Official announcements and happiness!
I had a thought about giving users points, what do you think?
First off, I don't want to scare any of our employees, this doesn't mean you will have to drop everything and build this, but I wanted to just have this discussion in the public.
Many people like made up internet points, but they can cause bad behavior as we've seen on other platforms. I had a thought today on the way in to work:
What if we did have karma and you get one point for starting a conversation? This could be:
- You made a chat post and people participated in it
- You made a post that people had a discussion in (how do we define a discussion? I think you have to have at least 2 people talk to each other).
- You made the first comment in a post and it got a reply from someone else.
To be clear, you would only ever get a single point for starting a conversation, not an accrual of the likes on that. What do you think? Would love to brainstorm with everyone!




I already hate the "popularity contest" aspect of social media, and the idea or "earning points" for being sociable skates much too close for me. I'm afraid it would change Imzy (and my personal blog and the communities I run) from a fun, giving thing to an obligation and a chore, for me.
I can understand this for sure. Part of why I left facebook and it's ilk long ago. That drive for likes or trophy tokens drives me to distraction...
@Dan I may support the idea of it as a less "in your face" feature though. Could function as a way to vet a poster ahead of time? But if it was screaming and obvious and communities devolved into that popularity contest mentality I'd be awful sad.
I'm really just brainstorming ways to get people to start having more conversations, this isn't something I'm sold on or anything.
Totally and that's one of those things I love about Imzy. You're all so open to exploring ideas and what ifs. It goes great with my own hypotheticals. Haha 💜
I think better threading, and some way to summarize community activity will do a lot to spur conversations. In-depth threads are confusing without reference to previous comments, and there's no way to follow-up with the discussion on a post unless someone comments on your thread, or you click follow.
I have an idea!!!!!!! Instead of focusing on more conversations maybe recieve requests from of us with communities we would love to get noticed and create a "promotion board" where we could post our community and a little bit about it in the comments and those who are looking for new communities could look there for new communities/etc.
I'm actually planning on putting together a "promotion board" community today. People currently use /imzy_communiti for that, but I believe the leader there is inactive and also its spelled wrong, so staff is just going to create a new one.
Though I think it makes sense to both have discussions about conversations (as dan is doing here), as well as discussions about community discovery. I don't think they need to be mutually exclusive things to talk about :)
Awesome :>
(sorry I kept ninjaediting my comment really quickly! I'm still having my morning tea and my brain is a bit slow)
Yes we're working on a redesign of comments now which includes deeper threading.
For this to really work, I think you'd have to auto-subscribe new members to it, or at least cross-post from the "promotion board" to /imzy for a while. Because if people don't know it's there, or don't join the "promotion board" comm, then they won't see the communities that we're trying to promote...
What about a rewards system that was fun but still gathering rewards? A thought that comes to my mind is, on our discord, @TheLizardQueen made a really cute imzysaur emoji. What about, as you become more and more active, you "earn" specialty Imzy emojis to use in conversations about the site?
I would adore using special imzy-specific emojis :)
And just like how in a video game, people might play to earn skins or outfits, people might be a little more motivated to chat and comment because activity leads to fun tools - fun emojis! (Or something)
But it wouldn't be a points system for users to track and compare, just a level system that perhaps staff has behind the scenes?
"Congratulations! You've earned a Smiling Imzysaur emoji!" sounds adorable to me... hee
Yeah I'm hesitant to auto subscribe people, but it is technically possible. Since that content used to go in /imzy, we could auto-subscribe folks who are members of the imzy community, and then they can opt out if they want to by leaving the "promotion board" community.
Would be interested in hearing people's thoughts. We split off the /feedback community earlier in the week, but that certainly doesn't yet have the 44.5k members that this community does.
quickedit: Though I suppose this might be getting a bit offtopic. We can discuss this more when we launch the community as well.
I don't think you should auto-subscribe any current users, just new ones. For new users, being auto-subscribed to a couple of comms is like a "starter pack" but auto-subscribing existing users seems far more intrusive, to me.
Yeah good point, Jo, thanks! :)
Really like this idea. DesignerNews had a thing where you can create your avatar out of pixels (basically you create a little 16x16 icon) and as you use the site, you get more colors to use.
I agree that point-whoring would be annoying, but unless it looks like it's going to really negatively impact the community, I'd be tempted to implement a points feature for the people who will use it well, and assume that users will just ignore people who aren't really contributing anything.
Thank you so much! :D
This, I'd be on board with this.
While I have liked karma-like point systems in the past, and have even been proud of them when I've had them, I really do want to get past the "karma-point" system in general as it tends to reward more trash comments and punish real discussions (or, heaven forbid, opinions not in sync with the norm).
I think a reward system like the one detailed here could be nice as it does reward real, actual discussions and participations, but not in a way that can be gamed by others or lead to useless posts.
Thank you!!! :) @Dan, @greenie, is this a thing we could actually do? Even at a community level, it'd be super neat :D
I think I've got 4 people who like it so far!
the emoji rewards I talked over above, I mean :)
Why not make it so that the value is hidden but has certain visible effects/rewards without ever actually showing the true value? The fact that it is not immediately apparent should make it less-encouraging to spam low effort content yet it would reward those who contribute good content often.
How about for existing members you just send a notification with a link and let them subscribe when you launch the community. I know I would want to be on it and for new users it could be an option during set-up.
I vote no. So far, Imzy has been positive and stress-free for me and I'd like to keep it that way. The number of remarks shouldn't matter at all, instead the content of those remarks are what should be important. Everyone wants activity and discourse on their feeds, but I feel it would encourage trolling and 'point gathering' activity. It would make the site somehow less genuine.
I agree with you, I want to just have fun and not worry about getting points of people having tons of points and I do not have many
When a post has 0 likes the heart icon doesn't even show the 0, in order to not be discouraging: "look, nobody liked your post". A karma system seems out of place here. Also I value quality over quantity, which is hard to measure, and I think a bunch of users would agree with me here. Finally, I don't want to start a trend of "FIRST" comments on Imzy. Let's leave that to YouTube, okay? :P
No no no no no no no no
One of the reasons I love Imzy is that you can only be in it for the fun and the discussion, not in it to win it (it being the most imaginary numbers).
For the record though, I got 50 likes on a post :P (jk jk, I don't act like that, but I did get 50 likes :P)
ahahahahaha
I enjoy it with just the hearts, and no points. But some people enjoy seeing activity levels. What about, instead of points, a sort of place you could check, that would show how active everything was for you, that day, that week, that month, over time? Kind of like the community activity bar (the green map that changes over time), but user-centered and maybe somehow more fun and less business-like?
I could envision being like, hmm, I wonder how active all the things I posted / commented today were! I could go check my personal "activity tracker" and it would be, like, really bright green, showing I'd had lots of activity. That could make someone feel good if they are getting lots of interaction, but it isn't so grade-like as keeping points.
I don't know how to make this fun though. Could it involve fun imzysaur art somehow? Perhaps an imzysaur that becomes more animated the more people are talking in response to your stuff?
Anyway, just thoughts Basically trying to say:
I don't like the idea of points, but some activity metric sounds okay.
That sounds like a great idea to me.
It would also be nice for community leaders when they go to choose a co-leader to see if the user is active enough to help and contribute to the conversation.
Tech difficulties :/ didn't finish that comment.
Thanks!!!
I think a community activity tracker is key. On Newsvine, there were three levels of tracking. Comments on my posts. Comments on posts I left a comment. Comments left in posts by people in my communities.
The community/friend tracker informed us of the discussions that our friends were having, conversations we didn't know were taking place.
Tumblr has an activity tracker so you can see how many likes/reblogs and new followers you get!
Maybe if we had a running tally of hearts on our profiles? I think the hearts are more useful for tracking than autopoints just for posting. The only way to get a heart is for posting something that is of use/entertainment/substance. Maybe at a certain threshold your heart becomes a star or an imzy head? Or first one then the other?
Vote "no" from me.
Coming from reddit and seeing how a certain population of that platform somehow acquired MASSIVE egos over the "karma points" system, I think it's refreshing that there isn't a points system here. It's fun to game-ify things, but it can also bring out the worst in a lot of people.
People want to quantify how "liked" they are. But please check out the first episode of the new season of "BLACK MIRROR" on Netflix, called "Nosedive".
The episode is a great critique of this human need to be "liked".
I have felt liked in various ways on Imzy, without points - in so much a more authentic way. When someone simply says "great post!" or "you made me happy today" - wow, that is awesome! That is what I love about imzy - you don't search for the points. You search for the authentic feedback that shows you've connected and hopefully improved somebody's day :)
<3
Yes! Elsewhere, on other platforms, someone might click on your profile to see at a glance how many "likes" or "points" you've garnered. But I think that's reductive and there are ways to "game" the system so people are more motivated to get points than actually have valuable content.
YES, see black mirror.!
So I should watch Black Mirror, huh?
no. I vote no. But we're not keeping track. Please, no.
Mind giving some color around why no?
Because it colors what people will say. They will say what they think will be "popular", instead of what they think. Last night, I tried to start a discussion about the ballgame, "Sidney or the bush" (old wonderful linus/charlie brown strip) was the title, and I included the strip. Not on Imzy. And everyone wanted to get voted funniest comment, instead of talking about the wonderful game we were watching. So it degraded rapidly to the gutter. And I left the discussion I had started, depressed. Rating one's comments only leads to commenting for outrageousness, not for quality, in the long run. imho.
Well, in my idea I was thinking you'd just get a single point, not an accumulation for how many likes something got.
I think just getting notified that some one commented back (someone thought something I said was worthwhile enough to write back to me!!!) was enough.
Agreed! I love chatting with people on Imzy because they care to chat back including the leaders of Imzy!
Dan is my pretend friend who happens to live across the country that one of these days we'll have a beer together. When our schedules line up. That's it.
We love that you are thinking up ideas for us, it's greatly appreciated by those of us who know what it's like to be ignored. Sadly this isn't something I can stand behind but if/when you mention something in the future than I can then I will stand behind you whole heartedly as will a good majority I believe.
I'll have a cocktail with you any time!
Based on the responses this isn't something we'll be doing 😄
But I love that I can have the conversation and get great feedback so quickly.
We do, too! Great day! the glow of the game hasn't worn off yet, election almost over, cardinal at the feeder!! woo hoo!
I personally don't see how restricting it to just one point would stop it from being a popularity contest in the end. Instead of saying whoever has the most points on said comment is the best, people will just look at the total points they've earned over their lifetime. It could still drown out people who aren't "popular."
The only way I can see it working is that these points are purely compartmentalized to each community, and only the moderators can see it as a way to monitor what people are interested in, and maybe adjust their community to better fit that mold. Honestly though, I'm not too keen on that idea either.
You're probably right about the popularity contest.
Oh please no.
I want to participate because I have something to contribute. I want people to contribute because they have something to say. I don't want people just randomly popping in and saying things that have no bearing on anything just so they can get a random point that means nothing to anyone.
I think finding ways to get conversations going is a good idea. But I don't think this is the way. We had good things going in the Hallowimzy posts. Not just entries, either. People were commenting and responding to the entries.
I think getting better threading would get a lot more dialogue going--I know I'd like that 1000x more than arbitrary magic points.
Getting a lot of discussion and likes on your post is its own reward. I'd rather people were talking because they have something to say than because it gives them a badge or a point count to show off. I can see what you're getting at, but I'd prefer everyone to be equals, and these kinds of things seem to divide communities into the noisy in group and the quiet out group.
I was thinking just yesterday that part of what is nice on imzy is the lack of labels and rankings. It's not a popularity contest; it's about interaction.
Directly incentivizing interaction with something as shallow as a points system appeals mostly to those individuals who do not yet appreciate the intrinsic rewards of interaction, the rewards of belonging. Give us time to teach them instead. Some will grow to enjoy their new-found sense of community. Others will not. And they can go back to Reddit.
Building community is a slow process; it's based on mutual reward and trust. If we try to speed up the growth, we may undermine the foundation.
(I love that you ask though! Thank you, Dan, for all your excellent ideas and hard work!)
I don't think I want to judge others based on points or be judged on how many points I have. It could mean I start or contribute to good discussions, or it could mean I start a lot of arguments, or any other number of things. I get the appeal of wanting to give people incentive to post and discuss while Imzy is starting out, but I don't think this is a good long-term feature idea. I don't think it would feel good. And as others said, community isn't a competition - even with ourselves. Gamifying things is not always the answer!
Good point - at least while people got used to this, trolls would get lots of points. And then we have a "don't reply to people you disagree with" culture on our hands.
Eesh, yes.
Thankfully Dan has replied saying we're probably not going to have this, so that's cool. :D
Not big on Points, but love the idea of "badges".
These badges would show on their profiles is all.
I dunno just a thought of mine :)
I too worry about people posting for reasons other than simply having some thing to say or wanting to support something someone else said. Not everyone is good with their words or feels comfortable putting themselves out there and one of the benefits to this community, to me, is that it's okay for people to just listen in on conversations without feeling obligated to interject in some way.
We have a lot conversations going at any given time so I guess I would want to understand what we are trying to accomplish. Why is it so important that we try to coax people to participate visibly instead of when/how they feel most comfortable?
this is exactly how i feel about this as well!
the only way I believe it would be good is if it were soly "that community" karma and it was just "Oh awesome you got people interested!" Without prizes/etc for having karma. But karma would be "bragging rights" which is why I say keep the karma earned in one community to that community.
Why I am saying this: people may believe someone is either "bad" or not as good as them if that person has lower karma than another person.
Hide it in the user profile (i.e. per-profile not per-account) and nowhere else. Anon posts wouldn't count.
I would be in favor of a system that helped leaders gauge participation, though that information doesn't necessarily need to be public. It would help them identify potential new leaders, and the type of posts that facilitate activity. Leaders would know who to approach for work on special projects.
At least two participants, and at least two comments from each in the same thread.
I would also weight original posts heavier than links and polls.
I don't like the idea of system based on popularity, but rewarding quality activity will incentivize quality participation from others.
What about developing achievements and/or site awards instead?
Yeah, we're now lightly discussing badges and things like that.
Dan: That's awesome, and truly a "nice to have." The site is great, but a WP plugin would be helpful, too. So far, I love it, and it's perfect for my 55+ age community, and for my 55+ brain! Simple, clean, lots of plusses! :) Thanks for all this!
It's true, it can be hard to start a conversation. We've all been sort of trained to be commenters. What Imzy's doing is different--the ask is different. My fear is that pushing its evolution with reward systems will dampen crucial differences and eventually it will feel and operate like everything else. But giving users time to get used to a more level and inclusive forum will reset expectations and make a stronger, more trusting community. Better and more conversations will follow.
Oh, and @Dan, getting a point for "first comment" is a total non-starter, surely you must remember the "First Post!!!@!!!!" comments on Slashdot?
I know I know
I've investigated some the idea of badges or points more in the way that Discourse does. Their faq over here explains that a bit.
I wouldn't mind being able to give users badges if I thought they earned it in my com.
Badges? Yep! Maybe something like snapchats? Like "you sent so many chats" "you have posted so many times" "you have commented so many times! Congrats have a digital sticker!"
That's just numbers, though, and comes back to the same problem. I like the idea of leaders being able to give badges for good discussion and whatnot, as that seems to mesh well with what I see Imzy doing, i.e. more human interaction, less automation that can be gamed.
That also makes the hierarchy stronger, though, and while I agree that numbers aren't great to base badges on, I think it would also feel weird to get a badge because some random person liked the direction some discussion went. Like "i agree with you and I am important enough to give you a badge", hmm x)
Doesn't have to be because they agree. I'd be in favor of a “You presented your points well" badge or similar. “You contributed substantially to the conversation" or “You disagreed respectfully and kept the conversation on topic", like that. Recognizing the behaviors that encourage discussion and recognizing avoiding the behaviors that lead to divisiveness and hostility and stifle discussion.
Here's a truly dumb idea that has, I hope, a delicious center of nougat-y goodness.
We already have a karma system of sorts: the tip option. Perhaps you could devise a low-key, behind-the-curtain, system whereby the Imzy staff can hit posts and replies they like with a tip. Each staffer gets a budget loaded onto their "account" each month, with which they can reward members who post and comment. Build it right into your monthly expenses as a means of growing and strenghtening the platform. Each staffer can decide how they give out their tips on their own, with a universal ground rule or two in place (maybe you have to give tips out regardless of whether you agree with the comment so long as the commenter engaged the post well and is behaving as befits a good Imzy member). Some staffers might decide to be random, which would be fine, too.
Okay. There's the idea. Tear into it!
I still like the idea of badges for achievements and site awards, but think you're right that this is/should be a function of the tipping system. Recognition from tips should come from the community's audience, though. Staff recognition needs to come some other way.
Eeeeeeehhhhhh, I dunno.
Even the current, tame "heart" system (which tbh, I wasn't 100% on board with either) gets a bit competitive sometimes.
Personally I'm against any type of "point" system, period. But I'm boring as hell fwiw, so take that with a grain of salt.
I think it is unwelcoming for new people coming to a site, especially after the site has been going on for a time. I've looked at sites and thought: Wow, this site belongs to other people - I don't want to feel like an interloper. And the numbers of points people have seem unattainable, as if one would always be an outsider. Imzy is so friendly, and I would hate to see it gain any Us-and-Them type of feeling.
Just. No.
I like the lack of epenor on this site.
@Dan what about badges instead of points? Leader Badge (started a community), Social Butterfly Badge (lots of comments), Conversation Starter Badge (certain number of posts) and you could have a level for each badge after a certain number. 10 posts gets you the badge. Conversation starter level 3 means you have started 100 maybe. Leader level 5 = you run 5 communities.
Individual communities could have their own badge for example I'm sure /photopigs and /lets_grab_coffee would have specific themes (Barista haha). Similar to flair but...better. Maybe you could choose 1 badge as your flair of sorts for any community or general public, profile.
No, and for a slightly-different reason. I remember coming onto message boards and whatnot for the first time and being the new user with one post/point/karma whatever and seeing people with tens of thousands of posts/points/etc. And it was sort of crushing and intimidating. Would anyone talk to me because I just arrived? Let's see... if I managed three comments a day and had people upvote them, then I could get to x-number in a month, and then I could get the q-title to be.... Sure, some of that was fun when I was the one with all the points, special titles, etc. But it sure was off-putting as a new user who felt like they could never measure up.
Imzy has been fun so far and relatively stress-free. Sure, I recognize familiar names and can get a feeling for who has been using the site for awhile, but I don't feel like I'm competing with them or am being overshadowed by their general awesomeness/socialness/whatever.
If you create a basis for competition between members based on an artificial points system then you also spawn an environment where people game for points only. The quality goes down, the points become an exposure metric and then if you give users the ability to sort by these points, the people with really good ideas but poor exposure get buried deep underground while the noisy crickets who post just to pump their numbers get more exposure.
If community leaders and members want metrics, how about page view metrics? How many times did your particular story get clicked on, how many hearts did it pick up, and beyond all of this - and it just occurred to me - we have a tipping system. If people want to engage with numbers games, let it be between members and let it be cash.
The fear of being buried underground by "popular members" or "popular communities" can be a problem. An idea might be a kind of riff on StumbleUpon for Imzy. A page with a roulette icon, it picks 20 unjoined communities using a RNG and presents you with a page with a handy way to pick up new communities. That would increase exposure for communities and members, help fight burying, and give people a new bit of Imzy joy than just refreshing the home page and looking for new stories.
"Lets go exploring, we may not find anything pleasant, but at least it will be new." -Voltaire.
:)
Page view metrics would be incredibly helpful. Right now I have no idea if anyone who has added my communities ever visit the site or see any of the posts.
I would leave.
Interesting conversation. I never spent much time thinking about the Likes, and Hearts, and such. I know it annoys me no end to HAVE to reply/like a comment on Facebook just so I can keep getting friend and family posts.
I'm not sure about points, but the badges ideas people are floating are kind of cool. They'd be really useful as a community reward that I didn't have to spend money on, especially if they could be given to anonymous users. (Not visible to other people, I guess, but in the anon profile you can access for yourself, you could see how many times you got badged.)
I don't have the instant dislike other people have toward the idea, but I'm maybe envisioning something different? I'm figuring something like a tally marker for number of posts created by the profile and number of comments posted that's available under the profile view. It's a good metric of activity, and IDK, it's nice to see history stats for yourself and others at a glance.
I wouldn't mind hit counts and tracking counts, maybe? Like a visible counter of how many people have clicked on a post and how many are following it. That kind of thing is nice to see when you're going through a community, and I think that it encourages people to say something when they think it'll be seen (at low levels of community activity and at super high levels, though, it does the opposite. Maybe make it a toggle for community leaders? IDK). It's also nice for people posting content--they can see how popular it was.
Hmm. I've never liked popularity points, achievements or badges on any site I've been on. And I don't think that can be changed by simply changing the conditions where they are awarded. I don't want "fair" rating systems, I want none at all.
I'm against it. Point systems and badges may look good on paper but they've never really led to anything positive on any internet community I've ever been a part of.
No.
'No' from me.
I feel like people are saying "no" without actually reading what you're proposing. I think it's a good way to incentive starting conversations
Making a post earns some karma I guess...and the post can be flagged off or removed by the leader of the group this deducting that many karma points....allotment of points to any person on the basis of comments can get out of hand due to spam or off the subject comments
I said this in a /feedback post but since it's also relevant here:
I'd honestly like to see something like Reddit's front page - something that gives an overview of the most popular/active posts that are going on throughout the whole platform.
I think karma supports bad habits, and exacerbates echo chambers.
Although a breakdown of my total comments, total posts, and total likes I've received would be a great way to still have positive reinforcements gamification.
No! This is Black Mirror season 3, episode 1. No point system can be good. It makes everything a competition!
OK, maybe let it be up to each community leader whether to subscribe to whatever might be done? (I still prefer nothing.)
I'm generally ambivalent about internet points, but this at least seems like a better approach than reddit's karma system - I like the idea of rewarding people for contributing to the community in a positive way. But I also probably wouldn't pay much attention to the points system if it existed.
I thank that wood be a good idea
Im not a big fan of the points game. I understand the psychology behind gamification, but it's really hard to get it right. What are the incentives behind the points? Are the users competing for attention, rank, score? If there is a prize, make it attainable, not like most point systems where you need 1,000,000 for a teddy bear.
All 3 are good ideas for points I pick all 3