First came across nudges being discussed at length in a book titled “Work Rules!” written by Laszlo Bock. Laszlo was the ex-Senior Vice President of People Operations, and he described how nudges were deployed to prompt people to make beneficial decisions at the right timing.
I thought nudges was an idiosyncratic term invented by Laszlo to describe the fine work he and his team had done. But it turned out that it is actually a popular behavioural science concept - and books have been written about it.
The obvious question then lies in how we can harness nudges here on Stacker News to make things better than they currently are. Of course, better is subjective, but I venture that it’s safe to say that many Stackers are cognisant of the trend of declining zaps. Some attribute it to the busy summer; others point out Million Sats Madness as one of the causes. Well, the thing is: no one exactly knows.
What will then be non-intrusive ways to encourage increased activity? There is a saying that goes, “Don’t preach to the converted.” Not all Stackers are bound to the addictive power of the cowboy hat, but for those who are, why not send a notification to Stackers who will lose their hat if they don’t zap something within the next hour? Sometimes, people lose their hats because they mistakenly think that they have zapped enough. Until Wham! the dreaded notification appears and they lose their emblem of honour.
No doubt, zapping someone just to keep my cowboy hat doesn’t feel organic. And I think that once I do get down to responding, I would zap 3 or 4 other comments since I’m already on it. It’s like how habit advocates suggest that we pick up a new habit - floss one tooth, exercise for the length of one song, etc. Once we get started, it’s easier to keep going.
Another nudge can be getting people who are being referred to fill in a simple form that will give the Stacker who brings him here some important information. Questions like “Would you like your referral know that you have joined SN because of him/her?” and “On what medium did you learn about SN?”
Very often, we get referrals, but we have no idea how and why we get them. Knowing that a new Stacker joined because of me through a particular platform makes me want to look out for him or her on the site. After all, the referral says I get are dependent on the level of success my referee enjoys here. Also, if I know that my referee is directed as a result of my blog, I will then spam post more strategic content there. Win-win situation!
What say you? What sort of nudges do you think Stacker News can leverage?
One of the recent Econ Nobel laureates was given for work on behavioral nudging.
This is a high potential avenue to go down. My recent posts about downzapping concluded that the best solution was probably just a nudge that encourages randomly selected people to downzap bad content today.
I don't remember who was suggesting this, so apologies for not giving credit, but there was an idea to send inactive stackers messages off-platform to entice them back. I'm thinking that could be sending them whatever post is on top of their hot list, either through e-mail or nostr message. It could also be a notification that they've stacked some quantity of sats since being away.
As silly as it sounds, just having "Zap Big. Zap Often." visible on the page somewhere might have a noticeable impact.
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I think Thaler had some interesting ideas. I also think Nudge is a playbook for how the state can exert control over people through suggestive manipulation.
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The thing is that suggestive manipulation is unavoidable. The state takes it's slice, but the most people can do is to chose what to get manipulated by. The solution to state nudging can't be no nudging, for it's a physical impossibility, but a "better" nudging, at the choice of each individual. Holding a "life philosophy", to know the own nudging, and understanding manipulation mechanisms, to detect the outer nudging, is the way.
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I agree that when we have a firm grasp of our values, we won’t be likely to be susceptible to external influences. It’s like focus on the signal, ignore the noise like all Bitcoiners do xP
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Exactly Sr. HODL
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Agree.
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That's very much correct. Most behavioral economists are enormous statists, in my experience. That doesn't mean they aren't discovering useful tools, though.
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It would be interesting to run an experiment. Inactive Stackers in Group A to receive a notification wrt their sats. Compared to inactive Stackers in Group B to receive a short message about how they have been missed or general updates of SN. We can see which nudge works better.
I actually think the Zap Big. Zap Often banner is a brilliant idea. But I fear Stackers might be desensitised to it in the long run. It’s like how smokers don’t break a sweat when they see gross adverts depicting the harmful effects of smoking on the cigarette boxes
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The thing with anti-smoking campaigns is that it actually worked in America. It's become pretty uncommon for people to smoke here. Maybe it should just say "Zap Well" or "Happy Zapping!", which would come off more affirmatively.
I like the experiment idea. Don't forget control group C, though.
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Given how rampant the vaping culture is in Singapore, even among elementary school students, I find America’s relative absence of smoking culture amazing!
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It is strange. I can't think of anything else like it. We don't exercise, eat healthy, or abstain from other drugs, despite massive campaigns, but smoking is largely gone.
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Would be nice to have a cowboy hat counter.
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The cowboy hat itself can be considered a very effective nudge. And the fact that you can get it for down zapping is a cherry on top
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I would think that you would get the cowboy hat from zapping good content, not downzapping. Downzapping should only be used for bad content.
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Counter as in? As in declaring that I have had my cowboy hat for around 200 days?
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As in how much time you have left with your hat? Or how much you need to zap to keep it?
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Yes, this kind of badges had already been discussed. Last time K00b said they had badges in mind, so it's on the map!
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I guess people have many of the same ideas to make this place better.
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Sure! It's nice to see organic convergence in action. The beauty of spontaneous order
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Was recently talking to a friend who works in this field. He says the golden standard of nudging is currently achieved by Duolingo. They manage to find that sweet spot between being pushy enough while it not being too much. Of course, YMMV, but they do have lots of recurring customers.
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I haven’t used Duolingo before, but I had it in mind when I was writing this article. Do you care about the streak you’re maintaining on Duolingo?
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i nudge by posting great stacker.news links to my meetup telegram groups.
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That’s nice. Sharing is caring.
have you ever posted my links? heh heh
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yours are quality posts but contain too many words for reposting to telegram readers
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49 sats \ 1 reply \ @Athena 29 Jul
Ar these 7 stages of nudge theory mentioned in 'Work Rules'?
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I don’t know! Let me read more about it n get back to you
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Nudges are absolutely great! I've read that all the successful people in the world have been there because of nudges. For SN, I think that a stacker should get a nudge for the count of subscribers he has.
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No. of subscribers is a good idea. I would be interested to know.
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It would be nice to have more Nudges at SN. But I see that we can create Nudges by ourselves. There's no need to ask for them.
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That’s true. SN is incorporated into my routine in which I take time out to post or comment something xP
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I feel SN has enough Nudges and does not necessarily require more. Zapping and being zapped with sats (the real money), you won't find it anywhere else than SN.
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Imagine my disappointment as I arrived to see Nudges, not Nudes.
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All the best is the long forgotten old.
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