To the newcomers on Snapzu (Again): 1-5 word comments. does not make a healthy discussion. Please refrain from trying to farm xp.
While the xp system does somewhat make things into a game please refrain from posting single line / low word count/ unrelated posts . It really harms the quality of our content.
EDIT : This is not about valid in context short replies or the odd thanks It's about people clearly abusing the xp system by short posting
EDIT 2 : Ok it seems like this still needs a bit more explanation. This is not so much about making a short reply or a joke every once in a while. It IS about systemic exploitation of the xp system by a handfull of users by posting short 1 word maybe up to 5 (perhaps i should have said 2 hey it was 4 am) word replies in a repeated and rapid fashion spread across multiple snaps soley to gain xp. The effect of this is that it turns the tribe feed into a stream of "Great" "I'll look at it" "Hello" "Thanks" "+1" "Nice !" etc etc. Which really in essence breaks it.
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XP grinding was my biggest concern about Snapzu. Karma whoring was a real thing on reddit, and karma was useless. Here it has actual value for your browsing experience. That said, most of my comments are a paragraph or less. I do my browsing on mobile, so I'm not going to be writing a dissertation on my phone, and I'm not opposed to a good (or cheesy) one-liner. I like my Internet with a bit of snark.
Yeah...not really feeling the short post hate myself! Sometimes you feel like contributing, or even backing up what's been said, without writing a paragraph. :\
Indeed. I'm a man of few words, and I think as long as it contributes to the conversation it's not really a huge issue. That being said, most comments that contribute will probably be longer than 5 words.
You can back up what's been said, and show your support by upvoting, or whatever it's called here.
I'm alright with one-liners if they are used in the right places. What I dislike is when a snap that has solid potential for discussion is overridden by quips and pointless comments. A lot of threads on other sites get populated mostly with pedantry, repetition of jokes/opinions that are only marginally relevant, or useless stuff like linking to a specific subreddit/tribe as a 'joke'.
If it's a thread on /t/funny or something I'm ok with there being jokes or quips or comments that are just gifs. But if someone posts an article that warrants discussion and all the comments are 'MRW' or pedantry, I get pretty annoyed. I guess it's more about users understanding context and commenting accordingly, which I think makes for a better community.
Yeah, context is everything. I might post a quip on a sports highlight, but I probably wouldn't post anything on a physics article. I like physics; I like reading about breakthroughs in physics, but I would have nothing of value to add beyond, "Yea Quarks!"
And yet people bitch about downvoting here. Downvoting because you don't agree with the opinion is bad. Downvoting because it's shitty content is good.
There's a certain somebody on this tribe that basically copy and pastes "hellos" to new users...Really annoying IMO
copy and pasting "hello"? Jesus and I thought I was lazy.
Meh, karma is still useless. I wish people would stop worrying so much about it.
At first glance i would agree but on a second thought, do short comments really hurt a discussion?
I mean, the threaded nature of the comments makes it really easy to ignore them. You can just follow the comment path you like.
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I don't personally want that choice. It is so much easier to follow the low effort, fast reward comment than the high effort slow reward one. Maybe today I ignore the one word comment but maybe tomorrow I will be more lazy. I come here for the quality content. I can go somewhere else for the one word stuff.
I totally get you. The question is, what is better for the community.
1. Introduce, for example, a comment character limit and thus ban the useful short comments as well.
2. Go with the current route and let the comment path determine the good content.
3. We could make downvoting short comments free and notice the author that short comments are usually not the best or something like that.
I have no real answer to this to be honest.
*edit: Added point 3
I like point 3, I suppose people would end up just padding the comment with blank characters for point 1.
Totally.
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And there's the problem with that. The comment above the line is 8 words, only one is mine, and none of it adds to the conversation.
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Those who type essay for comments are really annoying, though. I don't mind people sending short comments
There's probably some circumstances that would make them acceptable, depending on tribe subject and nature of the submission. I think the spirit of what he's trying to say is don't go and make short comments just to farm xp. People can make meaningful short comments; but it's the short "lol", "this", and other non-meaningful comments that should be avoided.
I wouldn't say they generally hurt discussion, just in this case they probably will, especially with the Reddit exodus. The problem with XP-farming comments is that they are quick and easy to post, and block out good discussion. With the XP-farming, these posts are almost encouraged. Since the actual comment post gets XP, and a user doesn't need to worry about getting upvotes to generate the XP, low quality comments are going to be everywhere. What might be better is a system with a little XP given to every comment, and then more XP given if the comment is well-upvoted. The base number can't be zero, or else you basically end up with a best-pun-contest thread like many good reddit discussions devolved into. Maybe someone should come up with an improved system and post to the improvement tribe.
It would be cool to see the amount of xp gained from comments depend on the length of the comment. It doesn't have to be drastic and would need to have a limit for really long comments. Just a thought.
Not really, because then you would have a comment which would be lengthy, but take forever to get to the point... Or just state it over and over again. It would most likely be longer than was necessary. They may even just copy and paste the same sentence but change something every so slightly, to get more xp. They may reiterate the same point over and over again in order to get a longer post and get more XP. I think at the end of the day, this would make comments needlessly lengthy, and nobody needs that. You can't curb the way people behave, and if it's the length of the post, not the quality of the post, it will just drag on and on and on and on. They may even just copy and paste the same sentence but change it a bit so a bot doesn't pick it up to get more xp.
Obvious jokes aside, I am a new user and I don't think my content should be judged as lesser than anyone elses, but I do think that that someones tenure should be taken into account when looking at XP, e.g. You can only rise one level a day, or obtain so much XP a day. I am assuming the audience you are chasing in your membership does not include karma whores so there is no real loss if those people leave because they aren't climbing the ranks fast enough.
One thing I have notices about your readership is that you aren't the slightest bit concerned with obtaining new users. You are happy if they create a more enriching discussion. If you have ten thousand members today, and ten thousand members tomorrow, and ten thousand and one in a years time... That's fine... Because unlike other sites, you don't exist as a protest and you aren't trying to fix a broken website, you are just trying, and succeeding, in doing your own thing.
I think new users need to learn the place before trying to settle down and claim ownership or make drastic changes. Then again, I am two days old giving you suggestions... so I guess there is a bit of hypocrisy in my own statement
The way I see it, post quality could never be determined by some sort of comment-length count, bot, or anything that doesn't involve the community. The reason the upvote / downvote buttons exist is to use the people of the site to determine post-quality.
I'm also new here, so I feel pretty lame posting my opinion, and my idea of this site is probably completely opposite of what the veterans use the site for, but I started lurking on the 3rd and I really haven't seen any low-quality posts. Maybe the discussion can wait until things start actually going downhill? It seems drastic to change the way the site works just because a bunch of us are coming from Reddit. I can't blame anybody for being concerned, but I think that most of us that are coming from Reddit were probably Reddit users for 4-6 years.
I don't know what the post-quality looked like before the 3rd, so maybe it's already going downhill, but I honestly haven't seen any problems.
Good point. What if down votes had the potential to subtract experience but can only take a way a max of what was earned for a comment?
Example:
Short comment = 75 exp
Medium comment = 150 exp
Long comment = 250 exp
Each down vote on a comment subtracts 5 exp. The most a user could lose on a comment is determined by how much they earned. If you earned 150 exp, then the worst that could happen is that you lost 150 experience which basically equates to having never earned the exp to begin with.
I probably didn't use very good numbers for my example but it gets the point across I think.
Maybe have a cooldown time on how much XP you are allowed to get in a particular period of time so people can't "power level" or sumsuch. You'll get there in the end people, and in doing so you'll contribute to the wonderful place that this is. If you do so by posting 3-5 word responses then you only make it a worse place to be so what's the point contributing.
And no, me saying 3-5 words doesn't mean you can reply with one or two.
I also like this idea,since people are definitely going to game the system. While this won't totally put the brakes on such behavior, in my way of thinking, it could be beneficial in the long run.
That sounds great. You might want to go and suggest it at /t/ideasforsnapzu.
I disagree.
Interesting. Tell me why.
Mainly because there's nothing in the rules mentioning "short replies", but also because people who write "short replies" likely aren't xp farming, they just want to voice their opinion without going in too much detail about it. OP talks about quality of content, but does that really matter when there are upvotes and downvotes? Comments that cause discussion get upvoted, comments that are short but funny also get upvoted because they're entertaining. I'm here to discuss and be entertained. Aren't you?
Lastly, because this is plain censoring people's opinions. "Ohhhh, don't comment if you X, don't make a snap if you don't Y, even though X and Y aren't against the rules". And you know damn well what happens when people try to censor others.
It's not really about it being in the rules or not nor is it about censorship. It's about gaming the xp system with short meaningless replies. For instance, your initial comment of "I disagree." There's nothing wrong with it given the context of this snap (although it's my personal opinion that it would have been nice if you added more explanation in your initial comment). But lets say you go into every opinionated snap and post "I disagree" or "I agree" with an aim to boost your xp. That's what this speaking against.
Also, it's not about rules because it would be darn near impossible to enforce, similar to how it's impossible to enforce "downvote is not disagree." It's more of a request on how the community should act. It's not against the law not to hold the door open for someone, but it would be nice if people did. Similarly it's not against Snapzu rules to post short meaningless comments and covertly farm xp, but it would be nice for the community if one didn't.
Well said this is not a rule issue it's a moral issue and it think it's fair we should be able to have expectations based on that
I'm afraid you misunderstand this isn't really about short and perfectly in context replies this is not the issue. Nor is it about censoring. It's simply about people using one word or very little more to game the xp system. Since Gaining levels gives them more privileges one could argue they might be doing this with not so noble intentions. I'm really just talking about people that have a personal feed full of non relevant one liners. Honestly if you write a joke or one liner ever so often that's not a problem if it balances out.
I feel like people should always add something to the discussion when they make their comments.
I try to get involved a lot with the community (even when I have nothing to add to the discussion), but it's rarely just to comment to an article saying "that's cool." "nice." - I try to at least formulate an idea on why I think something is cool, or why I agree with something.
If you simply like an article or a post, there is always the "upvote" button for that.
I agree. That's what I've been trying to do. Although, there was one time where I just said, "What an interesting and quirky video! Thanks for the post!" Or something along those lines. It may be a bit more than 5 words, but didn't really contribute a whole lot. However, it did end up starting a comment train, so I guess it can't be all that bad!
Actually that's a good point. Sometimes it's also just a good way to let people know you read/watched what they posted and found it interesting, even if it doesn't necessarily illicit discussion.
Sometimes a brief reaction to something is more of a community-building device than an upvote which can secretly signal so many different things. Whether it's in reaction to something I snapped or a tiny response in a conversation, I try to keep an open mind about the intent of short responses rather than wondering why they're not performing a writing marathon (XP farming is pretty easy to spot).
Upvotes can signal so many different things, from someone's agreement with the content, a stamp of approval for something that is well-written, recognition of a well-crafted angle, making one laugh, etc. A short commentary, even if it's not really contributing a lot, is sometimes just be a really nice and direct way to express thanks and one's feeling toward the content. Sometimes "This blew my mind," "You're not alone," "I cried for hours" or "This made my day" can be perfectly succinct and appropriate. Granted, a thread with 100 of these responses in succession would be annoying...
That is sort of true, however I don't think that short posts necessarily harm discussion. Just look at your postbefore posting and say, is there more to be said here? Not every post needs to be artificially long.
That's something that I hadn't thought about. I admit that I have done this a couple times, and I will stop doing this, to make sure to add to the discussion. Where should the line be drawn? If it's just a basic reaction to something that doesn't necessarily contribute to discussion, I understand that, but when does it begin to contribute? What personal guidelines do you use? Is it alright to just leave it up to the digression of the users, as long as they have this in mind?
Sorry to have another negative element of Reddit culture seep in with us.
Honestly if it's a short relevant comment that fits in the context i have no issues. This is more in response to a surge of comments in the style of "That's nice" "cool" "great idea" etc etc etc. repeated in different snaps in rapid succession which a clearly just a attempt to gain xp quickly.
I use the level of "is the response worth someone stopping walking down the street, taking their phone out, unlocking it and reading it" (this is the same line I use for text messages, if it's not worth someone's while to do such a small task as stopping and reading it then it's more than likely not going to be missed if you don't post it).
I'm sure some of my posts fall short of that from time to time but it's at least something I try and think about.
It's not short comments themselves, it's short comment with the aim of farming xp.
I've only been using downvotes in a functional sense (posts in the wrong tribe or unnecessarily shitty comments) but I'm wondering if they would be applicable in the case of the kind of comments you describe? I'm hesitant to use them too quickly, but given the effect downvotes have on reputation (and XP eventually) it would disincentivize extremely low effort comments. Thoughts?
Downvoting these post is actually a effective means of moderation. However one has to be sure the post are done to game the xp system. I usually check the users feed before doing anything if it's full of one liners it's fair game IMHO
Hmm. Well, I'm lucky that I haven't seen too many so far (and a part of that may be how in smaller tribes we're working hard to create good content) so I'll continue to use downvotes sparingly, but I like your idea of doing some investigation first before downvoting.
I mostly agree with you. But it's a bit complicated for introduction threads in the lounge. Like sometimes I'll be busy and doing something else while mindlessly browsing and see that a new intro thread has only received 2 comments within several hours; so I'll quickly write a one word "welcome"! I think one way to make the lounge less repetitive and full of engaging discussions -- and avoid said short responses -- would be to have a general "Welcome; newbies introduce yourself here" thread stickied at the top with maybe some general questions that are optional to answer about their interests, previous web experiences etc. If this is something the admins are interested in doing but too busy to write up some questions, I can volunteer to do so. :)
I've seen a comment from some mod (think it was /u/drunkenninja) about how XP farming was horrible for your reputation, though, which is really the number that really has any meaning over here, isn't it? It is tied to your comments up/downvotes, if too many were ignored or downvoted, you lost reputation.
I've been wondering if your reputation score should be the most visible stat in the account drop-down...
Do ignored comments affect your reputation, or do they just not matter?
I honestly don't know. We would need some confirmation from an admin on that!
It would be weird if it did, considering the amount of small tribes there are a lot of comments that must go unnoticed.
I think it's kind of a tough problem to combat. Maybe make something like a thread or tribe specifically for those people that want to sit there and gain imaginary exp? Lol
I think someone already created that (not going to link it to discourage its use), but as was pointed out to them while it may get one's XP up, it may be harmful to one's reputation. And reputation again affects not only how quickly you earn XP, if it gets low enough I believe you're temporarily barred from posting.
The Voting FAQ also reccomends:
So potentially these low effort comments could be counted as spam, though then it becomes a matter of intent. E.g. welcoming someone to Snapzu (as noted by sushmonster) probably isn't spamming even though the comment may only contain one word as it's a more concrete act of welcoming someone into the community. Something akin to just posting "Cool!" might be considered spam though, as a simple upvote may be more appropriate in that case.
Yeah, it's definitely not the best solution. I really hope it doesn't pollute this place to become like other websites - it's really nice to be able to post your opinion even though it may be controversial.
We could also just eject them out of the airlock..
I mean, I'd just like to reach Level 6 so that I can upload a custom banner for the tribe I created for fans of the Detroit Red Wings. This is the first time I've created a tribe or subreddit, so the XP system is at least encouraging me to contribute a bit more so that I can learn and grow the tribe, which is a good thing, I suppose.
An interesting concept that doesn't seem to exist in other sites. Although as others have said you can still have long winded posts that are absolutely pointless and small posts that can without a doubt propel the discussion forward as a type of segway .I'd hate to the "this" posts as well as those idiotic letter chains that started popping up more and more on the site (reddit). So far I am really impressed with the community here and the healthy, legitimately interesting comments and discussions. I hope to see this site prosper!
Nah, because 1-5 word comments can be good. How about instead of getting rid of those, we get rid of XP farmers?
I'd like to point out that exp is much much easier to earn if you actually contribute to a conversation, simply because of how upvotes scale. You get more exp at the end of the day from opvotes than from all your comments combined (normally)
I tried to discourage this on a forum I used to run a while back. Users then started appending the message telling them that their comment wasn't long enough on the end of their message. Smart asses!
Didn't Shakespeare claim "brevity is the soul of wit"? Sometimes the funniest and most insightful comments aren't the longest ones.
What is more annoying than short posts trying to gather XP, is posts telling people what to write. I am all for a respectful culture that bans hate and trolling but other than those very sensible rules, I don't think dictating the detail of what people write is warranted. So they gather XP and the threads become uninteresting. The result is a lack followers and upvotes -counterproductive to higher XP anyway. It all works out in the wash without having to over police each post.
OK