Needy Karma Turning Off Casual Plurkers?
The question is what’s the experience for someone new to plurk? What about the casual user who doesn’t have friends berating them about how great it is? You register think plurk is alright; check back a day or two later with almost no karma and a big down arrow to say thanks for coming back? Regardless of what people may say most want to be a user in good standings according to the networks terms.
The karma system at Plurk is much too needy in its current state. It’s no surprise that some sources claim plurks numbers are down. This same piece also mentions that those that are into it are really into it. Sounds to me like some love plurk and will do whatever is required to stay in “positive” standings while others are being totally put off by it.
Regardless of your level of interest in karma it’s human nature to dislike negative grades. Each time a casual user or even a remotely dedicated daily user logs in; they see a negative if the last login wasn’t a few hours prior. All this wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t such stress on karma. The plurk widget you embed on your site is promoting karma, plurk’s “most interesting” list and of course access to site features are all based on karma. Seems like everything revolves around karma?
My sentiment is that if such an integral part of the site is too demanding of the users attention it’ bound to turn off many casual ones. It could also eventually turn off those in the interested / somewhat dedicated group as well; bad news for an emerging network.
I always hate it when someone complains and makes no suggestions. Here are mine: make it possible to maintain a steady score by plurking every ~48+ hours. Your karma only starts to decline(gradually) after ~48+ hours of no updates. In order to increase your karma it could be left essentially the same but preferably 1 or 2 updates a day instead of 3 or 4.
At least by writing this I have something relevant to share with my friends while avoiding karma’s wrath.
Stay tuned for more things plurk,
-Rob
Good Post.
I tend to agree with you. I really like Plurk but I am in the process of moving and have been away from a computer for a day or two and my karma has dwindled. I don’t really focus on it but t is kinda lame when you log in and it has dropped a couple of points. It does seem that it has been a bit more generous in rewarding karma points since the recent update but it could be better when it comes to negative karma.
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I think maybe vacation days at least would be good. If you knew you were going to be gone you could register away.
Rea nice post
I can definitely see what you mean. For those of us who are really into Plurk, we really don’t have anything to worry about. I would completely agree that Plurk isn’t everything though. Without living life, you have nothing to share with others.
I do agree that Karma needs to change. I really don’t know what goes into the algorithm, so it is hard for me to say whether your suggestion is good or bad. However, it is an interesting idea.
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There’s been a lot of pros and cons with the Karma system, and the reality is that Plurk needs to “reward” its users when every day there seems to be another microblogging site erupting and competing for attention and time.
For those who can’t care less about Karma, they shouldn’t care if the points drop when they’re away, because they can’t care less - right?
And for those who do provide good conversation, tips, and topics, they can have a dropping Karma and I bet most wouldn’t care - I don’t let Karma detract me from a friend/fan decision.
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That explains my 0 karma.. But I rarely log in to plurk anyway.. Requires too much attention..
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As a casual plurker, I tend to post once or twice a day and maybe once over the weekend. I have watched my Karma slowly climb to 51, drop to 49 and then climb back to 51. Karma does nothing for me and I have stopped caring about it.
If I could turn it off or set a timer that says not to expect a plurk for X amount of time I’d be happy/
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I agree in that inately we seek positive reinforcement and feel dejected when we see a down trend. But for people who really like plurk I dont think it matters to much, at least not for me. It is a by-product of my time at plurk. I do agree that penalizing a user is not wise and there should be more time intervals. Great post.
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I agree and now I’m going back to comment about this post so your Karma will be promoted-how silly but true-see you are correct!
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I recently left Plurk, b/c it had become just another chore to me. The negative Karma was actually a big part in it - since at times I really wanted to be a passive listener and consume the conversations rather than necessarily contributing to them. Otherwise, it would become like me talking non-stop at a party - and half of the fun is hearing what everyone else has to say too.
I wrote this regarding me exit:
http://www.changeforge.com/2008/07/26/plurk-good-morning-good-evening-and-good-night/
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the thing I don’t like is the fact that I went on vacation for 4 days without internet and my karma drops. The current system is way to strict. people aren’t in front of their PCs 24/7, and many of use (me included) don’t have a phone with a data plan. At least adding SMS support, or the turning off of karma would make it easier to manage while you are on vacation or outside of the internet.
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Karma is one of the chief things I dislike about Plurk. I have never liked anyone telling me what to do, or chastising me for what I haven’t done. If I don’t like that behavior from my friends, I’m certainly not going to tolerate it from a damned social network. It has actually ~decreased~ my usage of Plurk, which is sad because some of my friends seem like a SocNet cracking a whip over them.
Can’t say it really bothers me. Its just a silly little aside with a few nice fun things like extra smileys. I can’t see why anyone would get hung up over plurk karma.
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The 48 hour idea sounds good. Karma does give a few nice extras, but it feels like we’re being pushed to plurk several times a day - or risk losing those extras. Does your display name change back if you go under 40 karma, for instance? Seems like this is encouraging spam. Quality over quantity?
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What I like about the karma system is that it is a measurement of patterns of behaviour. It doesn’t “punish” you for missing a day or two … it’s trying to figure out what kind of plurker you are, and assign you a karma relative to that. If you’re the sort of plurker who’s on all day, every day, a dozen times a day, starting interesting conversations, making new friends, et cetera, it wants to give you a really high karma score (70+). If you’re only on once in a while, only have a few plurk friends, and your “ate a sandwich” plurks don’t get many responses, it wants to give you a fairly low karma score (<20). If your pattern changes, it wants to adjust to match your new pattern.
I was an average plurker in June, karma over 40, but not by much, and I plurked almost every day, but usually only a few times a day on heavy days. Then I went on a two week vacation, where I only had internet access one or two days (I did plurk those days) - and my karma barely went down. Maybe 1 or 2 points, max.
Now if Rob, at 74 karma, took two weeks off Plurk… I expect he’d see a significant drop. But not lower than 40. Probably not lower than 60 or 65… I don’t pay that close attention to the numbers, but assuming his friends don’t all block him … it’s a very gradual reduction. Someone down in the 10’s misses a week and their karma will hardly notice. They don’t plurk a lot. That’s why their karma is low.
It’s not a punishment for not plurking every day, it’s a system so that -at a glance- I can see what sort of Plurker you are. Personally, I’m reluctant to friend anyone over 70, because they’ll flood my stream, just as I’d be reluctant to friend someone under 10 who wasn’t brand new. It’s a system so that good, active members, who have a lot of friends and say meaningful/interesting things get rewarded with neat stuff like customizable profiles and smileys.
I have a feeling that many of the old-timers are going to be happy to maintain the status quo, but my interest is with yours and is focused on the newcomer. Your formula seems fairer in many ways, though I would not mind seeing a formula that rewarded a user for some activity every day. The current system of requiring activity every few hours is a turn-off for a lot of people. Great post, Rob.
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how about just placing a “turn karma off” feature on user profiles? I mean, if you want to see it, cool, if not, just hide the dang thing.
No?
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The Karma system reminds me a lot of the way you level up on a MMORPG. Most of these games assign xp points while you are playing and killing creatures, and if you get killed before you reach the next level, you get an xp penalization, say 10% for each time you die, but once you get to the next level, you stay there, you can’t go down levels. I’m thinking Plurk’s system could be something like that, or at least, if your karma goes down, you should be able to keep the perks you have already reached… the way it is right now is very discouraging for both casual and frequent users, i find some people posting silly things just not to lose their karma, and if you get sick or can’t get online for a couple of days, you also get penalized, and that is also unfair to all plurk users…
I agree with @kdfrawg - the karma score should have more stability even if someone doesn’t Plurk for a couple days. Also, if you’ve Plurk many days in a row you should be able to take a several day break with no karma lost.
@thecolor - If you look at the icanhascheezburger Plurk it has no karma score at all. http://www.plurk.com/user/icanhascheezburger
I tend to agree with Teel. Karma seems to be a measurement of your plury-ness, if you will. I think the reason that many of us are seeing these dramatic drops is because we were so gung-ho over plurk when we first started that we dramatically rose to the 60+ level. Now that we are here we are beginning to resume “normal” lives away from plurk we don’t understand why our karma drops. It drops because you’re not really a 60+ plurker, you’re a 40+ plurker, or what have you. An 80+ karma is not a right, its a privilege. I don’t think you should assume that because you’re a loyal plurk fan that you should be given a karma that you don’t earn.
I think the karma system is great for the top 10 plurkers but for most others, I don’t see much value. Being in the top 10 allows others and new people to see them but if you aren’t in the group, no one really knows about you except for those you invite or know from other social media networks.
I also do not like the idea of a down arrow on the plurk widget. I do not want anything negative on any website or blog that I own.
I like the idea of being rewarded for participating in something but I am there for my friends and to make new friends, karma or not.
Doug
I’m a regular plurker and spend lots of time reading and commenting, but for the past 3 days, my karma has gone down every single update except one (this morning).
I like plurk, and the people that I interact with, but even I’m getting a little frustrated with the karma system. I’ve noticed that the only time it seems to increase is when I change something in my profile.
A feature to turn off or opt out of the karma system is a great idea and one I would love to see.
i think the karma system would be a lot better for attracting users if it never (or rarely) went down. teel notes that it doesn’t go down much if you’re away a long time– but the fact that you see that down arrow is negative reinforcement and it definitely *does* drive people away. anecdotally i have heard of users who just give up because of that ‘punishment.’
the “it’s a privilege, not a right” attitude does nothing for attracting new users. it makes the whole thing seem elitist.
I am curious about the people who want the option to “turn off” karma for their account. If it’s not a feature you’re interested in, why not just ignore it? Heck, I don’t know what size monitors you’re all using, but unless I scroll down intentionally to look at it, I never see my karma score at all!
Karma doesn’t effect the way I plurk - it isn’t really relevant to the use of the messaging system as a messaging system. Having higher or lower karma doesn’t prevent me from friending more people (as far as I know), or from responding to interesting plurks… What, exactly, are you using Plurk for, that karma matters?
And if it doesn’t matter, why are you looking at it / why do you care?
@teel, I’d say a karma of 70 plus won’t flood your timeline, as flooding a timeline (30+) plurks a day loses you karma. the people I tend to find who flood are the ones who do all the posting via ping.fm. I tend to look at a person’s profile and see if a) they post by ping.fm a lot, and b) if they engage the community.
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teel: a lot of features are disabled until karma gets higher. you may think of them as frivolous perks, but these things do matter to some people. it’s not just a messaging system, if plurk offers these features at all. customization and expression are important to any social networking site.
just because those features are unimportant to you doesn’t make them unimportant for others, or for plurk to gain a larger audience.
Great blog post. I have to agree on karma. They should put in a bit higher of a tolerance when dealing with things like the weekend and what not. Sometimes we’re not tethered to the computer at all times of the day and Plurk needs to acknowledge that.
In some ways, it almost makes you want to work with a service like Sendible in order to time out Plurks. Too bad it doesn’t support Plurk at the moment, but just wait, something will come out to facilitate automated posting to Plurk and then the developers will try to either tighten control or loosen the karma scheme.
I belong to another community where your “score” doesn’t start to fall untill you have been inactive for 5 consecutive days. It seems that there could be an algo that does the same for Karma. I can see where loss of karma can be a demotivator for new users.
I post new threads about 10 times a day and contribute to existing threads on a ratio of about 6 or 7 to 1. I enjoy plurking and I do look at my karma. I consider it irrelevent, but don’t like the “bad grade” of a decrease just because I slept last night.
Cheers,
Larry
I admit I was trying to get my karma up the first few days because the themes hurt my eyes and I need practice with CSS. . . after that I don’t really care. I did find it discouraging when I had to be away for a class all day to see karma going down. If we’re not away from the computer once in a while, how will we ever have anything to plurk about??
They do need to be a bit less harsh on karma because they are alienating the most loyal of their users when they take away karma for being away from the computer on a weekend.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I certainly didn’t intend to see this many when I woke up this morning. I don’t even know where to begin responding so I’ll make a basic one.
Seems like some people agree that it is a bit harsh and clingy, others don’t care and others would like it turned off. Based on the volume and contents of the comments I do think the karma issue is something of interest to people.
Hopefully if this bloggery gets enough attention the A-Team may take note because I still feel that it’s turning off casual users and may eventually turn off users in the somewhat dedicated group as well.
I’m trying to look at this from a bigger picture. Most of us that are heavy users now are just that; heavy internet users. If we weren’t on plurk we’d be somewhere else but you can bet we’d be online.
If Plurk is to hit critical mass with most people using it the fact is most people CAN’T physically be at a computer all day. What about those people who work all day offline come home and each night check there emails and catch up on some plurks? What about those people who check before work and then maybe if they are lucky after work? If Plurk is going to hit critical mass it will have plenty of users in that grouping.
I consider myself a very heavy internet user and even I have issues being able to update enough without it going down. Also lot’s of the time people don’t have anything new to share; why encourage posts for the sake of posting?
Also I can’t relate to those who say they don’t care. Maybe I’m just different but I’ve never dedicated my free time to anything in life to something I don’t care about. It’s not the end of the world but I spend lot’s of time on plurk each day so it’s only natural for me to care. Even if I only care a bit I still care.
I was just thinking this morning that I don’t have enough time to plurk four times a day, haha. Your points are interesting and very valid, I think for plurk to succeed they’re going to need to overhaul their current karma system. Since karma also affects the added features, it would be great if it didn’t go down at all from recent inactivity.
Perhaps we should send in an email to plurk.com? Or have i missed that suggestion already?
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Rob,
Great post. I just got on Plurk to give it another try last night, and am really enjoying the real-time-ness of the conversation as compared to Twitter exchanges. The threading is also a major plus. But at the same time, the whole Karma thing is a bit weird. For me, as a brand new user, all the limitations in the settings by karma did more to annoy me than to inspire me. I get what they’re trying to do- it’s kind of like some sort of MMORPG … where you have to Plurk to improve your “character.” Except, you shouldn’t have to do that just to do simple things like change your CSS. My two cents, from a brand new Plurker.
You can connect with me at http://www.plurk.com/smithereensblog if you like.
Daniel Smith
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Yes I can’t agree with this post anymore. I took a trip recently to Universal Orlando and spent the day with my family. The whole day that means no plurking. Came back and saw the karma was low..
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That’s why Karma Medic was born. She allows me and my friends to leave Plurk for a couple of days without suffering too much loss of karma.
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Yeah, the Karma thing makes me wonder. My Twitter list is pretty much spam-free, but I’m getting several friend requests per day on Plurk. It feels like a bunch of people are focused on Karma and not the value of the tool.
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I think Karma is a useful marketing tool for Plurk to get users started, but once they’re regular users it has a downside. People (me included) will sometimes Plurk boring or random thoughts that don’t stimulate good conversations because they feel they should to maintain points.
While I’m trying not to do that there is that pressure to perform that kind of takes the fun out of it. I think it would be better if one could lock in at a level and stay there instead of losing points. Perhaps this way people would focus less on Karma and more on content. As Pownce becomes more stable (aside from being glitchy tonight) I think I’ll find myself checking Plurk less and less often.
Hi Rob,
Karma should be tied to social standing, not digital regurgitation (which reminds me, didja see the Twitter Whore on youTube? It was hilarious, but a sad commentary on what passes for SOCIAL online).
I don’t have any suggestions, so I’ll not complain, either
For now, I at least get a backlink out of it.
Cheers,
Mitch
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Is there any list of complete features when we get some karmas?
After that, is there any way to see and to know all CSS in plurk?
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Finally the first person to comment. You make some great points here. I was reading John Reese?s blog yesterday about building friendships and I see that you make a point in this post about building friendships and relationships. They are definitely important.
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Plurk this, plurk that. Your karma is your karma, you earned it either way.
I dont know if they should upgrade them or not. Things like this may have it draw back especially for facilities management professionals who use Plurk in their day to day activities such as building maintenance, electrical and mechanical engineering jobs and serching for vacancies within London and UK. FM careers may not like it?
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