I believe the literature does not generally deny that a reward does not do anything for motivation. You are referring to the specific case where rewards are being given in exchange for performing a task, as an exchange or sorts. There are more subtle ways to offer small tokens of praise or appreciation for (a history of) contributions where the effect may be more positive -- but, as Stephan points out -- introducing rewards means treading a thin line. It is probably a good idea to take stock of the reputation / reward systems successfully implemented elsewhere. I will talk about this at SOTM a bit.
Martijn On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 5:57 PM, Robin Paulson <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > -- martijn van exel schaaltreinen.nl _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
