On 8 September 2011 10:03, Stephan Knauss <[email protected]> wrote: > I thought about "user rankings" some time ago as well. I have mixed > feelings. > On the one hand it might be a way to motivate users to contribute more and > to reward users having contributed "more useful" things than others. > > On the other hand I fear it can easily drift into something worse. People > editing specific for the ranking. > Have you heard of the "cobra effect"? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive > > It could actually create worse data when people try to improve their ranking > by "cheating" the statistics.
i've written quite a lot about this for university, and there's plenty of evidence that offering a reward isn't much of an incentive. stallman cited some psychological studies by Amabile and Lepper: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html and there's more on these studies by eric raymond, in 'homesteading the noosphere': http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/ar01s19.html -- robin http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/?p=237 - government bill to remove basic human rights in NZ _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
