11–20 of 37 posts
Nothing (except for badges/karma which are intangible and cannot be translated to $$). Once you start offering anything tangible to me, I start thinking about how does it translate to my hourly rate and this is where you will fail. So much has been written about why Amazon has the best reviews ever without ever paying a cent. Why Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever with last (and only) paid contributor back i…
And don't assume that people 'working for free' are getting nothing of it. They obviously enjoy it, or they wouldn't do it. Offering a tangible reward will change their motivation.
The result of both of those is often losing your best, most loyal users.
Be very careful.
On HN, obtaining topical, interesting news and conversation is the most rewarding and valuable thing that this site has to offer.
Your question shouldn't be "what can we give you" but rather "what can we do for you".
Here on HN, the answer will be a variety of ways to improve both the quality of the submissions and the conversation that surround them.
Nothing (except for badges/karma which are intangible and cannot be translated to $$). Once you start offering anything tangible to me, I start thinking about how does it translate to my hourly rate and this is where you will fail. So much has been written about why Amazon has the best reviews ever without ever paying a cent. Why Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever with last (and only) paid contributor back i…
Not for a community I'd like to be part of. Every single one of these 'rewards' leads to people trying to game the system, which leads to noise. You know the drill: - SO is full of people that jump at new answers, try to 'win' by submitting early and editing their answer later. "More text formatting = better". Needs. More. Bullet. Points. - HN submissions are 'valuable' so that we had automated submissions or bookmar…
Be careful with introducing monetary rewards. Rewards can sometimes have weird psychological effects on people, and may actually lessen their willingness to contribute because the task comes to be seen more as "work" than pastime [1] . Small side-note : A special property of the Stackoverflow system is that the user's profile can actually gain a value on its own, by reflecting so well on the user that it can be inclu…
I've had a job offer from a person that found my profile on StackOverflow.
Be careful with introducing monetary rewards. Rewards can sometimes have weird psychological effects on people, and may actually lessen their willingness to contribute because the task comes to be seen more as "work" than pastime [1] . Small side-note : A special property of the Stackoverflow system is that the user's profile can actually gain a value on its own, by reflecting so well on the user that it can be inclu…
Stack Overflow points also help to unlock additional features of the site, for example you can't comment on a post until you have 100 points, which unlocks that feature for you.
So the site tries very hard to require nothing to participate and as someone else already said, the 'more advanced' privileges are not useful for most people. Why would you want to edit questions in general, unless you're the OCD type or a wikipedia separatist? :)
No. A real community (that actually cares for each other) works "for free"—the compensation is in improving the community.
Nothing (except for badges/karma which are intangible and cannot be translated to $$). Once you start offering anything tangible to me, I start thinking about how does it translate to my hourly rate and this is where you will fail. So much has been written about why Amazon has the best reviews ever without ever paying a cent. Why Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever with last (and only) paid contributor back i…
"So much has been written about why Amazon has the best reviews ever" please do provide some links! I'm very interested.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/is-amazons-mechanic...