community management. usability and interface design.

This is going to be a somehow premature post, but I am so pleased with this book
Environment, Scarcity, and Violence by Thomas F. Homer-Dixon
that I wanted to share and organize my thoughts around few ideas.

Some half an year ago major change shifted the dynamics between power users. We used to have only one badge – the TeamBadge – the team gave it away under mysterious and vague conditions. Most of the power users were craving it feverishly. It was becoming harder and harder to give it away because

• 1. User numbers were growing
• 2. Users chasing after it were becoming abusive and thus loosing any chances to have it, thus becoming frustrated, thus becoming more abusive

So we made a grand decision to release more badges. Each one was going to cover a particular potential activity side – uploads, comments, subtitles, groups, famous users. Plus the TeamBadge. The main goals were

• release pressure over TeamBadge
• boost activity

Things however quickly turned out for the worse. Each badge was “probed” and various abusive methods for acquiring were flourishing simultaneously. “Tribes” formed between old users and new stars. “Wars” developed. Quick and effective changes in the way of giving the abused badge usually solved the problem, but I was dumfounded. Why did all of this happened? Why does it continue to happen?

Homer-Dixons book gave me valuable insight over the problem. What he discuss is – is there any connection between resource scarcity and violence? What is the connection? How strong does said scarcity affects said violence?

If we think about an website in this terms we have 2 sides – population and resources. When I say resources I don’t mean traffic or server uptime, or the site working properly. What the population of any website consumes is Satisfaction. A 35 year old male visiting youtube twice a week seeks Satisfaction through Entertainment. A student visiting his school website seeks Satisfaction through Information.
Power users, over any site, seek Satisfaction through 3 main things – Exposure, Attention, Recognition. My power users don’t feel satisfied when they watch video, laugh, close browser window, move on. They feel satisfied when

• their videos receives more and more views
• they receive a lot of comments
• they have a lot of followers
• they are known, famous and respected

A TeamBadge was the seal, branding a user as higher ranking, although not giving any exclusive rights. But it was, and still is, the highest possible official recognition you can get. Expanding the badges portfolio brought the potential opportunity in front of everyone to receive such recognition.

So, basically what we did was profoundly wrong.
What we did with the TeamBadge was feeding selected persons in front of hundreds hungry ones. Being really hungry and watching someone else being fed is not quite pleasant. And then we are like “the store is over there. you can have anything you want, but only if you pass through the door. but we left the windows open thought” What a really hungry person will do is not wait on a queue. He is coming through the window whether you like it or not.
When we introduced the new badges there were quick rise in the population of “attention seekers” They migrated from “I am here to watch, vote and have a good time” So we had growing consuming populaton and fall in the quality and quantity of the resource. Or the so called “recourse capture”. One of the strong effects caused by resource capture is that previously powerfull groups try to shift resourse distribution in their favor.
Their motivation usually is
Fear
- That the scarcity might produce disadvantage
Greed
- When a group consolidates, their interaction can easily lead to higher profits. (mutual marketing, for example, equals more views) Such consolidation can even produce speculation.
- If a group (or individual) manages to capture a significant enough fraction of the resource he can even become monopolistic

………………………………………………..~*~………………………………………………..

Example:

A “trust” of few users administrating large groups in Facebook can easily skyrocket a video (same goes for power users in twitter setting trending #tags) Such trust also can organize to vote down a concurrent video, and is also prone to “lending” – I’ll scratch your back is you scratch mine – do me a favor, vote my enemies video down, and I’ll promote you.

………………………………………………..~*~………………………………………………..

On the other hand every new badge owner was perceived from the badgeless users as one of “them” The social segmentation was sharpening – badge owners were “cool”, but also “attention whores” and “full of themselves”. Snide comments were becoming common especially from TeamBadge owners towards new badge owners.
Since the society, to begin with, was unstable (due to TeamBadge) and young (11-20 years, next group 20-28 years, and a lot smaller group of adult power users) fragmentation occurred rapidly. Small coalitions formed and the worse of it was that they were distributional. A coalitions pursuing only self-interest, not likely to act on behalf of the commonweal and most important – no constrain whatsoever on the social cost their actions might have.

All of the above eventually led to the visible social friction and violence – mostly verbal and “revenge wars”.

So what can you do in this situation?

For fucks sake I hope that badge fashion will die eventually like rounded shiny Web 2.0 buttons. I think it does way more harm to a website society then good.

- Keep the windows shut
You should prevent any potential abuse as early as possible. The most common cryout when a user receives notification is “But Everyone else is doing it!”

- Build more stores
A non-destructive adaptation to the newly created scarcity could be achieved pretty hard. You cannot advise “do not market your profile” or “do not market your video” since you will lose traffic. A primary goal of the whole badge system, is after all, the activity boost it produces. You could create new channels thus multiplicating and expanding exposure.
You should decouple as much as possible the core satisfaction that the site brings from the badges. Give away one or two badges easily and quickly. That reduces the we-ness in badgeless users. Accentuate on social values. We give now TeamBadge only to impeccable, model of behavior users.