Plurk to UnVeil New Karma System
Many dedicated plurkers will attest the Karma system is cool but at the moment it basically just rewards activity. In a public place activity has to be of social nature to be beneficial. You could go to a busy party and just yell out disconjuncted gribbel which wouldn’t bring anything to the party and in fact would probably annoy other members.
That is what’s happening on PLURK. Many top users have the “stats” to back it up which is lot’s of responses and particularly lot’s of PLURK’s. The problem is these plurks are useless!
“I have internet”
“I wear shoes”
“Dancing banana emotion”
You get the drift. There is nothing wrong with this type of behavior as we can all monitor and choose who we wish to subscribe to. That being said those people who do use the system like that should not be rewarded and need I say NOT added to the MOST interesting list.
The list is called “Most Interesting Plurkers” well most up there aren’t interesting at all they just input a lot into the system. Is this a system to see who is more interesting or who has less a life? If it’s the latter it’s just a game of whoever builds carpal tunnel the fastest wins. Not so cool.
That being said @AMIX, one of the admins announced that soon they will be unveilling a new karma algorithm that will reward an punish good and bad usage. What is good and what is bad? They won’t go into details but they will blog about it sometime in the future.
That’s the plurk page where I got this info.
It’s absolutely CRUCIAL that they change the algorithm sooner then later because if too many early adopters / influencers see those who are becoming “TOP MEMBERS” are basically just posting spammy BS they won’t want anything to do with it.
That being said I think one of the KEYs to defining an interesting person online or ANYWHERE is how much of a response / discussion is generated from the plurks they do make? Good conversation increases stickiness of the site, time on, page loads etc etc etc… What’s good for the user is good for plurk.
Looking forward to seeing the karma algo change soon; I’m sure it won’t please all but I am hoping it will be a step in the right direction. Let’s give these guys some credit because if they were clever enough to invent / design / code / implement plurk I’m sure figuring this out will be a breeze.
Posted by Eric Odom :: Written by Bloggeries. Visit Bloggeries on Plurk.
Cool. I heard it here first. Thanks again Eric.
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I felt sure it’d come to this.
A lot of the people who befriended me are just making a land grab for their Plurks, which if this update does the right thing, will penalize those guys.
Plurk is real time Instant Messaging. And like all forms of communication, it’s about increasing the signal and lowering the noise.
Let’s see what this algorithm does to all the noise…
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“That being said I think one of the KEYs to defining an interesting person online or ANYWHERE is how much of a response / discussion is generated from the plurks they do make?”
Maybe one of the keys. However, if this was a main determining factor, then this would be an unfair system as well (or at the very least could be easily abused) because the people who have been in the interesting plurkers list for a long time, or who have several hundred or even thousands of followers by virtue of being famous, will naturally get more comments, thus keeping them at the top of the interesting plurkers list perpetually. There’s also the problem that plurkers trying to score higher karma will simply start asking questions in every single plurk, or will try to generate controversy with every plurk, just to get more responses, and this could greatly decrease the quality and variety of plurks as well.
One of the disadvantages of having a karma system of any kind is that there will always be ways to discover how to abuse the system, and there will always be people who will try to abuse it.
I agree with Josh that whatever system is chosen won’t be foolproof and that people who really want to, unfortunately, may find ways to abuse it. “Interesting” is so subjective too, and the fact that somebody is generating responses or discussion is one way to measure it, but only one. However, the only way to improve something like Plurk is to participate in discussion and figure out how to change it for the better.
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Some great points being raised. I think it will be impossible for them to please everyone and they know that. I think the key is to make the user experience as pleasurable for as many people as possible should be the goal.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Glad to hear it as we were musing about this earlier today. I know a lot of my mates (web developers and marketers) have had some grumbling relating to the Karma system (among other things, we’re a whiny bunch) - it is nice to see this is being addressed as the noise to signal ratio seems to be affected by this. As an algorithm nut, I shall be very interested in seeing what direction you take.
Kudos… some Karma right back atcha’ ;0)
Dave
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Thank you so much! While I love the idea of being rewarded for participating in the community, to me the point of plurking is to actually connect to others. The folks who just plurk and plurk all day long without saying anything substantive are just increasing the noise to signal ratio, & making it harder to follow the interesting conversations.
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Good to hear. I enjoy the interaction and like that my Plurk buddies tend to be more casual than some other streams, but the Plurking for Karma folks were beginning to drive me batty.
no more banana spam for Karma gain *happy*
Here’s another idea. In thinking of other online systems that use a karma system or something similar, I thought about Slashdot (http://slashdot.org). There are so-called “karma whores” on Slashdot, too, but the difference is that in order to increase one’s karma one must actually post interesting, insightful, or funny comments, as determined by Slashdot moderators.
Slashdot’s moderation system is interesting because it puts the regular users in control of adding or taking away points from each post, occasionally giving a user 5 mod points which expire after a few days if not used, at which time another regular user will be selected as a moderator for a few days. Because the moderation system is spread around, nobody needs to be employed specifically for the purpose of weeding out spam, etc.
Now, back to “karma whoring”: as I said, in order to be moderated favorably by one’s peers on Slashdot, one must post interesting, insightful, or funny comments. Thus, anyone who is trying to increase his/her karma may do some extra research on his/her own to be able to add value to the conversation. Additionally, the moderation system discourages many logged-in users from trolling, posting inane drivel, getting too far off the original topic, etc.
Slashdot is a geek news site, and Plurk is a social networking site with a much more casual feel and nature; on Plurk, people can discuss whatever they want or just share what they’re doing at the moment, gripe about things, etc. A peer moderation system would probably be much less effective on Plurk than on Slashdot because of the very different natures and focuses of the sites.
Having said all that, I really don’t know what the best solution is. =) I’m just trying to throw some ideas out there for discussion.
@Josh I hear what you’re saying and every good idea has bad sides to it. Bad sides would be the moderation process that I’m sure the admins don’t want to get involved in. Secondly people who already are “hot” from another system will always have a crew to help build things up. It’s simple human nature.
I think they are on right track with an Algorithm but like I said in the post these guys are geniuses and I believe they will come up with something fair and equitable for the largest percentage of users.
Appreciate the thoughts!
I honestly can’t see it being fair for people to be penalized because of what they plurk. The website is a free domain for anyone who wishes to sign up, and therefore should be allowed to plurk whatever they want with the same standards as everyone else.
Changing peoples’ site interaction because of what they plurk is discrimination.
@Ian great point. People can use it however the heck they want and should be encouraged to do so.
However if you wish view some “Interesting Plurker” the algorithm should be suited so it actually selects “interesting plurkers” not just active plurkers.
“interesting” is something that is different to every person but certain criteria must exist and I believe that is what Plurk team are working.
@Bloggeries, yeah, that makes sense. One could argue that “interesting” is an individual opinion, but in the long run I do see that selecting “interesting” plurkers does make sense this way.
Stepping back for a moment, and viewing a seemingly analytical and intelligent discussion related to philosophy and rational of …
plurking, karma and dancing bananas…
Say that 5 times and it stops making sense
How the odd ends up being mainstream…
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I’m glad to see some revisions to the system. I would love some basic guidelines on how the system works, without giving away the magic.
I hate to admit it, but Scoble hit it on the head first thing out of the gate that people will try to game the Karma system… people are adept at finding boundaries and pushing them, so much like DIGG periodically updates its social algorithms so must any site with a growing fan base - to keep it interesting.
After all, what is fun about this little experiment we call life (virtual or otherwise) without growth and change?
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I’m curious to see what they’ll do. Ideally you’d get more points for things that generate discussion, whether you start said discussion or contribute. I’m not sure how you get a machine to measure that. length? grammar? avg # posts in a thread? vocabulary?
But I do think on a minimal level responses are more critical than new Plurks because they do indicate a level of community participation…assuming they’re not fluff and nonsense. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens!
*thinks* it would be clever if they deducted karma whenever you shared a HATES command. Is someone really a karma worthy member if they go around using the hates buzz killing in every thread? Wouldn’t it be better to use the positive ones? With one in particular maybe carrying more weight? Also hates is black; maybe for good reason.
Whilst I think Karma is a fun thing, it’s not something to become obsessed about. It’s not like increasing your Karma, increases some kind of income stream!
Yes, it’s nice to see it go up, but it shouldn’t be the over-riding factor for plurking.
I think it is important that Plurk doesn’t get full of spammers, or mindless idiots, but then again too, we all find different things interesting, and even I find myself commenting on topics, I wouldn’t think of starting myself.
It’s all social interaction after all, and that’s the name of the game.
On the other side of the fence, sometimes almost all of us can do with a chill pill, and just relax. What I mean is that we don’t always need to be talking “shop” (whatever that might be to each of us); sometimes, it’s good to hang out and have some chat about trivial stuff, just to unwind.
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[...] well encourage people to interact more, but would also make them very well spam to increase karma. Plurk is soon revamping its karma system..so that should be taken care [...]
[...] Links: Plurk: An anti-micro blogger’s perspective Plurk much? Plurk me, parse me Plurk unleashed! Plurk to unveil new karma system Is Plurk’s karma system distorting the [...]
no way! Its not an adequate way to penalized people for plurking!
I agree its not a adequate way to penalized people for plurking.
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