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Could points for Helpful and Likes be Driving Wrong Behaviors?

Sean_Miller

I often am happy to see my inbox summary showing a lot of messages available to read, but then I often get disappointed because the majority of them are folks marking "helpful" in discussions I was part of. 

The reason its disappointing is that it looks like they are nuking the entire discussion.  Every single person that commented is tagged with a like and helpful.  Even posts that are just saying "thanks for posting" are tagged as helpful or liked.  Total dilution of the purpose of the button.

 

At first, I thought - well that's super friendly.  Then I dug a little further and looked at profiles of the users doing the nuking and I saw that what is happening is they are scoring 10 points per click.

 

To me, this seems like the points rewards are driving the wrong behavior here.  A behavior that actually doesn't boost one's reputation in the real world - particularly, because it clutters my inbox with bogus helpful tags. Also, the person that took 3 hours to blog on something is getting less points than the guy nuking every comment as helpful.

 

So, my feedback is, do we really need to reward for clicking like or helpful?  When someone is helpful, I'm compelled to click it anyway without the expectation of getting rewarded.  I know they'll get points and its a good virtual way to express thanks.

 

Or, best yet, can I suppress the "helpful" notifications from my inbox?

 

-Sean

  • in reply to shabaz

    @shabaz, I wondered this, too.

     

    What confuses me about it, the award often is this:

     

    completed Mark a reply to your question "helpful"

     

    Yet, it's granted to a person that never even posted anywhere in the entire discussion nor asked the question to begin with.

     

    See ya',

    Sean

  • in reply to shabaz

    I like the helpful button, don't get me wrong - whenever anyone sees a post that was helpful, they should click it.  The person will appreciate it.

     

    I'm referring to the action of marking every comment down the line as helpful.  One example over the weekend was a reply that effectively said "I don't know" in as few words and it was marked helpful along with 4 other comments.  It led me to dig deeper to see what was motivating it.  Having assumed there would never be a reward for just clicking, I clicked reputation and there was the howdy-do.  Points and points and points from clicks.  Maybe its just the shock of it after this many years not knowing.

     

    I agree and find that it's just a handful of folks in this category, at least that run in my circle.

     

    One other thought, for me - actually, I did enjoy seeing my points and level climb even though it doesn't get me anything.  I thought it was a measure of my content and participation in the badge system - and, in turn, a reflection of my mojo.  I now know - points and level just reflect my engagement on the web site - nothing more without running some serious reports.

     

    Regardless, I do find e14 a great and helpful forum, just wish I could suppress the helpful from logging to my inbox.

     

    See ya',

    Sean

  • Sean I also agree with Gough Lee on this subject.

    Member as clicking Helpfull when a member says "Good Quiz" or "Good Review"  excuse me but WTF???? this is not helpful although you might like comment.

  • in reply to jw0752

    Hi John

     

    Not sure now if to "Like" or say "Helpful" or do both so thought to reply instead image

     

    So, thanks for elaborating.

     

    And then I think I will test all this by clicking my own comment as "unhelpful", just to see what happens next (points wise etc.)....

     

    Ok, I now see how it works. It works as you say and you get no points for saying something is unhelpful vs. 10 points for saying something is helpful...

     

    hmmm, actually that is good because it should then hopefully prompt you to explain why through a reply (and then earn the points).

     

    G://

  • in reply to genebren

    I'm with you on the overall positives of the forum.  This is actually the only place I post or frequent.  It's like what my Facebook is to my wife. 

     

    One tweak I'm making now is eliminating "following" on anything I joined over a year ago...assuming I can do that.

     

    See ya',

    Sean

  • in reply to genebren

    I use the like to signify to that author that I've read their comment and , well, agree with them or like the content. I sometime wish there was another option as well for when something hasn't gone so well but to show support for them....sometimes 'like' seems the wrong wording !

  • in reply to shabaz

    Now I'm getting sensitive to the fact that maybe I should _not_ click Helpful...

    Just carry on exactly as you have been. Everyone is different. There are no set rules for when members should be using like or helpful, so we have all created our own idea of when they should be used - some are probably just more generous than others.

  • I think it is easy to label things as either 'wrong' or 'correct' behaviors, but in reality these things are very blurry.  While I do agree that there might be good reasons to tweak or tune the points aspect of the system, I do think that the system as it stands is way more right than it is wrong.  This site has been one of the most friendly and lively communities that I have seen (and I have seen and participated in other sites that are mostly dead now).  I think that encouragements like 'like' and 'helpful' are one way that keeps such a friendly tone here.  It is clear that there have been limits placed on the rewarding for overuse of the 'like' and 'helpful' clicks, which speaks well for administration of this site.

     

    A lot of notifications are placed into the message system, but I feel that the reporting of like/helpful has my brought attention to many threads that I initially missed.  I do agree that I ignore a lot of the messages, just clicking on them and then moving on, but I gladly do that, to find the ones that I am interested in reading.

     

    Hopefully you have found a suitable method to limit the messages to your own inbox.

  • in reply to BigG

    Hi BigG,

     

    I believe that clicking the unhelpful will produce a report like:  5 of 6 found this helpful

     

    If you have marked something Helpful and then change your mind you can reverse your Helpful by Clicking Helpful again. However the accounting of points that you and the author received initially does not seem to be reversed.

     

    John