really cared where I ranked in the daily percentages. Usually felt pretty amazed when I got reward sats at the end of the day.
Now that we are all jockeying for position and paying attention to rank, I do think it will feel less marvelous when awards are doled out, despite the amounts being significantly larger.
Maybe this is just a function of paying attention to rank and seeing the rewards people who outrank you garner.
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It would be interesting to know what would have happened if there were no leaderboard.
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I also do not like the leaderboard. And is quite misleading. And leaderboard with "hidden stackers" doesn't make sense. or we are all in hidden or we are all out in the open.
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I completely agree. We are competing with the invisibles. They can see us by we cant. I wonder if that is a physical MSM, visibles would be losers from the get go.
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As one of the invisibles, I think I agree with you. The main reason I don't go visible is that I don't like advertising how many sats I've stacked.
But perhaps there is a case to be made that if I want a part of the competition I should not be able to stay hidden. I can make it visible.
It will be very frustrating if the top 3 slots are all hidden when the competition concludes. Not good for morale.
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Most likely, two of the top three are k00b and kr, who are both ineligible, and the other one is siggy.
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Pretty sure SN affiliated are excluded from the leaderboard.
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@grayruby told me that they weren't. They're excluded from the competition, but they are on the board.
deleted by author
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I only hid myself so that I have no idea if I'm on it or not. I'm 99.9999% certain I won't be anyway but I choose not to look. I don't like the leaderboard for all the reasons I have previously written about (fiat style school competition etc...) We can't beat up on ppl for hiding themselves. It's their choice. The MSM and leaderboard is forced upon us whether we like it or not. So unless you just stay away from SN for a whole month you can't avoid it.
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Leaderboard is like the big sticker chart on the wall at school or the house points system.
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Definitely. The leaderboard changes a lot. But without it I could see people feeling unhappy with how things shake out.
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Also, it helps that we can see roughly how many sats we might be getting back. Maybe there's a version of this where we can see our estimated rewards without seeing the leaderboard.
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Soon I will let my "high position" on the board to others. It was fun indeed. Weather is getting better so I have to go back building that damn citadel. After a heavy winter must be a mess there.
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Now that we are all jockeying for position and paying attention to rank
It's like school, making everything a competition and pitting you against your peers. It's a no thanks from me
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I think it's fun, but I appreciate that it's not what others are looking for. Someone mentioned making experiments like this opt-in. That seems reasonable.
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Thanks for sharing and the kind words.
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Hopefully it leads to more zaps for you from these shameless grifters. :)
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Kepford deserve it more.
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Yes, I'm not going to engage in a popularity contest in the hope of being in the chosen few who get rewards. The fact that anybody can get daily rewards based on whatever factors is what keeps a lot of people coming back here.
The people who check in once or twice a day just aren't going to start posting nonsense in the hope that something takes off. In fact, it would make for a far worse user experience if we did end up in that situation. As it stands, the balance is OK, people post things they think are interesting or reply in ways that make sense, and if other users like it, they zap.
What this new model will lead to is just a barrage of posts hoping to "go viral" with no real substance. And, when that's the case, I'm out.
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To clarify, is the "new model" you're talking about the month-long challenge or my proposal?
I agree with you that things were working OK (I would go so far as to say they were working well). I had been aware of this incentive problem for a while and wanted to articulate it so that everyone was aware things could go the way of chasing virality.
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It was fine as it was, yes there was an element of engagement farming to put it that way, but those posts were generally easy to spot and the free zapping market took care of the rest.
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I'm more concerned about the flip side of engagement farming, which is disingenuous zapping.
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How do you mean?
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The rewards incentivize zapping content that you expect others to zap, rather than zapping content because you like it.
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Ohhhh, I didn't know it worked like that. I just put the calculation of daily rewards down to some mysterious algorithm that I'd never truly understand, and that as fine with me.
So, as it stands, if you zap a post soon after it's posted, and then it goes on to gain traction with other zaps, this gives you a greater share of the daily rewards? I can see if you were to reply to such a post with something inciteful then that reply is likely to be seen more and therefore probably gain more zaps, but I think that's just natural.
I think most people just use it honestly, that is, gaming the system is too much like hard work and the simplest thing is just to engage with what catches your eye and zap what you like.
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Eventually, behavior conforms to incentives.
I was super excited when I found SN but was disappointed by the zapping incentives. I quickly learnt how the system could be gamed due to being rewarded for "zapping top posts and top comments early". This affects user behaviour in a negative way, prompting them to zap based on their prediction of what might benefit them rather than zapping good content regardless of who has posted/commented. I have mentioned this several times in the past. It's pretty much what you are saying here. IMO SN need to find a genuine and equitable model that rewards users for zapping content that is genuinely good and not just because a particular user posted it (something which is denied but is blatantly obvious to some of us) or just remove it entirely and rely on people zapping each other accordingly for good content and engagement. I don't like MSM and chose not to get myself caught up in it (I wrote about why previously). My engagement definitely went down on SN because of the above points. I'm just so tired of mainstream social media models and, whilst I'm being manipulated in these ways, I don't feel I've left big tech manipulation. I guess the issue is SN is it's VC funded and they want to see ROI, so I'm skeptical as to whether an equitable, non-user-manipulative model will be found and implemented - but I remain hopeful.
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This one of the memes I made for the monday comp. I think I got about 2 sats for it 🤣🤣 rather a waste of my time but hey ho.. I made my point LOL
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The problem of how to evaluate quality independent of revealed consumer preference (price) is a vexing issue for economists. Value is subjective and therefor so is quality. I think any attempt to identify good posts, other than something like what SN does, will just be the devs imposing their preferences for content.
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Sorry I'm not following you. SN devs don't decide what's good or bad. I'm talking about what individual users zap. "We" the users decide what we zap based on our own independent free thought (or that's how it should be). What I'm saying is our independent free thought has been hijacked when "incentives" are introduced. Incentives change people's behaviour. This is what SN is doing - nudging, manipulating and changing people's behaviour. Of course, one of the problems here is the term I have used myself here, which is "user". We are not "users" we are unique individual people. I have a huge issue with this as we already live in one massive mind-programming/manipulation psyop starting from birth, thru school, fiat job schemes, tv, media etc......
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I was responding to this line:
find a genuine and equitable model that rewards users for zapping content that is genuinely good
I think nostr gives us a glimpse of what we'd get without the incentives on SN. There are always incentives, just like there's always an algorithm, and they all have their own consequences.
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ahh I see, my bad, I'm tired and about to hit the sack. When I said "zapping content that is genuinely good" I meant zapping content that people themselves think is genuinely good - rather than zapping what they think will get them the most rewards.
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We agree that that's the goal. I was pointing out that this is a common and generally unresolved problem in a bunch of settings. Our best available signal of what's good is what people pay for.
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Thought provoking post and replies. One observation that I think supports the quality of the community here is that there is a barrier to entry to engage on SN. You need a lightning wallet, browser extensions, and optional nostr keys, to get it all working. If this barrier is lowered, you wind up with Craigslist or Reddit.
It is my hope that SN, despite that it is VC funded, makes every effort to fine tune incentives to reward high quality content over short term profit and growth. As has been pointed out, incentives can and will be gamed. So game theory needs to be well thought out. My concern is that the owners/operators of SN have incentives that are likely divergent from the community. And getting a valuation like Craigslist or an exit like Reddit may be precisely what they are after.
One thing is certain. The model that SN has pioneered has legs.
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You need a lightning wallet, browser extensions, and optional nostr keys, to get it all working.
All you need is a simple lightning wallet and the SN website. WoS is super easy for beginners. That's all you need. I haven't done any of the other things and I get along fine.
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Yeah, I found SN through nostr and signing up required a Lightning wallet and a web extension, e.g. Alby. Had I gone directly with Lighting, it would have saved a step. My point stands however. Most plebs struggle with getting Bitcoin and of those many struggle with getting a Lightning wallet. There remains a barrier to entry, although it lowers over time.
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Elegant I'm into, clever I'm not.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." - Friedrich August von Hayek
If incentives are going to be experimented with, in complicated ways, then they need to be diversified / decentralized. One way is as you've suggested - 25% each in 4 different timespans.
I would go further, 1% from 100 different ideas of how they should be divvied. 'You get 22 sats this week for @Undisciplined 's algorithm, which was chosen at random based on the 14th alphanumeric character in the most recent bitcoin block to clear. click here to see how it works.'
That would be inferior to a very simple, very understandable, elegant solution that most mirrors laissez faire understanding of human action.
I'm thinking 1% goes to the house. 4% goes to the rewards pool, which is split among all who posted anything zapped, and all who commented anything zapped. It would be nice if the rewards pool could further be limited to verified human beings.
The ultimate eventuality is that the rewards from my zaps get split among my web of trust how I see fit, but the ideal WOT has not yet been specced.
In that case, I would still be for 1% going to the house, but go to .1% when the userbase increases 100x, and 0.01 at 10,000. And perhaps 1% going to a general pool that is split among arbitrary federations defined by network data visualizations that group WOT blobs.
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The ultimate eventuality is that the rewards from my zaps get split among my web of trust how I see fit, but the ideal WOT has not yet been specced.
In that case, I would still be for 1% going to the house, but go to .1% when the userbase increases 100x, and 0.01 at 10,000. And perhaps 1% going to a general pool that is split among arbitrary federations defined by network data visualizations that group WOT blobs.
Sounds great!
Networks of influence (trust). These blobs represent a group of people, but they can also represent a topic (music, enco, etc.). ?
When will it be ready for use? :)
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I've floated similar ideas for highly randomized rewards structures. I like your approach of not only randomizing parameters, but also randomizing the model.
Your other idea for weighting the distribution of rewards from zaps according to WOT is not something that had occurred to me. It's an interesting thought.
I think the important thing is just that users are rewarded for zapping good content and that they don't know precisely how that is determined.
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I like your last bit and agree - but the devs and those who can read the code will always know. Therefore it must be transparent and fully understood by all, IMO - another reason to go for simple and elegant.
Important to minimize the ability for those who game the system to have an advantage. I'm thinking one way to do this would be to value zapping 1 sat the same as zapping 1000, for those who zap themselves back and forth. So 'if zapped_at_all = true' then 'tickets_in_reward_pool += 1'. each person ever zapped gets one raffle ticket for every time they get zapped. the idea being it costs more to spin up a new npub, and zaps 1 sat at a time for each npub will get costly. then redistribute to all whose raffle tickets get drawn, provably random (ish?) by open source + blockchain (?)
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it must be transparent and fully understood by all
Something like you proposed could be equally understood by all and yet almost impossible to game by any. We would all know the set of possible rewards structures, but none of us know which one will be chosen. All we know is that they all have the feature "Zap more -> earn more".
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As a creator, all I want is to have my own time focus on learning and creating instead of rushing for the "Beauty Contest," and I'm more into attracting those who see the unique side of me. 👀
As for the rewards, I would say KISS; otherwise too much complexity takes away all the joy.
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74 sats \ 2 replies \ @gmd 20 Mar
I don't really understand the rules of MSM and I suspect it's too complicated for newbies. I preferred the daily rewards which I also think would help retain new users.
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As I understand it, the rules are basically the same, except that the scores are applied over a month instead of a day.
On average, people should be getting a similar amount to what they would have gotten with daily rewards. However, I think it's going to skew towards established stackers and work against newbies.
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31 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 21 Mar
I think the small daily reward dopamine rush is needed for people who aren't emotionally committed to the site.
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i agree here, i spend so much of my SN time in ~Music doing what i can to engage with the people there and to grow that territory. when i'm not having to unfortunately return to the fiat mine. i don't find a lot of time to browse much more of SN, theres plenty of territories i'd like to spend more time in, but as i'm creating content and engaging with the people interacting with that content i find myself very tied up. if its kept really simple, and not too easy to game the system it could be great for all participants.
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I'd love for someone to unearth a simple mechanism for eliciting honest zaps. Fingers crossed.
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All we need is an implanted brain chip that can detect the dopamine increase as well as track the post we were reading, then automatically zap based on how much we got out of it. Seems pretty simple, and no way it could go wrong.
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there could be a timer implemented into a window? when you hit reply, it starts counting up in sats on the zap (which would be auto since you're replying) and the longer you take to respond (the assumption is you're engaging more than one word answers there). the more you auto zap the parent comment. when writing your own comment in response to a post, same thing applies, only its the main post that gets the zaps.
but i have zero coding knowledge of how to implement that. i don't even know if you could automatically bill someone via zaps, i'm unsure its possible as that transaction needs to be signed effectively? thats all way above my head. but i'm interested to hear how @kr and the team of devs would do something like that if they chose to do so.
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That's a very fun experiment proposal. All the miserly hodling cheapskates would flip out.
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i can see them now, losing their minds as they furiously type at super speed to keep the post long but the costs low 🤣 just better hope they don't accidently leave a reply window open whilst browsing something else. that could be a big bill to come back to.
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timing things is like tests at school, very stressful. I would definitely leave the site if that happened LOL
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Although meant quite tongue in cheek, it does highlight some obstacles. I wouldn't be too pleased to find a huge bill. And I don't know if I like enforcing zaps if you are engaging. Zaps are a choice... But I do wish more users would choose to zap.
As someone who has on occasion tabbed away and found an open comment window hours later, I think I'd be broke in a heartbeat.
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You and me both. My comment was meant very tongue in cheek, but it does highlight an obstacle to overcome. Needs to have built in redundancy should you tab away for example.
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Anyone have Elon's number? I'm sure he's looking for human volunteers.
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I'd love for someone to unearth a simple mechanism for eliciting honest zaps
that's exactly what needs to happen. Surely it can't be rocket science!
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Rocket science has been solved. There are hundreds of brilliant minds still working on designing incentive compatible mechanisms. It's much harder than rocket science.
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Sooooo maaannyyyyy commeeenntsssss
I'm new so it's always been this way... I do understand your point about people not necessarily wanting to zap the "best" article or comment but rather the one they think others will zap...
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Its an interesting experiment, it reminds me a lot of the issues I saw back in the day with steemit, even though they were paying users with new inflation giving them much more room to experiment, finding ways to distribute that inflation was always a centre of friction for the service, people would create voting trails on popular authors, they would create circle jerk voting groups, and create content farms just to keep bagging that inflation
Thats humans for you, we will find a way to drive certainty of returns or extract as much value for the least amount of effort, I guess one way to curb it is the difficulty adjustment like Bitcoin has done or like you propose a type of monerofication by switching up the game every so often to keep users guessing
The issue with rewarding content is its all arbitrary, what is quality? Is it insight? Length? Uniqueness? Reading time? Views? Comments? Reputation? What is worth a reward?
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"Quality" isn't exactly arbitrary, but it is subjective, which causes the same problems for third-party evaluation.
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41 sats \ 23 replies \ @kr 20 Mar
interesting ideas, appreciate the write-up.
in theory, i like the idea of splitting up rewards over different timeframes but the complexity of our rewards structure is already a lot to handle.
explaining the details of daily (or monthly) rewards to a total newcomer is still a challenge, and i think adding in 4 tiers for rewards distribution makes it even harder for a newcomer to grasp.
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explaining the details of daily (or monthly) rewards to a total newcomer is still a challenge
me preparing The Art of Using SN III? 👀
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I am still waiting... 😂
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oh I was joking, I don't see such big change for a new post yet? 👀
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It's ok, it was my turn for a meta post anyway.
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That complexity is a feature not a bug. At least that's how I'm thinking about it.
I think what we want is for stackers to just zap the content they find valuable. One way to do that is to make it not worth their time to attempt to game the rewards system and to just have a general understanding that you get rewarded for zapping good content.
In experimental econ, one of the ways experiments can fail to elicit responses aligned with the incentives is what's called a saliency problem. The difference in payouts is not large enough for the participant to bother figuring out the incentive structure and they just do what they feel like.
This is essentially imposing a saliency problem onto Stacker News.
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I am still saying what I always said here on SN: people should zap wisely. After the halving, people will start appreciating more each sat. And the halving is near.... right after this MSM. And will be BRUTAL.
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31 sats \ 10 replies \ @kr 20 Mar
i hear you on the saliency problem, but SN funds MSM with 3 million sats so we do want to make stackers aware of the contest (and the sats).
raising rewards amounts has been positively correlated to improved key metrics across the site, so i think downplaying the sats might have the opposite effect.
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My issue isn't with the reward being large, it's that people are potentially trying to get the reward by gaming the system instead of trying to get the reward through heightened engagement. The problem is stackers having a sense that there's a big payoff differential between zapping the content you like and zapping the content that will earn a reward.
Raising the reward amount is awesome and I'd expect it to yield positive outcomes.
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31 sats \ 8 replies \ @kr 20 Mar
are you seeing real examples of people trying to get larger rewards by gaming the system on MSM?
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This is largely anecdotal, but I have noticed much lower zaps on my link posts. People know link posts don't do as well, so there's a disincentive to zap them.
Personally, I intentionally increased my post zapping about a week ago. I had been rationing my sats a little bit, but realized that I was shooting myself in the foot. I'm not zapping anything just because of the author, but I am probably clicking on certain people's posts more often, which leads to them getting larger zaps.
I don't expect to see this really peak until next week anyway, as people sprint to the finish. I did see a comment in the saloon about someone checking out from stacker news until next week so that they can be sure to have resources at their disposal.
I'm not saying we have some huge problem. This is more an expression of concern that over time the behavior on SN will conform to the incentive structure and the incentive structure has a well known flaw that is beginning to show itself.
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63 sats \ 4 replies \ @kr 20 Mar
fair enough, and appreciate you raising these concerns.
the daily rewards structure has its own flaws too, and on balance the key site metrics seem to be better in March (total zaps, items created, etc…).
the only metric that hasn’t really budged is new signups, but we’ve got a separate experiment planned for that shortly.
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I'll just say one thing, in the first week of April I'm going to do like Siggy and take a week off :) pura madness
As always, I look forward to the new experiment.
The rewards might not be big enough yet - but in general people game the system to make money. It is common on all the other social medias.
Over MSM, I have been giving zaps more freely, and in general give them to anyone who replies to me thoughtfully. I will 100% reconsider this now that I know I would get more back giving them to highly zapped comments.
Maybe that makes me a jerk, but those are the incentives.
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31 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 21 Mar
that’s not exactly how the incentives work, but i get your point.
all else equal, zapping the most popular comment after everyone else has already zapped it is not going to move the needle as much as zapping an interesting comment which others haven’t yet discovered.
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I see just as much value in those who find good content no one else has zapped and spreading the wealth. In fact, that is what I think must happen for an economy to flourish. See Jack's 'balancing redistribution' from billionaire to underfunded FOSS, and OpenSats. I think the premise that 'zapping popular content ' should be rewarded is flawed at the outset. It is mitigated by making it more specific: 'zapping popular content early' but I also see that it makes the incentives a game of guessing, which cannot be ideal at scale.
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the premise that 'zapping popular content ' should be rewarded is flawed at the outset
Right. The issue is that they don't want people just randomly zapping crap for the sake of a reward payout. They want people to zap "good" content. How do you gauge that other than by equating "good" and "popular"?
Btw, the trust score does a lot of work here, as I understand it. However, that also compounds the problem. It doesn't take long to get a sense of who has the high trust scores and then you can attempt to mimic them.
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It always has to be 'high trust scores to me'. My zaps go to reward those I trust locally and their rewards can only go to me if they trust me locally.
just randomly zapping crap for the sake of a reward payout
There must be something I don't understand. I don't see how this could be economically viable? How would spending sats randomly earn me sats overall?
Any system must incentivize creators more than zappers. Zappers being incentivized to zap may be necessary, but it reminds me of the fallacy that tax/theft + welfare programs are needed because humans aren't kind enough to take care of each other. Not equivalent, but similar. If it is needed, perhaps it should just be by lottery. I have to think on it more.
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I don't see how this could be economically viable? How would spending sats randomly earn me sats overall?
It doesn't make sense as an equilibrium outcome (absent some outside subsidy). However, most stackers are zapping well below the equilibrium level right now, so there are sats to be made just by zapping content. I'm living proof of this and I've been admonishing everyone else for their miserly behavior pretty much the entire time I've been on SN. The hodl mentality is working against them in this case.
I actually like incentivizing zappers more, since there's no other financial reason to do it. If people are rewarded for zapping "well", then by necessity creators are being rewarded. Shifting the burden of producing zaps onto creators seems like pushing on a rope to me.
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Just a quick thought, I wonder if changing the color of their username or cowboy hat based on how much they have zapped would cause others to zap them back more.
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Many cool cowboy hat ideas have been discussed. I tried to aggregate them here: #383551
I think there's some low-hanging fruit there.
The good MSM forces you to stay humble. The bad not enough breaking news on sn as before. Forces stackers to write more stories and original content, as opposed to reporting the news. Not necessarily good or bad just interesting things I've noticed.
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That's exactly the kind of thing I was referencing.
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31 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 21 Mar
I like sn for the breaking news.
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@Sn is boring without daily rewards, I don't know why my position got changed from under 21 to under 200,
I am leaving sn now!
(Will be back if i see old reward system)
Daily rewards was going great, this MsM Demotivated many people like me over here i think
I am losing my SATs instead of getting zapped here
No more VALUE for VALUE
(Only priority to regular or senior stacker here) i am none of them
All the best with @sn development @k00b @kr @ek
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41 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr 21 Mar
I am losing my SATs instead of getting zapped here No more VALUE for VALUE
Zapping on Stacker News still works the same way it did in February, in fact the number of zaps people make across the site is actually growing in March.
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the number of zaps people make across the site is actually growing in March
To who though?
I'm sensing from many of the comments that the distribution is not the same. Obviously, that doesn't mean it's worse, but I think that will be an important thing for you guys to dive into as you evaluate this experiment.
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31 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 21 Mar
over 1,000 stackers have already earned sats this month, which is within our typical range
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Maybe it's all just anecdotal, but my professional advice is to analyze the distribution for the month pretty carefully.
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I’m just a random zapper. I’m here to kick start the circular economy and to hangout with bitcoiners because I can’t in real life
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Great analogy.
Scheduled posts would be very helpful for time zone issues. I have often thought that Pub's daily music would get a lot more zaps if it was coming out during the prime hours for North American stackers.
The drawback with this would be even if the post could be scheduled and got more zaps he wouldn't be around to take part in the interaction.
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Exactly, I think it's better to smooth out the incentives to post and engage throughout the day than to increase the congestion at peak times (although being able to do that is important too).
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our rewards aren't really based on zapping and making the best content. Our rewards are based on zapping and creating the content that other users zap the most (slight oversimplification).
This was one of the first things I noticed when I started using sn. I think there's not much to be done about this issue because at the end of the day, it's the stackers who decide which posts to reward.
That way there's an incentive to zap content you think is good, but not best-of-the-month good, because it still might get you some daily and weekly rewards. There's also more incentive to zap great posts even more, since at the end of the year those rewards might be very large.
I think we may have touched on this before, but I simply can't express how brilliant I think this idea is.
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Thanks for the nice comment. I also love the idea of Keynesian beauty contest, so am extra-delighted to see the analysis of it. (I came to SN to check something and am not officially able to respond to this post at more length atm but will later.)
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Hai ya
Imagine me sighing n saying Hai ya. This is the Singaporean way of reminding everyone to not take things too seriously.
I think regardless of the format of the rewards system, it is gonna take newcomers some time to absorb the rules. It was only until I kept using SN on a consistent basis that I realised the role of the Daily Rewatds. I remember feeling puzzled for the longest time how come I was “shortchanged” of some rewards. Then I realised that the rewards were stacked on top of the sats I originally received. All this familiarisation takes time.
Though if the rewards system were to be revamped, I would suggest three methods instead of four - because of the rule of three. The mind remembers things in threes well.
I also think what’s more important to focus on is the emotional resonance. I mean, if people find it a chore to shitpost for sats, they are not gonna stick at SN for long. These days I don’t even care much about the sats I will garner. Because I’m having FUN like a BOSS
My two sats’ worth
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I really love the idea about having things play out on multiple timescales. Everybody who knows me at all knows that one of my pet obsessions is the idea of participating in a way that creates enduring long-term value and having the reward structure literally allocate across timescales would be in service to that; although I'd have to think about how one might implement such a thing. It's possible that you'd get to a weird problem of prohibitive fan-out and sparsity. ...
Anyway, even if that literally isn't feasible, the idea of rewarding at timescales other than the next few hours is intriguing.
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Once it occurred to me, I've been pitching it somewhat aggressively. I'm sure kr's sick of hearing about it from me.
Whoever had the best content of the year really should get a much bigger prize than they get now for having a good post one day.
I'm sure it would need various tweaks, but the basic idea seems like an improvement.
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @ch0k1 20 Mar
The MSM compression somehow made me more active and generous in terms of zapping...
Overall, I like the contest and can't wait to see the top 5 or top 10 (wish me luck to get there)
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Good luck!
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @ch0k1 20 Mar
Thank you 🙏❤️
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I’m so addicted!!!
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Chatting with you in the saloon made me want to make the post, so you earned a cut.
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