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I think this is all great stuff. On Imzy, we've removed karma, removed downvotes, and turned upvotes just into more generic likes kind of like they are on FB, Twitter, or IG, that do not roll up or affect your account in any way, because everywhere we saw that had that, it tended to turn into purely something to game and didn't actually contribute to higher quality discussions. I think there is some value though to being able to sort by which comments might have more merit in a post, or which posts have more merit in a community, which is why we left likes in, just disconnected from anything besides that post/comment, and it's more just as a way of giving users positive reinforcement for posting good stuff than doing any kind of real moderating. We also have then have leaders who create their communities who hopefully are benevolent in their dictatorships, and we've also given them lots of tools to be able to manage their communities well and also be really transparent about what's happening so that all users can learn and be a part of that process. The other thing you mentioned is that it tends to be better in forums that are built around specific interests or communities. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what we're doing on Imzy, relative to that. We've noticed the same thing, and also that anywhere where there tends to be a "default" community or "front page" or something like that, is where there tends to be the lowest quality discussion, because you get too many people all dumped into the same place who didn't actually actively choose to be there, and lowest common denominator stuff tends to appeal. So what we've tried to do is preserve the quality of individual forums but the convenience of something like Facebook or Reddit where you get everything from all different sources in one place. When you join, we ask you what you're interested in, and then based on that, we show you a bunch of communities you might want to join. Then you specifically opt into those communities, so that hopefully only people who really care about those topics end up there, and they stay a little bit smaller but much higher quality for everyone across all interests. Curious to hear your thoughts on this model and how well you think it'll work! |