User motivation for creating content
Recently I happened to read on Habr about the discovery of a whole bunch of startups made in the image and likeness of Habrahabr and based on the free LiveStreet engine. The system of ratings and ratings, habrasil and karma, and of course the invite system - all this, according to many, is enough for a crowd of people (and a prerequisite for an adequate people) to start writing posts on the topics chosen for the site. Actually, a hara-like rating system should solve two problems - to stimulate the user to create content and to sift out "inadequate". These functions are successfully performed on the IT-site, but is it worth hoping for their implementation on other sites?
In order to convincingly say that such a system does not always work, I want to give an example of a site that, firstly, is close and interesting to me on the topic, and secondly, in which a lot of effort and money has been invested. The creators of the site cannot be blamed for the fact that they did not take care of its proper initial filling with content, or that the site was not advertised. A large number of own materials, proper advertising, but still the site was closed. What is it about? About one of the Thematic Media projects - the Dribbler website, a blog hosting dedicated to football topics.
Why didn’t the “shot” so well-established habra-like rating system on the site about football? Naturally, everything that will be lower is just IMHO.
Nobody wants to write just like that - I think the truth is common. The user needs some kind of benefit (most often moral, although not always) from creating content. IT employees, at least many of us, are more inclined to solve individual problems. For many of us, high karma is an opportunity to establish ourselves as a specialist, quickly promote our new project, ask other highly qualified specialists for advice and much more. But why does a football fan need karma? All he needs is for his favorite team to win next weekend, and the fans of the hated Spartak will finally recognize that CSKA is cooler (or vice versa, it doesn’t matter). A football fan is a person who is much more dependent on the team than an IT employee, and therefore “habrasil” and his own rating are much less interesting for him than the rating of his favorite team. But they tried to push him into the framework of habrahabr, only the name was changed. He did not understand this, was not interested, and left.
Saying that somewhere there is a full-fledged blog hosting or a normal football social network with normal, adequate participants. So the developers set foot on a rough field, but offered the user the wrong model. As a result, there are few materials, uninteresting posts, uninteresting comments, and, offensively, most often inadequate. It’s problematic for a
fan to persuade him to behave normally ... At the moment, “Dribbler”, as it is written on the site, “is closed for reconstruction”. And as a user, I decided to dream up how I would like to see the online football community.
Firstly, the site should be more “content”. By the way, the creators of Dribbler are going to do this. Without news, fans will have nothing to talk about. Some of the news and analytical articles will be written by the users themselves, if, of course, they want to. And in order to want, the rating system must remain. But not hara-like. It seems to me that in order to create a successful online community of football fans, ratings for comments and posts should not affect the user rating, but the team rating. That is, each user of the site "plays" for some team, and ratings for his comments and posts affect the place of his favorite team in the general list. In this case, it would be possible to make a kind of online game - to make leagues, hold championships, give users the opportunity to repeatedly change their team,
Collective responsibility is much stronger than individual responsibility. Moreover, in such a collective sport as football. And that is exactly what could motivate the user of a football site to write their own news.
Frankly, the football site is in front of my eyes in almost all the details, and the conversation would be much more practical if I could offer it to the public in a ready-made form. But since I can’t find the time to implement such a large-scale project, and I don’t have enough skills, I put all this in the form of a bare idea. Ideas that for each topic you need to look for your own model. Of course, it’s impossible to say with confidence that everything will work, but trying to create hundreds of sites on the same system, I think, is not worth it. Collectivism, too, has not been canceled.
In order to convincingly say that such a system does not always work, I want to give an example of a site that, firstly, is close and interesting to me on the topic, and secondly, in which a lot of effort and money has been invested. The creators of the site cannot be blamed for the fact that they did not take care of its proper initial filling with content, or that the site was not advertised. A large number of own materials, proper advertising, but still the site was closed. What is it about? About one of the Thematic Media projects - the Dribbler website, a blog hosting dedicated to football topics.
Why didn’t the “shot” so well-established habra-like rating system on the site about football? Naturally, everything that will be lower is just IMHO.
Nobody wants to write just like that - I think the truth is common. The user needs some kind of benefit (most often moral, although not always) from creating content. IT employees, at least many of us, are more inclined to solve individual problems. For many of us, high karma is an opportunity to establish ourselves as a specialist, quickly promote our new project, ask other highly qualified specialists for advice and much more. But why does a football fan need karma? All he needs is for his favorite team to win next weekend, and the fans of the hated Spartak will finally recognize that CSKA is cooler (or vice versa, it doesn’t matter). A football fan is a person who is much more dependent on the team than an IT employee, and therefore “habrasil” and his own rating are much less interesting for him than the rating of his favorite team. But they tried to push him into the framework of habrahabr, only the name was changed. He did not understand this, was not interested, and left.
Saying that somewhere there is a full-fledged blog hosting or a normal football social network with normal, adequate participants. So the developers set foot on a rough field, but offered the user the wrong model. As a result, there are few materials, uninteresting posts, uninteresting comments, and, offensively, most often inadequate. It’s problematic for a
fan to persuade him to behave normally ... At the moment, “Dribbler”, as it is written on the site, “is closed for reconstruction”. And as a user, I decided to dream up how I would like to see the online football community.
Firstly, the site should be more “content”. By the way, the creators of Dribbler are going to do this. Without news, fans will have nothing to talk about. Some of the news and analytical articles will be written by the users themselves, if, of course, they want to. And in order to want, the rating system must remain. But not hara-like. It seems to me that in order to create a successful online community of football fans, ratings for comments and posts should not affect the user rating, but the team rating. That is, each user of the site "plays" for some team, and ratings for his comments and posts affect the place of his favorite team in the general list. In this case, it would be possible to make a kind of online game - to make leagues, hold championships, give users the opportunity to repeatedly change their team,
Collective responsibility is much stronger than individual responsibility. Moreover, in such a collective sport as football. And that is exactly what could motivate the user of a football site to write their own news.
Frankly, the football site is in front of my eyes in almost all the details, and the conversation would be much more practical if I could offer it to the public in a ready-made form. But since I can’t find the time to implement such a large-scale project, and I don’t have enough skills, I put all this in the form of a bare idea. Ideas that for each topic you need to look for your own model. Of course, it’s impossible to say with confidence that everything will work, but trying to create hundreds of sites on the same system, I think, is not worth it. Collectivism, too, has not been canceled.