Normally I don't share ideas off the top of my head. I like to let them settle for a while, and I like to wait until I have enough energy to try to explain them in a non-lazy way.
But, I'm spending less and less time here, and I'm finding it tougher and tougher to remain enthusiastic, so I figured that, while I'm still around, and even though I can only do a lazy job of it, I should try to share some of the forum-related thoughts I've either recently had or recently remembered having.
Thought 0 (The forum's SNR)I've noticed a few new proposals that have to do with improving the forum's signal-to-noise ratio. I still believe that some version of the ideas I left scattered throughout my "
Ranking up/down" topic could be made to work. From now on, I'm going to refer to those ideas as "the carry system" (as I said in that topic, I don't really like the name "carry" for a subtractive term, but that's how I've been referring to those ideas in private for nearly a year now, and so the name has kind of stuck). I've gone back and forth in my mind, at times liking the carry system very much, and at other times worrying about some of the problems that I estimate it will cause.
There's something very natural to me about the idea of having to part with a little merit each time you submit a post. There's also something so
simple about the whole thing that I really like. I've had many ideas over my time here about how to put a dent in mindless posting, but they're mostly all very complicated (comparatively), and they mostly fall apart when I try to work through all of their edge cases and corner cases and failure modes and so on. The carry system has this really appealing shape to it. It's got this nice, large set of upsides, it's implementable in a very neat and straightforward way (one new database table, and a tiny amount of PHP that wouldn't pull in any new dependencies), and it has a compact set of downsides.
Like all systems, it's a bundle of trade-offs. But, it's the nicest bundle of trade-offs that I've yet encountered for the problem that it's attempting to put a dent in. I think my
main issue with it is that it's going to turn the dial up on "merit-seeking behavior". But, I view that as a problem that can be largely if not completely dealt with by the community. That is, the carry system adjustably amplifies the rationale that meriting something counts (in some sense) as a sort of vote that you'd like to see more of that type of content, and that not-meriting something counts (in some sense) as a sort of vote that you'd like to see less of that type of content. So, "merit-seeking behavior" is behavior that can be shaped over time through collective merit-sending discipline. If the community stops meriting the things that they'd like to see less of (like synthetic-sounding, disingenuous, AI-polished posts, for example), then the carry system will have the effect of attenuating the production of that type of content. And if the community
starts meriting the things that they're worried the carry system might kill (like very simple but pleasant-to-read organic/genuine/authentic posts, for example), then the carry system will have the effect of boosting the production of that type of content. Right now, there's no real cost associated with spamming the forum and hoping that some very small fraction of it might attract some merit (and I think that that pattern of posting is drowning out and driving away more-mindful users).
(One new idea I've recently had about all this is that I think I like the concept of the cost-per-post amount increasing with rank. That is, I like the idea of Legendary Members being held to a higher standard than Hero Members, and Hero Members being held to a higher standard than Sr. Members, and so on. An older thought that I don't think I've yet shared is that, as an alternative to something like the "fade in" expression I left
here, I think I prefer the idea of the carry system being introduced alongside some kind of a merit airdrop, so that people, and especially new users, will have some headroom and an immediate incentive to find a posting style that doesn't just chip away at their merit balance.)
Thought 1 (Transferring sMerit)I'd be surprised if this thought hasn't been expressed before, but, I'd like to be able to transfer sMerit as well as spend it. I don't like the behavior I sometimes see (and have sometimes participated in) of sending someone
merit when the main reason you're doing that is so that you can help replenish their sMerit balance. It would be more efficient and better all around if sMerit were directly transferred in those instances. I have some thoughts on who exactly should be able to do this (only sources, I think; so, I suppose I'm really talking about
source merit transfers), and I have a few thoughts on how the UI interaction should work/look, and how the transfers should be kept track of, and so on, but I'm too lazy to unpack all of that now. I think that this would have a small positive decentralizing effect on the merit system if it were designed and used carefully enough (as in, you could think of it as a way to let merit sources temporarily "deputize" others).
Thought 2 (Sending max-merit)I think I've expressed this one myself before: I'd like some convenient way to send someone the most amount of merit that I'm able to send them. Something like an asterisk in the "Merit points:"
input being interpreted as "as much as possible", or the
placeholder="0" attribute being changed to
placeholder="1 to {$max}", or the
type="text" attribute being changed to
type="number" along with
min and
max attributes, or something. (I mean, I realize that that second suggestion would lead to strings like
"1 to 0" or
"1 to 1"; I'm sharing the germ of an idea, not a worked-out proposal, you muppet. Probably the current code should be re-organized anyway, so that range information is available and made use of both before and during the send attempt; though a simple/stateless implementation of that would duplicate the effort expended on what I imagine is not a trivial calculation, so maybe the asterisk idea is best.)
Thought 3 (Post-deletion countermeasure)This one can only really work if the carry system (thought 0) is implemented. One thing I really like about the carry system is how it lays a cost-per-action foundation that can be used to get other ideas to work. For example, I really don't like the idea of people deleting their posts (even though I did that myself when I was first getting started here [1]), and I especially don't like the idea of people deleting their posts to improve their stats. If the carry system were implemented, then it would be very easy to add some logic that would make deleting a post cost something like one or more units of either your merit-to-activity ratio or your merit-to-post ratio (that is, you're
free to delete all the posts you like, but doing so can't improve your stats).
[1] Here's the
topic. Makes me smile to read the second post I left in that thread. Feels so long ago. At that point I was still using theymos-style spacing after quotes, and I hadn't yet decided that I preferred the snugged-up-to-the-quote style that I now use. While going through my post history I found some pretty embarrassing stuff. Like, WTH was I doing
here? First of all, that topic is kind of pathetic, and second of all,
why am I @-mentioning each person after quoting them. What a noob.
Thought 4 (Negative footprint reporter badge)Welsh jokingly asked me if I could think up some way to encourage more reporting, and I gave him an off-topic
response around how/why I'm not really in the mood to field requests these days (and I got a very kind PM from him in reply). I do have an idea about how to encourage more reporting, but I'm reluctant to share it because the precise reasons that I think it would play out well are subtle and detailed, and I'm too tired to get into it all (and the whole thing depends indirectly on the carry system). The back-of-the-envelope description is: I think it makes sense to introduce a specific kind of "reporter badge" that's awarded when the total number of good reports you've made is greater than the total number of posts you've submitted (that is, the badge is active so long as you're in a state of having cleaned up more than you've littered, so to speak). But, hardening that badge against certain acquisition strategies requires something like the post-deletion countermeasure I described above (thought 3; to be clear, I don't need that as a countermeasure against people trying to get the badge by deleting their
own posts: that can be taken care of by the logic comparing the number of good reports to the number of posts that the user has
submitted, not the count of their surviving posts; what's much harder to defeat is someone, for example, creating spam with one account and reporting it with another). I don't want to get into it now, but, basically, I think that only actually-resulted-in-a-deletion reports against Full Members and above should be counted, and I think that when a post by a Full Member or above is deleted by a moderator, it should cost the author of that post something like one or more units of their merit-to-activity ratio; I like how those conditions at once make collusion or self-collusion irrational for most users and also remove some of the incentive to make reports on accounts that are still trying to find their feet here).
Thought 5 (TOTP phishing)Back when I did the 2FA patch, I don't know
why I didn't do this, but, I wish that I had included some code to keep track of the OTP that was used at login, and also some code to ensure that that same OTP would be considered invalid when making account-related changes (I know that that would create a confusing/annoying error when the OTP
happens to be the same as the one generated at login, but I think that that trade-off makes sense). The other day I was thinking about how even that could be defeated by a phishing attempt that collected an initial set of credentials, immediately used them to successfully log-in, but then reported back to the user that the credentials were bad, that way convincing the user to maybe enter the second OTP that would be needed to make account-related changes. That thought left me thinking that, for users with 2FA enabled, a perhaps wiser and more general countermeasure would be to disallow account-related changes for some (maybe configurable) length of time after logging in.
I'm logging out now for a good while. I'll see you guys in a month or two. Cheers, everyone.
