Our new Rails app: pplrep • Hacker News Board

Re: Our new Rails app: pplrep

#31

Post by pplrep » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 6:32 AM UTC

aespinoza wrote: post #12

Maybe I miss something, but why would I want to get reps? I mean what is the objective of it. Is it to incentivize people to help others? Or just an ego boost. I can help people without giving reps. In my opinion this would be a feature of a larger product. It would be cool to implement it in Hacker News. Where you can get Karma for helping others here. But it would still be an add-on. The focus of karma in hacker ne…

I recommend signing up and getting your friends to sign up and use it. It's indeed a very good feeling when one of your friends reps you for something you may have done. It does feel good. And I'm not drinking my own kool-aid. I've been repped a few times, and it does feel pretty good.

Re: Our new Rails app: pplrep

#32

Post by pplrep » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 6:33 AM UTC

readme wrote: post #25

Is the search supposed to do something? I tried three people I knew and then tried 'John Smith' -- returned 0 results every time.

It's working the way it's suppose, to ;). Your friends haven't signed up, most likely, and 'John Smith' isn't a member of the site.

Re: Our new Rails app: pplrep

#33

Post by pplrep » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 6:40 AM UTC

pooya72 wrote: post #17

I know this is well intentioned, but it might have the opposite effect. There has been a lot of study done on rewards and motivation. It turns out that giving external rewards can undermine motivation. For example, giving stars to children for their drawings will undermine their natural motivation to draw. The same can be said about monetary rewards. Moreover, people who do deeds for an external reward are usually le…

I'm not sure about psychological studies as I am not familiar with them nor do I have a degree in psychology, so I am not going to try and be an arm-chair psychologist.

I can say that based on my own anecdotal experience I feel pretty good when I receive a rep, and I also feel good when I give people rep. Others who have used pplrep have reported similar experiences. And I think that's a good thing. Certainly better than dealing with the drama that occurs on other social networks.

Re: Our new Rails app: pplrep

#34

Post by mcantelon » Fri, Jul 26, 2013, 6:56 PM UTC

pplrep wrote: post #30

mcantelon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll likely end up working the same way it does on LinkedIn and Twitter. On LinkedIn I get strangers wanting to connect all the time so they can increase the surface perception of the the size of their network. And on Twitter it's similar: people who follow an implausibly large number of people in the hopes those people will follow back end up following me temporarily, hoping I'll follow back. Is the amount of rep a…

The amount of times they've given out rep is indeed visible on their profile.

Perfect. Would be easy, then, to make a greasemonkey plugin to do some simple math and work out a "sincerity ranking", etc.

Re: Our new Rails app: pplrep

#35

Post by pooya72 » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 11:36 AM UTC

pplrep wrote: post #33

pooya72 wrote: post #17

I know this is well intentioned, but it might have the opposite effect. There has been a lot of study done on rewards and motivation. It turns out that giving external rewards can undermine motivation. For example, giving stars to children for their drawings will undermine their natural motivation to draw. The same can be said about monetary rewards. Moreover, people who do deeds for an external reward are usually le…

I'm not sure about psychological studies as I am not familiar with them nor do I have a degree in psychology, so I am not going to try and be an arm-chair psychologist. I can say that based on my own anecdotal experience I feel pretty good when I receive a rep, and I also feel good when I give people rep. Others who have used pplrep have reported similar experiences. And I think that's a good thing. Certainly better…

Sorry, just saw your reply. Well, the studies show that people well feel good about rewards when they are unexpected. But once it becomes part of a standard routine it turns out to lower intrinsic motivation.