More on comments

From the same guy who was talking about whether empty (tho positive) comments are really desirable, on how to foster online commenting communities (for blogs. If you are posting on the net in different ways or w/ different goals, this may not be relevant)

I found the part about participation equality interesting: the more you lower the barrier to participation, the more people participate and feel like they've contributed. This is why low pressure, easy stuff like rating something on a scale of ten is helpful.

Anyway, in the previous discussion on comments, the issue of "dogpiling" was brought up. Some claimed it was caused by people with a "blogging" mentality, while others claimed it was actually also consistent with a social networking mentality. But since no one can control the actions of a bunch of unknown people, can anything be done about unwanted comments from a group of people who are previously unknown to the poster?

I think there are solutions beyond the obvious "lock the post." Comments can be turned off, or screened, or only a whitelist (the access/friends list) can post them. Perhaps more would be useful? For example, there could be "throttling" where after a certain # of comments, all comments from non-trusted people would be screened?

Some links on reputation systems.

Why negative karma might be best left invisible: The case of the 'Sims Mafia'

This is from a blog about a book called Building Reputation system. There's also a wiki that has a lot of material about the book, and the blog has excerpts from the book, such as this article on the potential negative effects of leaderboards.

I suppose the Tumblr folks had consulted sources like this when they created Tumblarity. However, honestly, I find that thing annoying. It rewards you too much for reblogging the content of others.