Robert's Rules of Order are necessary. Constitutions are necessary. Norms, rituals, laws, the whole list of ways that we say, out of the universe of possible behaviors, we're going to draw a relatively small circle around the acceptable ones.
I like to think that the way SN works dispenses with the need for moderators and algorithms, but this doesn't mean we haven't for any norms of behavior at all. What do you think some of the norms are for SN?
Here is a longer passage I was reading that triggered this thought:
From "The Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" by Clay Shirky
This reminds me of Eternal September, the Gartner Hype Cycle, and another post about similar cultural phenomena that I can't find anymore.
I think there's some inevitability to this social churn. All of history suggests that social structures are never eternally stable, there is always some churn, but they churn in a logically predictable, cyclical way, even if no one can predict the exact timing or outworking of the churn.
I can believe the inevitability of it. But it is still ideal to have some mechanics for delaying the churn of a good community into an awful one. Currently, we have sats. They don't seem to do quite enough on their own, so perhaps some amount of web of trust is needed.
In what sense do you think that sats are not doing enough on their own, relative to web of trust?
In trying to answer this, I kept thinking, honestly: I like sats as the only moderator. Do we really need trust?
I think zapping (both up and down) is not very widespread. There are a limited number of SN users who are highly active zappers and many more who only occasionally zap. So the burden of using money as the moderator falls on those few rather than emerging as a consensus of the whole community. Trust might be a way of magnifying the actions of users who the community tends to agree with.
Heres one example: Zapping (both up and down) is not a terribly widespread habit -- it seems like there are some users who are highly active, and then many more who only occasionally zap or not at all. This means when some scammer boosts their stuff, the burden of downzapping it mostly falls on the few who really care (rather than some beautiful world where everyone chips in a little bit to create a big downzap effect). The same is true for downzapping: if one user decides to go on a jihad against another, the victim is often on their own to boost their posts back up. If we had some amount of trust affecting the weight of zaps, highly trusted users could spend less to achieve the same effect.
I'm very interested in being convinced that no trust is required, and that we only need to tweak the way sats are used, but we've been using only money as a moderator for more than half a year now and it is clear that when someone wants to spend to distort things away from what most users would like, it is expensive to combat them. And that there isn't a "whole community" reaction against such a strong hand. Rather it seems that most users were kind of like "ugh, I guess I'll just check back when this is over."
Now, the reality of SN is that such actions things seem to pretty quickly be "over" because it is expensive to manipulate on a big scale. And we did get some pretty nice reward pools.
I really think that
trustis the wrong word, and it comes with baggage too, while the word you want to have isreputation. It's not about trusting someone really. It's not abouttrusted usersbut aboutreputable users. I think those are different things, and they only matter for ranking algo purposes. But, and that's a big issue: it's hard to measure holistically from a system-wide perspective.The downside of introducing any further metric is loss of simplicity, which is the greatest thing gained with the "november" update.
In my mind
trustrefers to relative visibility (ie show me things from users who like the same kind of things as me), whilereputationrefers yo what SN used to call "global trust" (I think?) -- all users are ranked and those who are higher get more visibility.I wonder if there is a world where the experience of SN when not logged in (
anon mode) is purely sats based, while the logged in experience is unique to each user: what you see is affected by users you trust.I've been reading a lot about the recent (last couple years) decision on LessWrong to ban Said Achimz. LW seems to value a unified experience for all users (I have no idea what their code actually implements, just going off what the head mod and other users say). They seem to want a forum where users end up talking about the same things. So they use
reputationwhile a place like X is based on relative experience, and so users are shown a feed that is presumably? unique to them.We currently show everyone the same feed (except for muting), and I believe it is one of the principal sources of strife on the home page. SN could show each user what they want to see, but this would be a big change from treating the home page as a market.
To my memory k00b once made a point about remote controls (on your post: #1471077) and there only being one at his party. So I think that the uniform view is desired here too - at least it was the last time we discussed that in-depth?
The problem with sats-only for anon is that that is exactly where it hurts now.
I used to read in the order notifs -> new -> top/lit and now i just skip the last part. So for me, situations of sat suppression don't matter, also because
newis exempt from filters other than the ones the user sets (coming back later to this part.) So for my consumption, while it would be nice to have a ranking that reflects the attitude of the whole more than the attitude of a few, I don't truly care because I get by regardless.However, if original content created will be hidden because of some troll or a dude with a grudge downzapping way above organic thresholds - content that mind you someone paid to have published - then, at differing thresholds for each individual stacker, it at one point becomes better to not treat SN as a home for such content. Post the content elsewhere, repost / link on SN, or not, but at least the content can be indexed other than through SN. Which means that SN slowly becomes an aggregator only, whereas I feel that many of the stackers we interact with today aren't here for the aggregation, but for the "community" - for lack of a better word. So original content ought to be more visible?
Now here's the thing: the casually lurking stacker, unlike you and I, doesn't change their downzap threshold to
-∞, or even logs in. So they won't see the downzapped posts, and neither will any crawler, unless found elsewhere. Instead, they'll see some very monotonic front-page every time there is someone spending a ton on influencing visibility. This sounds nice, but I don't think that at those times the front page and the visible items reflect that community that many are here for. So the one selling point I am sure is there, becomes kind of invisible.All this is manageable, and it's not catastrophic. But, yes, there's only one remote control, and oligarchy at their whim can control it.
This is a really good question btw.
If I think through some open-loop systems I worked on back in the day, they always have intrinsic guardrails on top of extrinsic ones. For example, you enter the subway and tap w/ your apple pay (unlike your tap card, which is/used-to-be closed-loop issued; not sure if LA has open loop nowadays?). Not only will there be a check against MC's service that guarantees the first 15 bucks, but it will also be checked against internally kept deny lists, and in many implementations, something like trip reconstruction and intrinsic risk management modules (does this card have a history?) that will decide what and when to charge and for how much. So even in such systems, that really only just process payments, there are additional metrics that decide reputation.
I think in SN's case that relying on open-loop sats is a good metric, but perhaps not a good system-as-a-whole for ranking if it's the only metric?
NGU&NGD Blindness...
I find it hilarious and refreshing that when Bitcoin is ripping or dropping like a stone, no one mentions it
It's like everyone is busy just doing SN
Meanwhile on toXic and yewtoob the bitfluencers are looozing their minds 🤣
X psychosis has become a thing for people in bitcoin, one of the most interesting things I observed during startup day were people asking me about this or that on X, had almost no idea what they were even talking about
further proof was seeing this young gen z kid speaking about bitcoin and he also had no idea what people were yapping about on X
This is one of the reasons I like in-person events so much: you meet people who aren't living on X.
well also the people on X are you usually the most difficult people to deal with in the bitcoin ecossytem
This definitely brings true for me. SN is a place that rarely gets overwhelmed with empty price talk, and it is very pleasant that way.
A link post should give some context by quoting some relevant parts from the linked post.
A 100-fucking percent!! I hate it when people don't at least cite an overview of what the topic is, over and above the title itself.
Seems lazy. Spend thirty more seconds, fuckwit
You should check out the old debates about link posts. Some people vigorously objected to allowing any commentary by the poster.
#258906
What do you think changes the norms around that, because the commentary crowd seems to have carries the day.
I think @k00b thought it would create too much friction. Back then all I wanted was a small comment box for a brief overview. We got more, and then @denlillaapan showed up and took it to another level.
Hahaha yeah, maybe its all my fault
Literally my biggest pet peeve (also why I hate the HN reposter).
Lots of posters don't seem to agree with you on that one (I do though)
I hope this becomes more of a norm. Unexplained links are a little bit of of a bummer.
I TOTALLY AGREE. When I see that sort of thing, my anti-Assmilker radar goes off.
I think: mate, couldn’t you have at least quoted something or done a copy-and-paste, if you didn’t have time to write something you’d thought up yourself?
Interesting posts and comments are to be zapped.
Thoughtful replies are to be zapped.
Bots and slop are not to be zapped.
Replies indistinguishable from bots or slop are not to be zapped.
Ass-milking is not to be zapped.
Shitcoining is not to be zapped.
NSFW content is not to be zapped.
Naked links are not to be zapped (usually).
Asking about personal details is to be met with a "Nice try, fed!"
Nice try, fed is a sort of norm but I wasn't thinking of it that way.
Interesting that all the other norms you list have to do with zapping. Also, none of these are things that SN "enforces" in any way (I guess SN incentivizes zapping things you expect will be popular, but I'm hesitant to describe this as "enforcing). I wonder how SN could communicate such norms?
I'm not sure they need to be communicated or enforced by the head office. Communities are good at generate norms of behavior and people are good at picking up on them.
I wish we had some norms around downzapping and not engaging with trolls/dickheads, but I don't think those have emerged yet.
But they're extremely hard to measure objectively. Which one in your above list do you personally not agree with?
Why do I get notifications of you replying to me if this is a supposed norm? haha
I said that I wish it were a norm. I’m clearly part of the problem.
It happened again just now...
aren't you talking about norms tho? which I take to mean organic social behavior, and not policies enforced?
We need a "nice try, fed!" emoji 😅
Absolutely!
Probably the biggest norm is just respect. You can disagree hard without turning every argument into a personal fight.
I agree. I'm curious how it happened though. It's not like users get banned for bad behavior.
deleted by author
The algorithm is what stackers pay to promote (and pay to demote). It definitely has it's flaws, but I'm curious what particularly you find BS about it.
My mistake similar but different post here and on nostr
Be civil, argue in good faith, and don't be a menace. Pretty much the ancient laws of SN. 😅
Bitcoin technical related post/comment will get you more zaps than any other post
I hadn't considered this a norm, but you may be right.
We speak mostly English and we don't take our shoes off before entering.
I cannot discern any. You either make it work for you or you don't and leave.
Well, here's a norm: the site is largely SFW, even though there isn't any explicit prohobition against posting NSFW stuff (we even had ~nsfw for a while and it died). Why is that?
Another norm that maybe exists (but isn't that strong) is zapping a reply. When someone replies to me, I pretty much always zap it (both as an acknowledgement and as a courtesy) and I think there are others who do this as well.
Supply adjusting to demand, I think? More of a market force than a norm. There is no reason for this to not come back if there is demand.
That only goes for a subset of stackers, there are 3 types:
The first group isn't half of the set of active stackers, but it is most of the top active stackers, which could make it feel normative, but it is really just us suckers that try to resist the greed.
Not zapping nsfw stuff is a norm then
If we're reflecting top 0.2% spenders upon the whole (could make sense because that's close to 65% of the volume) then you're right.
Do the bottom 99.8% zap nsfw content or is it that they mostly don't zap anything so this is not a specific norm for them?
They mostly don't zap anything.
Gotcha
Ah! Perhaps the market is our norm?
This doesn't sound like a very meaningful statement, though.
I wonder about market demand, though. Fan fiction (or even normal fiction) is an interesting case. We have times when we get little bursts but mostly itnos reserved to "approved" times (ie competitions). I'm surprised we don't see more fiction in between times.
Hmm not really, I think?
Thought about it some more. The only one I can come up with that is mostly upheld is: "no shitcoining".
Imma resurrect it. Lust is important:
https://m.stacker.news/153648
Well I've been on SN for a while now and these 2 practices or norms I've observed so far.
1.The Duplicate post We need to allow fresh engagement because tools and contexts evolve, and current users deserve real-time troubleshooting
2.On Ignored Posts and Account Bias ignoring relevant content just because it isn't formatted "perfectly," or Judging a post by the user's reputation level we choose rigid bureaucracy over actual knowledge sharing. And even though it a choice to zap or not. It's shouldn't be "who i know"
Besides norms are more than just codes.
I think about this one a fair amount. We all start from scratch here, so reputation is earned through the repeated game of making valued comments and engaging in good faith with others, which leads to the valuing of one's perspective.
We can't really shortcut this learning process about the mind behind a post and just judge each post "on its merit", because part of what the incentives are for is eliciting the views from people with interesting perspectives.
But other than
stacking sincewe don't surface an easy way for users to gauge another user's reputation level.We are small enough now that you can roughly have an idea. But for instance, if @mallardshead or @davidw posted something today, there might be a lot of newer users who wouldn't know much about their reputation.
(There's also
total stackedbut since many people hide that, I'm not sure how useful it is in discovering reputation)Newer stackers shouldn't trust @mallardshead or @davidw, just because we do.
For instance, I zap your posts immediately because I've come to respect your thinking and am interested to read what you have to say, not because of how others regard you.
It's almost like paying a subscription to a blog. I'm not going to pay to read the random thoughts of someone I don't know and who has no track record.
If there's a great, thought-provoking post, that I can judge to be high-quality, then I'll zap it regardless of authorship. Those kinds of posts are not generally what we're talking about, though.
But I would also say that the users of SN do a lot of work to sort out high quality posters and currently the only way it surfaces is through history of zaps. It might be a good thing if that work could be surfaced more easily.
You don’t have to sell me on making trust great again.
In my perfect world, whatever comes next is as transparent and easy to understand as money is the moderator. Too often the karma/merit/seniority systems are difficult to understand.
I think it was @mallardshead writing elsewhere, about SNs, that led me here...
Tit-for-tat reciprocal zap
Interesting one. My experience is that the act of zapping this way is more important than the amount of the zap.
Interesting to note though that SN doesn't show you who zapped you, so you have to guess a little bit.
yes!
but we're small enough and in person-to-person interactions in the reply/comments it's fairly easy to conclude, heuristic style, who zapped you
Is using English a norm here?
Or is that a result of zapping behavior, or even SN simply being difficult to discover if you aren't fluent?
I find that really hard to draw a line between a norm and incentivized behavior around here. Maybe there isn't one.
In my mind, the behaviors that SN incentivizes (be early to zap good content and you get more rewards) is not quite the same as"norms" -- an example of a norm is definitely using English. For a while we had a espanol territory (I think) but it didn't catch on.
I'd say norms as those things that are "enforced" or strengthened by stackers themselves rather than the code.
It isn’t obligatory but responding to comments on your posts is not only polite, but often broadens your worldview
Yes! I'm surprised this one didn't come up earlier. I always find the users who make a point of doing this to be very classy.
Of does not feel like there is much social pressure to do so, though. In fact, I can't remember a time I saw someone get annoyed that the OP didn't respond. But maybe I just miss it.
ya I agree. I don’t feel the pressure to respond back. but often I do so because I want to. and chatting makes the experience more interesting
Responding to a legit question with a humorous image isn't always a norm, but in this case, it is.
shitcoiners get the hose
Not sure if it's the norm here, but separating good content from stuff we just like should be standard when zapping
Cowboy stuff
SN norms are defined by the code k00b merges, how many can read between the lines?
I think SN's norms are more than just the code.
For instance, there is a norm that posting a paywalled link without a link to an archived source is poor form.
I think there are many of these.
That should be common practice; the question is then how to educate stakers to follow best common practices. Would it end all in social politeness and a regulated environment, losing that Wild West flavor it had years ago?
Most of these "rules" apply outside SN too
Yes, perhaps I should have called it "best practices" instead of "norms."
Nonetheless, I am curious if there is a body of these best practices that most of us follow.
Yeah, it's not normative. We just comment with the archived link if it is available and not provided.
Yes, it may be a poor example.
When I add links I try to copy and paste as much as I can into the post. Using SN a soft archive of things I may want to look up in 5 or ten years time. Nothing sucks more then clicking the link and the server took down/deleted the content
Zaps are the norm here... both for climbing and for getting buried...!!
There seems to be a norm where people treat increasingly nested comments almost like a direct conversation. It can get a bit confusing, e.g. the notifications don't include any context, and even when it is quoted in the comment, the formatting is not present in the notification text.
Do you know of any examples where they do a nice job of keeping context with increasingly nested comments?
Stack more and avoid downzaps if you:
This is exactly it, zaps do the moderating job without anyone moderating. Bad takes just sink, no rulebook needed 🤠
Do you think there are Norma beyond the way zaps function?
The cowboy hat streak is probably the clearest one, it's not tied to any single zap, it's pure social pressure to show up daily and keep the hat, people genuinely feel bad losing it after 80+ days. Then there's tagging posts "freebie", downzapping being reserved for spam not just disagreement, replying in the right thread instead of derailing it, and how every territory kinda has its own unwritten culture depending on who founded it. None of that's enforced by zaps directly, it's just stuff the community settled into on its own
Interestingly, I think there are a number of current users who are downzapping for disagreement.
The hat is interesting. I remember when it first came out and I had a pretty good streak going and then I lost it. I think I stayed away from the site for a couple days because I was so frustrated. The hat is certainly strong.
Yeah that's the part that worries me a bit, once downzapping for disagreement becomes common the norm basically flips into a popularity tax instead of a spam filter. Funny that the hat hit you like that though, didn't expect an emoji streak to have that much pull, but it clearly does 🤠
Don't bring topics some OG don't like, they might just spend their sats downzapping you.
But how are you supposed to know what topics not to bring?
Thanks the problem, still to Bitcoin or just comment on stackers that generally don't centered their talks only on their POV
SN is like the Wild West; here, everyone’s an outlaw and a gunslinger. The only unwritten rule is to shoot (zap) others.
Some take good shots (zap)
Some take bad shots (downzap)
https://m.stacker.news/153736