How Moderation can backfire

A nice article on the side-effects of publishing reputation data — you turn it into a game.

This is a good explanation of why I’m looking at limiting access to reputation data in systems I’m designing, so that only the admins have access to all of the data, and users have limited (and non-identifying) data about what’s been assign to their account record. you want reputation systems to moderate activity on your system, not become the activity.

As an example of how flawed these systems can be, before I gave up on Slashdot, I spent some time posting responses and generally being serious about things, and over time, build my karma up to, oh, +5. finally I gave up, found a reasonably new posting with an obvious snide comment to make, and since I was early into the mosh pit with a good straightline, immediately added +5 to my karma — for a useless, throwaway line. It’s too bad the majority of slashdotters prefer Jay Leno to useful information, but that’s how their system works. And why I pay little attention to slashdot any more beyond the headlines in my RSS….

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