Tragedy of the email/discussion forum commons...

[wumpus]

Therefore short messages has to be rewarded.  Thus, to me it make sense to pay more for longer messages.

Well - I simply don't agree. To prevent spam and superfluous messages, a fixed cost per message works just as well.

This again proves how subjective the whole thing is. And also why it would probably not work for a large-scale community. Different people have different interests and different ideas about what is a quality message and what is not.

[mizerydearia]

There was a line on one of the Bitcoin irc channels earlier today, I forget which channel and who it was, but said was something to the effect of

Someone should take the Reddit source code and require Bitcoin for upvotes

Then added was:

Name it creddit.

http://veritas.maximilianeum.ch/bitcoin/irc/logs/2010/12/01

[Pegasus-Rider]

A very interesting and useful application of this idea is filtering junk e-mail out.
In a most basic case, one just sends a message with a bitcoin "envelope', which sender may use for reply or just return at will. Client-side white-listing might be utilised to make this scheme more useful.  With envelope price being mere 0,01 BTC massive spam is just out of the picture, while any user can obtain an amount necessary to send a message from a service such as Bitcoin faucet without much fuss.

A more elaborate scheme would involve stamps that MX server would proceed (an example of such a stamp would be a BC transaction sent to postmaster address). This approach is far more complex, but it yields a great potential for research (just imagine quality-of-service mechanism for e-mail that is all the more relevant because of delays introduced by grey-listing).
What do you think?

[Timo Y]

Popularity != Truth

Here is an experience I made at Yahoo!!!Answers!!! a few years ago:

Somebody asked what the most aerodynamically efficient shape of an idealised subsonic aircraft fuselage is, given constant volume, and assuming that all else is also constant.

Is it a) egg/cigar/penguin shaped ("fat looking")  or b) needle shaped (very long and very thin) ?

There were about 10 answers.

Every single one of them answered "needle shaped", and every single one was the wrong answer (I confirmed this with a friend who has a PhD in aircraft design).

The problem is that none of the respondends were experts in the field of aerodynamics, and they simply chose the answer that seems intuitive, which in this particular case is wrong.

Now, Yahoo!!!Answers!!! has a credit system similar to the one you are proposing. People collect points according to how their answers are rated and can spend those points to ask questions.

I was the only one who answered the question correctly, and I even went out of my way to explain why the counter-intuitive "cigar shape" is the most aerodynamic. In very simplified terms, it's a sweet spot where the combined losses of dynamic drag and friction are minimised.

The result? My answer received lots of negative points, all other answers got rewards. The author of the question even rated one of the wrong answers with 5 stars, and thanked the answerer for his alleged wisdom!

I rolled my eyes and cancelled my account.

Yahoo!!!Answers!!! is a celebration of ignorance.

How do you intend to deal with these kind of perverse incentives?

[Anonymous]

http://www.seriosity.com/attent.html

this company recently came out with a currency that deals with email attention.

[Anonymous]

Popularity != Truth

Here is an experience I made at Yahoo!!!Answers!!! a few years ago:

Somebody asked what the most aerodynamically efficient shape of an idealised subsonic aircraft fuselage is, given constant volume, and assuming that all else is also constant.

Is it a) egg/cigar/penguin shaped ("fat looking")  or b) needle shaped (very long and very thin) ?

There were about 10 answers.

Every single one of them answered "needle shaped", and every single one was the wrong answer (I confirmed this with a friend who has a PhD in aircraft design).

The problem is that none of the respondends were experts in the field of aerodynamics, and they simply chose the answer that seems intuitive, which in this particular case is wrong.

Now, Yahoo!!!Answers!!! has a credit system similar to the one you are proposing. People collect points according to how their answers are rated and can spend those points to ask questions.

I was the only one who answered the question correctly, and I even went out of my way to explain why the counter-intuitive "cigar shape" is the most aerodynamic. In very simplified terms, it's a sweet spot where the combined losses of dynamic drag and friction are minimised.

The result? My answer received lots of negative points, all other answers got rewards. The author of the question even rated one of the wrong answers with 5 stars, and thanked the answerer for his alleged wisdom!

I rolled my eyes and cancelled my account.

Yahoo!!!Answers!!! is a celebration of ignorance.

How do you intend to deal with these kind of perverse incentives?

On 4chan the best answer is the funniest answer - either intentionally or mistakenly funny  .  Food for thought.....  

[AgoraMutual]

I think you're all barking up the wrong tree here. This is a solution in search of a problem and the problem you've come up with is even more nonexistent than it's namesake. Forums and lists have been working perfectly well on the internet for way over a year now. Probably a lot more. The solution to perceived problems with the "commons" was not and is not enclosure.

[mizerydearia]

Based on an idea from noagendamarket (which may have been inspired from this thread, I'm uncertain), I have been working on a site that is establishing similarly to the ideas expressed in this thread.

[mizerydearia]

Popularity != Truth

Here is an experience I made at Yahoo!!!Answers!!! a few years ago:

Somebody asked what the most aerodynamically efficient shape of an idealised subsonic aircraft fuselage is, given constant volume, and assuming that all else is also constant.

Is it a) egg/cigar/penguin shaped ("fat looking")  or b) needle shaped (very long and very thin) ?

There were about 10 answers.

Every single one of them answered "needle shaped", and every single one was the wrong answer (I confirmed this with a friend who has a PhD in aircraft design).

The problem is that none of the respondends were experts in the field of aerodynamics, and they simply chose the answer that seems intuitive, which in this particular case is wrong.

Now, Yahoo!!!Answers!!! has a credit system similar to the one you are proposing. People collect points according to how their answers are rated and can spend those points to ask questions.

I was the only one who answered the question correctly, and I even went out of my way to explain why the counter-intuitive "cigar shape" is the most aerodynamic. In very simplified terms, it's a sweet spot where the combined losses of dynamic drag and friction are minimised.

The result? My answer received lots of negative points, all other answers got rewards. The author of the question even rated one of the wrong answers with 5 stars, and thanked the answerer for his alleged wisdom!

I rolled my eyes and cancelled my account.

Yahoo!!!Answers!!! is a celebration of ignorance.

How do you intend to deal with these kind of perverse incentives?

Have you heard of http://justanswer.com ?  Answerers are professionals with credentials.

[ribuck]

Have you heard of http://justanswer.com ?  Answerers are professionals with credentials.

I run Uclue, where the answers are provided by former Google Answers researchers. Sometimes "free" answers aren't good enough.