204 sats \ 24 replies \ @grayruby 21 May \ on: Gaming Stacker News is Self-Defeating in the Long-Run meta
Great post. I still think the reward algo needs to be tweaked so that people can't simply zap top posts and have a few notable comments and end up with thousands of sats in rewards while others get punished for spending the entire day posting, zapping and commenting broadly.
I would guess that there are some wonky tweaks that @k00b and @ek have already thought through to address that, if it seems like it's becoming a serious problem.
As it is, I see the rewards system as getting things mostly right, with the occasional undesired outcome.
One thing I'd love to see is bigger rewards for posts/comments that generate more discussion. It's another one that's hard to implement without opening up easy exploits.
reply
Regardless what the algo is there is always going to be some risk of people trying to game the system. Agree overall the reward system is solid but agreed sometimes it produces some head scratching results like a person with one comment and a few zaps being 5th for the day.
reply
As long as it's just one person, I imagine it's not worth the time to address. If half of the top 10 looked like that, though, they'd probably do something.
reply
This is a more difficult issue to address, as this type of behavior could be legitimate. However, I believe that to be rewarded with thousands, it is not enough to simply reach the end of the day and zap the top posts. The algorithm takes into account the order of the zaps and the value, which seems balanced. More stackers would help to better distribute rewards, I would say a few thousand daily.
reply
Agree more stackers would help balance things out and it is not as simple as zapping top posts and having a few comments but we did see last week at least 3 days where one stacker got into the top ten with only a few zaps and a couple top comments. I understand why the algo is set up to reward quality but I think it punishes quantity to try and root out spam. I don't know what the answer is. We don't want to reward people for posting nonsense all day to get rewards but also don't want people who aren't really engaging broadly to be rewarded above others simply because they zapped every top post and had the top comment on a top post.
reply
It's definitely a tough balance to strike.
reply
Randomise the time zone so that no one Stacker has the first mover advantage at all times
reply
I hope they do that experiment soon. I'm really curious to see if we get more night (US time) activity that way.
reply
Perhaps we should move to a 25-hour day or use a variation of a block clock…
reply
I like the idea of a block clock! So innovative n exemplifies the purpose of this platform
reply
I like it, too. There's no reason that the two ideas can't be merged.
SN could randomly choose a block that's going to be mined in the next 12 to 36 hours.
reply
Would be more fun than MSM
reply
I like the idea of it being unpredictable to a larger degree.
My thought would be to randomly choose a value between 12 and 36 and let that be the length of the current day.
reply
That’s a good idea. Should you keep the timer on display?
reply
My gut says no, because I don’t want people to game it.
However, it might be worth trying it both ways to see what happens.
reply
My gut says no too. Prior to MSM, we never knew our position relative to others, so all we could do is post n comment the best way we knew how. It was a simpler time haha
reply
How do you feel about the daily leader board?
I like it, but I can see why some probably don't.
My thought is no. But I’m not sure how many Stackers do watch the clock to game it.
reply
Probably not many, but it’s deeply ingrained at this point.
We know that morning posts perform much better. That might be organic, but it might be partly because of the rewards schedule.
I agree
reply
You’re killing me lol
reply