Punished by Rewards

[charmian]

Sabina and I were talking about points systems on websites, such as Blip.fm's blips, and whether this created negative social effects. She argued that the existence of such systems prompted users to play it as a game/play purely for points, and also explained to me the secret of getting props and being uber-popular on Blip. I was excited because I thought she was going to reveal to me which bands are the hippest or something, but actually the secret is to reblip the popular and prolific people, and blip a lot yourself, and follow the popular folk. However, what really prompts people to play blip.fm, or another service, as a game?

Is it the appearance of metrics? Yet, LJ also has metrics: comment count, and # of people friending you. I certainly use comments as a metric and believe getting them does measure my 'success' in some manner. Probably blips were created to be a game, to get people to use the site more, rather than as a metric of discerning who is the best blipper. Also, while blips are infinite (because they aren't based on putting $$$ into the system), they are also finite (you don't have unlimited blips to give others directly) and transferrable.

This began to remind me of Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards, which argued that rewarding students causes them to devalue learning itself and simply work for the reward. Extrinsic motivators diminish intrinsic motivators. I've read the book: the research cited is IIRC fairly convincing, although I'm not sure the theories can be implemented in a large scale in schools.

Yet, I don't think the system I was discussing in the last entry ([this is good]) really falls into the category, because it works more like comments, like a very short, pre-made kind of comment, or like a poll result.

Anyway, in other news, I see that DW is planning cross site authenticated RSS reading. The bug reports says: " you won't need to create a feed account for every account you want to follow. You'll
provide us with your authentication information for the LJ-based site you want
to read the friends page of, and we will take what the protocol returns,
perform magic, and intercut it on your DW reading page." I wonder how this would work... Well, maybe I wouldn't be able to understand it anyhow.

Comments

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I think that where you say "blips" in the second paragraph you really mean "props".

Another way people game the system is by giving props to each other. You only need two people (http://blip.fm/profile/sub_divided/blip/3834699) to do it - though there might be a limit? Dunno, never tried.
Someone claimed today, in a blip, that Blip.fm is going to reset all the props soon. Can't remember who or where though and of course it's impossible to search. OTOH you can see prop obsession first-hand here:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=props+blip.fm

So the etiquette is to say thanks for props? (Oops.) Lots of people have an automatic prop back policy (http://blip.fm/profile/evablue/blip/7169752), as well, which makes other people more inclined to prop them.

You don't get medals for props, though - followers is more important. People try to game that too, by giving @shoutouts to random users from the blip stream, hoping to be followed:

http://blip.fm/profile/yamamiya

Some genuinely great blippers mixed up with all the gamers.

[charmian]

Yeah, props, wuffies, whatever.

What would even be the purpose of resetting all the 'symbolic exchanges'? I don't get it. So people are playing for the medals as well? This is pretty hilarious. XD

[sub_divided]

I don't know, since they don't really measure what they're supposed to anyway (that is how much people like the music you're posting). Maybe blip.fm is getting rid of reciprocal propping, and wants to reset everything. They already got rid of the feature that let you see what other people said about the songs you blip, maybe because they realized that like 90% of messages were "good morning! ;)" or the song title.

[troisroyaumes]

Hey, pretty cool (I've heard of similar behavior on Xanga, which also uses a props system). Now I'm really hoping you'll get around to making that post on blip.fm; I don't use the site often enough to understand its social dynamics.

[sub_divided]

Thank you for the invite! And thank you charmian, too~~~ XD When it rains, it pours.

(To Charmian: I hope that wasn't your only one. ^^; Or that there is some way for me to give it back. Can I pay it forward?)

<3 <3 <3 <3

Twitter and blip.fm social dynamics are both hugely weird to me, since the system puts so many constraints on what you can do - but that only seems to make people more inclined to try. ^^ At the same time it's much easier to connect than on LJ, where you are forced to take chances on people you don't know well (yet). In a way it's almost more like RL than like the blogsphere.

[troisroyaumes]

Yay, you're here! <3

Hm, the point about it resembling RL sort of reminds me of what Scalzi said about Twitter, which a friend linked me to a while ago.

[sub_divided]

John Scalzi is always exactly just ahead of the curve on these things. XD Following on twitter is like dropping into the middle of a conversation with someone you already know well - which is why celebrities/bloggers do well, everyone already "knows" and cares about them. And it IS like texting - or like changing your AIM status to something clever, actually, and hoping that someone will ask you about it.

And it's easy. LJ is less casual. Before you can friend someone on LJ, you have to go through the same awkward first steps you would if you were meeting someone in real life - hang out at parties (communities) and have conversations about mutual interests, or go over to a friend's (journal) and talk about your mutual acquaintances. The relationship may ultimately be deeper, but it's not as effortless.

[charmian]

Hmm... Well, if you have someone that you really want to give it to, go ahead and send it. If not, I have someone in mind that you can send it to.

[sub_divided]

It's your invite, so I gave it back to you. (Assuming that the code will work for anyone, not just the person with the email address you gave DW.)

[charmian]

Okay, I'll give it to that person then.