SDN Forum points vs Sun Forum Duke Dollars

[Former Member]

I believe that a points system is a great way to encourage participation by the community in problem solving.

With the points system in SDN, however, there is room for abuse, for example, by having people you know award points to you on threads.

I personally like the points reward system (Duke Dollars) on Sun's Developer Forums. In this scheme, you work with credits. Every user is given a certain amount of points (Duke Dollars) when they join. When you post a question, you can assign a number of Duke Dollars up front from your available credit as a reward to entice responses. You can also accumulate more Dollars by answering threads which have Dollars assigned.

Every month, Sun gives a gift to the user who has accumulated the most points.

I'm not sure that this solves the problem of users not assigning points for valid help, but, because users are working with limited credit, it does force them to be careful when assigning points, and prevents abuse as that mentioned above.

I would like to hear what other people think about this scheme. Perhaps there are aspects I have not considered.

Regards,

Martin

[former_member374]

Hi Martin,

<i>Every user is given a certain amount of points (Duke Dollars) when they join. When you post a question, you can assign a number of Duke Dollars up front from your available credit as a reward to entice responses. You can also accumulate more Dollars by answering threads which have Dollars assigned.</i>

We decided against such a system because it is too complicated. How much is this question worth to me? Will I have another question tomorrow where I need my duke dollars? Check the posts in the forums, very very few actually are offering duke dollars.

Also it seems that they have changed their system: No prizes anymore, they don't even show how many duke dollars someone has, or who the top duke dollar earners per forum are.

Doesn't look like the system is working very well, but this is from half an hour of poking into it.

Let us know about your experience, Mark.

[Former Member]

Thanks Mark. The conclusion of your investigation seems to invalidate the info on the FAQ page (http://java.sun.com/siteinfo/faq.html). It seems that the Duke Dollar system was successful at one stage, but not so anymore.

Thanks David also for the mention of the multiple-user loophole.

I guess that means no system is foolproof. The only thing that's left then, is that people will answer posts purely out of goodwill. As a matter of fact, this may not be such a bad idea. I get the feeling, looking at many of the posts, that some people reply with any (useless) information just to try get some points. If there was no points system, the threads might be a lot cleaner.

(It's a lot like the Amateur vs. Professional sports debate - do you play for the love of the game or for the love of money?).

[ramki_maley]

<b><i>I get the feeling, looking at many of the posts, that some people reply with any (useless) information just to try get some points. </i></b>

Martin, I am with you on this one. Some even repeat the same answer!.

<b><i>If there was no points system, the threads might be a lot cleaner.

</i></b>

No on this one. I do like my SDN T-Shirt!

Cheers,

Ramki.

[Former Member]

Hi Ramki,

I agree with you: In recent weeks I see on many posts that people repeat the correct answer with different words. The reason why they would do that is clear, and (I think) the fact that the person posing the question also assigns points to these "copied" answers just reinforces the trend. You can see more than one "copied" answer posted, even hours later!

[marilyn_pratt]

Hi Bhanu,

So actually, what would resolve this is better consensus in the community of how to discourage "inapropriate behaviour". In other words, the community, when they encounter such point mongering, could choose to respond with: "sorry already answered". If there is a code of behaviour that is adopted and implemented by the community to reject such duplication, I am certain it will stop. Maybe we need a "public awareness" campaign around this. Self-policing on this always seems to work best. In fact, this forum conversation is a type of public awareness that each of us might want to bring back to respective forums and areas that we most frequently visit. Now maybe we could have a contest around those "catching" the most cheaters....(only kidding).

[Former Member]

Hi Marilyn,

I do agree with you, but I am not sure about how responding with "sorry already answered" will work in a positive manner unless a moderator steps in to say that.

As an example here: Many times people post the same question in more than one BI forum. Sometimes I have replied with a request to please "post only in one forum" so that it avoids confusion among those replying with answers. One would expect that no other member posts an answer after reading this request, and only replies to keep one thread active. But still SDN members post answers below this request...self-policing should come into play here too, but it does not.

I guess it ultimately lies with the persons awarding the points, and I am not sure how many of them will get round to reading this post

[marilyn_pratt]

Would a moderator make it more positive?

Actually Craig went into each of the forums and published a "rules of engagement". Maybe that kind of a "sticky note" post would be the place to remind people about the inappropriateness of redundant questions (across various forums) and the confusion and poor sporting behavior associated with "copied" answers. I can ping Craig with that suggestion to add text if you think it makes sense to "remind" people in each of the respective forums.

Or..to be a little more provocative, we could suggest that community members who have a good track record of participation, collaboration, and exemplary attitude be given the moderator rights in forums where the activity volume might be too overwhelming for an SAP moderator alone to manage and given the rights to move content to a more appropriate thread.

This is what I meant about "self-policing". Also, perhaps the moderators (internal as well as SAP) could identify themselves in a sticky post and invite participants in those designated threads to track "abuses" or issues, thus identifying them and hopefully resolving them publically.

Strange, it reminds me that in old, Puritanical, America, of the 17th century community culprits were subjected to a public dunking or stocks when they broke the law. The purpose being that public condemnation sent a clear message to other "would be" misbehavers.... and thus deterred further bad conduct.

While a rather radical and unpleasant method it was an open way of dealing with abuses to the system.

Perhaps others can offer less extreme and more effective suggestions here

Marilyn

[Former Member]

<i>Actually Craig went into each of the forums and published a "rules of engagement". Maybe that kind of a "sticky note" post would be the place to remind people about the inappropriateness of redundant questions</i>

Not really. I have always intended on reading that "sticky note" but never got around to it.

Well, here's a possible solution:

Moderators, who (hopefully) monitor all the activity in a forum, should be the ones rewarding good behaviour and helpful replies.

It could work like this: People who post questions can suggest that a certain response gets rewarded. Only the moderator sees this suggestion, not the community. The moderator then decides whether or not to award the relevant points as per the suggestion.

You can see an example of where the moderators assign points to posts in the discussions at Slashdot - http://slashdot.org. Users are also given the option of only viewing posts that receive above a particular rating, thereby filtering out unhelpful posts.

Moderators should (hopefully) have an overview to see when someone is abusing the system, and refuse to reward points to such abusers. They could even let the offenders know the reason why they are not awarded points (as opposed to making a public spectacle), and give them a chance to respond.

Of course, this adds up to a lot of work. Maybe we do need more moderators.

[former_member374]

Hi Martin,

We all don't want more work. The moderators, who by the way are doing this on the side don't have the time to do that.

Think about the ABAP forum with about 400+ a day. Let's say on average 1 question and 3 answers. That would mean checking 100 threads every day (including Saturday and Sunday, as SDN never sleeps.)

The solution could be a "flag for review" functionality. You see a thread that is not O.K. you flag it, write what the problem is. The moderator then only has to go through these flagged messages.

Something along these lines we would like to implement.

All the best, Mark.

[Former Member]

Hi Mark,

<i>We all don't want more work. The moderators, who by the way are doing this on the side don't have the time to do that.</i>

I think Marilyn's idea is not so bad. The ultimate reward for contribution to the community should be participation in the moderation process, not a t-shirt (although maybe that too Then you would have enough moderators to share the workload.

Again, I would like to point to Slashdot as an example of how involved community members have the possibility of participating in the moderation process. (I just need to make a disclaimer, though: I haven't been reading Slashdot for a very long time - things may have changed since I last was there).

Your "flag for review" idea does not sound too bad though - I'm assuming you're suggesting that this could be done by elevated community members?

Cheers,

Martin

[Former Member]

Hi Mark,

I think the "flag for review" and a brief description of the problem in the thread is a good idea. So that it does not discourage participation, or point out a particular member in public, may be the reason should be visible to just the person flagging and the moderator...

[Former Member]

Please see this!

[suresh_datti]

and I thought only the ABAP forum needed cleansing!

Regards,

Suresh Datti

[nikhil_chowdhary2]

Hi,

I am too new to this community to give my opinions, but I feel we are overlooking one problem here:

the frequency of answers is extremely high and there is this problem of time lag - two people might be typing similar answers at the same time and they get posted one after the other - which one deserves the points in this case?

This has already happened more than a couple of times for me.

So in case you are planning a "flag for review" kind of approach - please inform the reviewers to look into the time stamps for the posts as well and maybe add points themselves to posts within say 5 mins of each other with good answers.

Regards,

Nikhil

[marilyn_pratt]

That's a good point Nikhil. I too have had the experience on occasion of posting simultaneous to another's answer.

But hey, isn't it glorious when we have an "embarrassment of riches", meaning too many answers rather than none.

I wish, by the way that all forums had the problem

Marilyn

[Former Member]

Hello Everybody who has contributed on this thread and helped chew the fat on this topic, and all the related issues that came out of it.

I would like to point you to this thread that I started: , because I would like to hear your comments on it, please.

[Former Member]

Interesting idea and actually something we discussed before - not exactly but close.

So what does everyone think of such ideas? Post your ideas for the point system here.

[David]

Hi Craig,

It still doesn't really close the big loophole where a user can register twice and hold conversations with themselves to accumulate points within the forums. We still have to rely on our community to pick up on these things which they do a great job with BTW.

I like the idea of having to build a bank of points by actually contributing. I think it would really boost participation.

DB

[suresh_datti]

>>the big loophole where a user can register twice and hold conversations with themselves to accumulate points..

Never thought of that.. I do have two ids.. thanks for the tip!

OK, on a serious note, I too like the idea of having to build a bank of points..

Of course, things have gotten better, ever since Craig posted those sticky notes on all the forums..

Regards,

Suresh Datti