126 sats \ 33 replies \ @grayruby 13 Sep \ parent \ on: Stacker Saloon
Abuser, gaming the system, call it what you will. Three days in a row they have been in the top 5 earning thousands of sats in rewards just by zapping content early. They had no posts and comments two days ago and around 400 sats zapped and generated 4800 in rewards (give or take). Yesterday they had one comment (which was directed at Undisciplined for calling them out and posted one music video that was not a popular post). They did zap over 2k sats yesterday in order to earn over 5k rewards and today have made the one comment on fun fact friday and zapped around 700 sats and are currently in position to earn over 5k sats. I don't consider this value additive behavior.
People may disagree with me and that's fine. Ideally the reward system and community should have an immune response to those trying to take advantage of it and the perpetrators should not have long term success. We will see if that's the case.
I downzapped their comment 1k sats yesterday and that had no effect. Which is understandable as I am only one stacker but I say let the stackers decide if they want to vote with their sats in favour or against this behaviour.
Zapping early is value added though else these things people later agree are good would never be seen. Careful zapping is expensive even if the effort isn't visible. It's the rarest behavior stackers engage in.
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After reading the comments yesterday, it's clear that to replicate this performance, you need to zap big the posts that will become top posts. But is that really the answer? I believe it's incredibly challenging, as it demands an intimate knowledge of the stackers' preferences.
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That's not gonna work. Check out my last comment.
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Great we should all aim to do nothing but try to zap content that will become top posts early.
I don’t want to spend my time doing that but if that’s what is the most valuable behaviour should we not all be trying to create the most value.
Nice knowing you SN when 75% of the content goes away so we can all try to game rewards.
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Nah, we shouldn't all be doing this. I estimate that only 2 or 3 stackers are capable of it. The biggest concern is when it becomes a recurring pattern, as this can create the impression that the top posts are manufactured.
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Nah, the biggest problem is having honest actors who put a lot of time and effort into adding value to the site, having their contributions devalued in comparison to someone who is doing nothing but spending a few sats which they will get back and more. This just sends a message to other stackers to optimize for sats instead of quality experience on site or to not bother and go elsewhere. Either of those outcomes are negative for SN.
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They are clearly only zapping high value stackers content that is likely to end up as top posts as a strategy to earn sats. Sorry, I don't agree that is value added. That is gaming the system but if you are good with it then so be it. I don't really care about earning sats, pretty much every sat I have ever earned on SN has gone back into the community but personally I would rather see the largest pools of daily rewards sats go to stackers who are actually participating in the daily discourse on SN not judiciously zapping.
Your site though so if you think someone zapping top stackers content early so they can earn thousands of sats in rewards and doing nothing else on site adds more value that people who are posting, commenting, zapping, getting zapped, that's your prerogative but I think most stackers would disagree.
That's my position. I don't want to debate it further. You incentivize what you want on your site.
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I didn't mean to sound like I was debating. I was trying to share more context.
They are clearly only zapping high value stackers content that is likely to end up as top posts as a strategy to earn sats.
fwiw I looked at what they are doing and that's not what they are doing.
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Ok so then you are suggesting that we should all be merely trying to replicate their behaviour as that behaviour is more highly valued than creating content, commenting and engaging with others.
Zapping and getting zapped. I realize you have a difficult problem creating a mechanism to avoid spam and sats farming and trying to make it costly for those that try. Maybe the system isn’t always perfect and there will be anomalies but quite honestly the implication that they deserve their position because they are creating more value than some of the amazing stackers that are below them in the rewards ranks is mildly offensive to me.
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I'm not trying to make a judgement about who is valuable and who isn't - especially to me. I was sharing that our ranking algorithm requires brave souls zapping great, widely appealing, content early, which very very very few people do, and so our reward algorithm compensates for that.
I was trying to share the assumptions made when the algorithm was designed. I'm sorry it seems unfair. I want it to be fair.
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I understand the problem you tried to solve in creating a value based system.
And I understand your point that for good content to be elevated it needs people willing to read it and zap it early.
I just find it odd that the system so heavily values early zapping alone as a metric that someone can do this.
I don’t think 100 stackers trying to do what they are doing would be good for SN.
Yes there is a cost to trying to do what they are doing but after it works once they are playing with house money because they zapped 400 sats and got 4800 in rewards. That gives them a lot of runway and every day they are in a net profit it further encourages the behaviour.
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they zapped 400 sats and got 4800 in rewards.
That too on a daily basis!
How can someone be so accurately zapping daily? Can you do it? I can't.
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I don’t think 100 stackers trying to do what they are doing would be good for SN.
I believe this would actually fix the problem and it's why I'm not too worried about it.
My understanding is that part of the outlandishly large return is that it's very important to be first. If many more people were attempting this strategy, they would eat into each other's winnings and all would be lower in rewards ranking. It also makes a big difference coming in as the top zapper vs the 2nd or 3rd, so more people trying this would rapidly make it less fruitful.
We saw this with a certain vampire character a few months ago and that fizzled out.
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It was an exaggeration. But in that case you are right if everyone was doing it it wouldn’t work. My broader point was if everyone was trying to optimize for sats rewards in the most efficient way it wouldn’t make for a very great SN experience
I just find it odd that the system so heavily values early zapping alone
For context: 50% of the rewards "score" comes from zapping. One person can earn a lot doing this not because it's disproportionately rewarded but because so few people do it. It's like winning a gold metal in a sport no one competes in.
Perhaps we can skew rewards to people spending more money, but the idea was to reward "good pickers" who might be poor.
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I sub to Siggy. He posts something I get a notification. I zap it immediately because it is Siggy and I support everything he posts. But then I go in and read it and probably comment and go back and forth with Siggy about it.
But that is less value than if I had zapped 2 minutes earlier and not said anything.
Sorry but that seems intuitively wrong to me.
This implies we should all just be playing a game to try to buzz in early like jeopardy but not actually provide an answer when we do.
Sorry to interfere
But it does feel bad when someone without making any contribution by posting or commenting becomes the top stacker. If by only zapping we can be in top 10 stackers that too regularly, which makes the behaviour suspicious.
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I agree.
Downzapping seems to be not working upon him!
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