The week of posts about karma is ending. Once again it is chewed out why karma is bad, once again changes are proposed. Let's figure out why karma is good.
Let's start with the fact that Habr is a (near) technical resource that positions itself as "polite". Insults and ignorance are not welcome here, and this is indicated in the rules of the site. As a result, politics is banned - it is very easy to go from it to personalities, in an impolite form.
The basis of Habr's foundations is posts. Under many there are valuable comments, sometimes even more valuable than the post. The time of the “active” life of most posts is two to three days. Then the discussion subsides, and the post is opened either from bookmarks or by Google.
Authors should be motivated to write posts. There are several options.
- Money. This is a revision, possibly streaming translators.
- Professional order. Basically, articles in corporate blogs.
- Personality. I would like to share something important (or interesting), to structure my own knowledge, to show myself in front of a conditional future employer.
Readers go to Habr for 3 things:
- Learn something new interesting (new posts).
- Find out something specific (bookmarks or Google results)
- Communication.
The administration understands its resource. The administration also wants to make money from it. And this is fair, because the administration invests money and time in the development of Habr. Actually, the purely financial goals of the administration are simple: to stimulate views, to minimize costs.
Views are determined by the number of posts and comments (another number of hubs - now two people can see completely different posts on Habré). The quality of posts can be average, because the competition is low. Frank shit is not welcome, because it scares the audience. One of the cost minimization mechanisms - karma.
The administration (partially) shifts the responsibility for moderation to users. Users can tell the administration: this comrade generates great things, but this one drives fierce game with the mention of Putin and Trump.
The transfer of responsibility is not an easy process. You need to find the right person, you need to receive feedback from him, and you need to do all this automatically. A hundred thousand users is not something that can be sorted out by hand.
As a result, we have karma. It is assumed that the carriers of positive karma honor the rules and will identify violators. It is assumed that the carriers of positive karma are (nearly) technical people, and will identify their own kind. Roughly speaking, polite (nearly) techies will mark their own kind with greenery and drown rude people or "humanitarians" in red.
The administration recognizes the "greens" as true techies, and they carry out moderation. The “Reds”, on the other hand, generate messages that run counter to the needs of the target audience - and their UFO takes them to TuGNESVES.
Just in case, the administration puts an additional "aptitude test": the requirement to write an article. This kills 2 birds with one stone (actually more): content is generated, and "green" shows that he is really a techie, true to the principles of the platform.
The whole mechanism works automatically. Mechanism as simple as possible, otherwise the "greens" will be idle. The mechanism makes mistakes - but this is acceptable. The mechanism is cheap. As a result, there is a platform where IT and IT-related topics are discussed, where the discussion is (relatively) polite and to the point.
There are those who are dissatisfied. People want to communicate with the audience, express their opinion, but “greenery” kills good impulses with minuses. Often even without explanation. Colleagues, I sympathize, but there will be no explanation. Not because you are second-class people, it's just easier that way. And the mechanism of karma will not change: as described above, it must be as simple as possible to function.
PS Poll added
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Why do you write articles?
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Karma
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By order
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Like a regular income
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I am an editor
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Because you want
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Other
403 users voted. 277 users abstained.
Source: habr.com