Suggestions and thoughts how to keep forum cleaner and more useful

[lupandina]

At first I would like to tell story about one other forum, I was member before, and how it ended up. I think, main idea should be pretty clear

It was russian forum about crypto, more from technical side, but nvm. It had pay per post system, which was generous tbh, but very strict too. Members had ratings (similar to Stake's forum community rep), difference was, it had not only way up (like we are getting only +), but also way down - reported wrong replies was reducing rating. Forum paid base amount (2k sat for reply and I think 10k sat for topic) + 1 sat per word. And in additional, there was faucet for forum members only, which was giving 500 sats every hour, but only to members with higher than medium rep and 10+ posts in last week. But believe me, get 10+ posts per week was damn hard! Moderation was damn strict! Any at least a bit not topic related reply, without any new, useful or meaningful content had been deleted immediately and sats earned for that, deducted. Every rules breaking (like posting ref links in wrong sections or topics, posting ref links of sites, which was already introduced in forum before, etc.) was causing penalty of -50k sats and don't even try whining about that, as you will get another -50k sats

What was result? 

Forum was amazing clean. Every topic was like page from encyclopedia, every post was with smth new, useful, interesting. I was opening just one topic and in result I spent few hours in forum...  Users were earning pretty nice amounts, but earning, not abusing, as it was paid for smth really worthy. It really was discussion, not spamming. Amazing feeling. The only such nice and clean community I ever saw.

What happened next?

Admin changed rules, removed moderation. Forum literally turned into recycle bin in just 3 days!  And sometimes I get feeling, that Stake forum is turning into recycle bin slowly too...

My suggestions?

1. We already have way up, but let's add and way down  and for community reputation points, and for individual pay per post rate (after reported/deleted inappropriate content rate should drop, isn't?).

2. Add some additional, like 1k sats + 1sat per word for posting. Really, some posts are much more useful, and they worth more than post with 5 words.

3. If content was inappropriate and deleted, sats received for that should be deducted, isn't? Yea, there's thing about instant withdrawing... But well, even if it was withdrawn, after deduction forum bal can become negative, why not? Or, withdraw can be available only at least 24 hours after least sats earning, to left enough time for moderation in bad case.

4. To make less work for mods, let's clean our forum by ourselves!  And for motivation, if member made right report of some trash post (which was deleted and sats deducted), reporter could get like 10% of that "saved from spammer" amount. But also, if report was wrong, reporter should be deducted in same like 10% of amount  Just not to create space for personal things  Also like same 10% should be credited to moderator, who deleted post. Their work should be paid, I think.

 

Oh my, I wrote almost book 😱

[David]

Agree with this fully, I see unneeded responses to posts and repeat topics posted way too often. Need more incentive not to spam.

[truemeng]

+1 vote for this  

Quality vs Quantity

there have been people creating topics that i think can be answered by common sense and/or simply reading. 

as there is a rule on faucet abuse, it's kinda appropriate to have forum incentive abuse.

 

 

[wry]

1 hour ago, lupandina said:

What happened next?

.....removed moderation. 

That is EXACTLY how you get a crappy forum.  The number of one line posts on this one that add nothing to the conversation is remarkable.

While I like your idea of allowing for a way down, it often doesn't work either, people just retaliate or make ats to attack others and boost themselves.  The only real way is to have some human intervention and moderation.

Bitcointalk has been trying to solve this for quite some time, and I don't think they are much better off than we are.

Maybe if Stake would focus their efforts a little more, e.g. rainbot, pay for post, discord giveaways, now snapchat giveaways, forum contests, they would be able to have more moderation.

Thanks for trying to think of ways to make it better!

[Kargai]

Thanks @lupandina for the post, just wanted to give you some answers

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1. We already have way up, but let's add and way down  and for community reputation points, and for individual pay per post rate (after reported/deleted inappropriate content rate should drop, isn't?).

That exist already, everytime someone receive a warning point on forum the number of satoshi he'll win on each posts in the future is decreased. And just few points is enough to hit it hard

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2. Add some additional, like 1k sats + 1sat per word for posting. Really, some posts are much more useful, and they worth more than post with 5 words.

Short posts under a certain amount of words are not paid, or very little. But an idea could be to increase sligthly the sats amount according to when you registered. If you have a 400 days account with 1000+ posts and no warning, there is a lot more chances that you are valuable to the community than someone with a 30 days accounts with 50 posts and 1 warning points ... or that another 400 days account with 50+ posts and no warning.

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3. If content was inappropriate and deleted, sats received for that should be deducted, isn't? Yea, there's thing about instant withdrawing... But well, even if it was withdrawn, after deduction forum bal can become negative, why not? Or, withdraw can be available only at least 24 hours after least sats earning, to left enough time for moderation in bad case.

Agreed on that. Some people are creating already existing threads and even if I merge both or hide the second one, they still win the sats. 

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4. To make less work for mods, let's clean our forum by ourselves!  And for motivation, if member made right report of some trash post (which was deleted and sats deducted), reporter could get like 10% of that "saved from spammer" amount. But also, if report was wrong, reporter should be deducted in same like 10% of amount  Just not to create space for personal things  Also like same 10% should be credited to moderator, who deleted post. Their work should be paid, I think.

There is a report button for every users to help the mods (top right of each post). That bring our attention to the specific post. The problem with reporters who could win 10% of the content reported will be that it could turn in a police forum where people report others to win money ... and will be pissed off if we don't follow them and they loose their sats. I see lots of possible complains there : people who will say "he's targeting me, stop this bully" and others who will be like "I loose some sats while i'm reporting legit stuff to help you".

[williamshennie9]

There are a lot of people that simply copy and paste information from websites just to abuse the "pay-per-post" system.

I think the solution to this is 2 fold.

Firstly, I think users should only start earning sats after they have already made 100 posts.

Secondly, we, as the community need to actively report plagiarized posts.

Hopefully we can start cleaning up the forum to make it neat and tidy

[lolipant]

i see most post here (in the forum) is just "me too", "that's cool", "yeah" something like that that's longer and get the sat, but doesn't really offensive enough to get reported

what to do with that? (i ignore it but still.. it's annoying to find an empty content just to bump a little money, plus it put the real comment down too..)

[AquaViki]

The best solution is just remove the earning feature. 

If you wish to keep this feature of pay to post active, then the essential thing becomes not to copy how others are running things. That actually hampers a site. It needs to be different from the other and not the same. Of course, the features and activities maybe same but a different approach is the best.

If anyone loves a system, I often observe the same recommendation being made on another platform as well. But doing so stops the evolution that the system could have gone through if it stayed true to its nature and did things at its own pace. We overlook such a possibility.