what do you do if the rule-breakers aren’t punished?
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while reading the wisdom of crowds by james surowiecki, i came across an old (but highly applicable) forbes article titled are you a chump? the article is a commentary on the american tax system, tax avoidance, and whether it makes sense. let’s think about this problem.
the money that the government gets from tax collection goes towards things that benefit everyone. you get public services such as roads, police, firemen, and you get a military that protects you, irrespective of whether you actually contributed to the pool or not. why then do people pay taxes? ultimately what it comes down to is that if you cheat on your taxes, chances are that you will be caught, and the penalties you will have to pay then are high enough to deter most people from playing the numbers.
comparing cheating on your taxes to gaming a social news site may be stretching it a little but bear with me for a minute. the more i participate on these sites, the more it becomes obvious that certain sites and people are participating in a way that isn’t the ‘good citizen’ way of contributing to these sites, even though it might not explicitly violate the terms of service. take the example of digg and propeller. both these sites have systems in place that allow users to share their submissions with other people (shouts versus site-mail). though the systems are in place to allow people to share one-off interesting stories with a few of their friends, they are increasingly being used to mass-spam entire friends lists to rally for votes.
until today i had resisted using these systems simply because it’s not the ‘good citizen’ way to participate. however, now that more and more people are abusing this functionality, at the cost of users in good standing, and aren’t being punished for what they’re doing, i can’t help but wonder why any user shouldn’t similarly abuse them for their own benefit. most of us are contingent consenters, i.e. we are willing to participate and abide by the community rules as long as everyone else also abides by the same rules and those that don’t, are punished. if the system breaks down, the community leaders have no choice but to resort to the same methods. after all, no one likes to be the chump.
what do you think?
this post is a part of my journey through james surowiecki’s the wisdom of crowds.
Technorati Tags: rules, contingent consenters, james surowiecki, the wisdom of crowds
January 11th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Hi Muhammad, the basic tenet of policy enforcement is to catch rule-breakers. If you don’t, then the message to the rest is it’s allowed. As such, this “message” will spread until it tips.
Even those who are normally good will have a propensity to follow suit as everyone is doing it. If they don’t follow, then they just stand to lose.
In such case, all hell breaks loose. Exactly like what I see now on Digg.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
hey muhammad,
first, i’m surprised to think you need to shout to be competitive given your stature.
second, i see a few challenges in this.
1. what if there’s no clear rules (i.e. google map spam, shouting all your friends, etc.) and it’s only etiquette (not submitting your own, being a member of the community)?
2. it seems like what you’re saying is there’s no high ground so everbody’s got to be equally low (gotta have a hummer ’cause my honda’s not safe if it gets hit by a hummer).
3. is the shouting necessary to get above the noise? are you supplanting the network of friends for the network of friends with friends to shout at?
this seems a quick-turn from http://searchengineland.com/071120-144401.php
i’m excited to see you refine the focus on this issue. and to tell me the approach for today
January 12th, 2008 at 12:19 am
hey will, i think you pretty much completely missed the point of the article.
the point is, what do people with stature do when others are running wild at their expense? i say at their expense because yes, these people do supplant good content with their shouts. i don’t need to shout if everyone is playing on a leveled field, but what happens when you can shoutspam a story and get 90 votes in 5 hours while im stuck at 30?
this is not a turn from the rules of being a good citizen that i outlined at all and it’s unfair to say that. this is more a discussion on whether it is possible to be a good citizen and succeed in a community where outlaws run wild and are aloud to do so.
please read above comment by lawrence.
January 12th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Hi Muhammad, I guess that there is a route along a timescale.
You may be able to be a good citizen & succeed, but increasingly you will succeed less well, so eventually you will get tired & leave. So the answer is that in badly run sites, the ‘outlaws’ take over, as with badly run countries. As the quality of the site therefore falls, so the remainder leave & the site moves out of favour. Eventually better run sites are set up.
January 12th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
muhammad,
i know it sucks. ideally, i think those on top should set an example for everyone else. but, i understand your pain. i was wont to use the shout feature in the beginning, and even now i really hate using it. after a while, i started to shout at only those who shouted at me. i tracked every one else through RSS or Friends’ activity. recently (a few days to be exact), i’ve been getting annoyed at submitting articles that i feel to be good content and appeal to Digg’s user base, only to see masses of articles ahead of mine in the queue due to higher digg counts. part of it is due to my apprehension at behavior not conducive to “the good citizen.” another part is the algorithm that requires so many diggs out of top users and articles with “buries” on them. users like myself, who do not need need as many diggs as a top user to hit the front page, still need them just to gain some ground in the queue and make our contributions more visible.
Now I do use the shout feature, but i try hard not to spam with it and not to annoy my friends. I’m worried about how my behavior would change in the future. How far will i go? Sorry, I think i may have digressed a little… I don’t think we should… but if we did all game the system, it might cause a change in the enforcement of policy.
January 12th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
i’m sorry muhammad, you seem to have misunderstood my point.
i was responding to “until today i had resisted using these systems simply because it’s not the ‘good citizen’ way to participate”.
what i was trying to point out was that once one starts talking like the only way to success is the low road then it really has devolved as lawrence so aptly put.
i don’t have your history, so i have what may be a benefit of having come upon already broken systems. as such i don’t know when it tips (tipped). i don’t have the history except through your writing and that of others to know that the guy who shouts me nothing but diggs for his own blog is behaving badly. at least i know.
most don’t.
most don’t read the instructions.
and they certainly don’t read philosophy.
your piece from sel is a primer of sorts — a mantra repeated by others in the social know — which if adhered to would make the social media world a better place.
sorry if in my lack of clarity i appeared to be suggesting conflict.
and i’m sincere when i say “i’m excited to see you refine the focus on this issue.” it’s a bigger issue for which this discussion may be a telling microcosm.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Good post. I think like everything in life it has to be used in moderation. I usually shout one thing a day and pick and choose who I send it to. It is the same as cursing. If you throw out the f bomb in every sentence then it stops being effective.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
@maggy: I think you’ve made a good point.
My colleague was in Pakistan recently during the Bhutto assassination. There was mass rioting and looting. My friend commented she was surprised by normally “nice” neighbors who joined the looting.
I asked myself what would I do, if I were in those shoes? Again the inclination to join the looting is VERY high. Otherwise, my family will starve at the expense of my principles to be a good citizen. It’s a tough dilemma…
So in such case, leaving the country is an option (provided it’s still possible). Likewise for Digg, I have chosen not to participate, and I know of many blogger friends who don’t. Simply for the state that it is in.
I’m just surprise that a Digg power-figure like Muhammad will bring up this issue. Before, I didn’t think it’ll be an issue for someone of stature, but now I know better.
Thanks for this interesting conversation.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Hi M,
This may be a little stretch for some minds but hang with me… I work in the middle of all the homeless shelters in my City. I have been educated to say the least!! My whole gripe is…we tax paying, law abiding citizens (for the most part) obey the laws, we don’t expect others to “give” us our daily money, food, alcohol and drugs. We work for it. We also pay our speeding tickets, and all others that we happen to be enforced upon us. The “homeless” individuals get a complete free ride off of us. We give them 3 meals a day, we give them free shelter, we are now starting to build them “supportive” housing, and above all…we do not enforce the laws on them because “they have no money” and the cities and states to not want to be bothered!! This sux!! I say hold the homeless accountable damn it! I’m not talking about the ones truly down on their luck, but the ones who choose to live on the streets and expect us to support their addiction and all the high costs they bring to our communities. If you break the law, you pay some type of consequence! Regardless of the amount of money you have in your pocket.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Hmmm… after reading some of these comments and your blog post, i started thinking about foucalt and the panopticon.
i wonder if your apprehension is due to your higher visibility than other users. also you probably place a higher degree of value on your digg account as do I. an average digg user can always create a new account if it’s deleted due to bad behavior, but that may not be a sufficient recourse for you. there’s a certain sense of self we put into these accounts (*sigh, i’m not really sure how to express this idea properly). It’s more than just an account with a username on it. we “put ourselves” into it. there’s a reputation, history, personality, etc. attached to it just like our identities in real life.
Digg’s large user base (and the internet) have created a sense of anonymity among users that can encourage dishonorable behavior. there’s no one really “watching” unlike in real society and, if a user is caught in bad behavior, are there any “real” consequences for their actions? note what i wrote in the last paragraph.
about this “chump” thing (so you know i am actually reading your post
). Yeh, deep down no one wants to be the loser who gets left behind because they followed the rules that everyone else breaks. That’s what makes adhering to our ideals so difficult.
January 13th, 2008 at 9:04 am
@gerard — monster-kudos for the esoteric psycho-architecture reference. you’re right, in the perfect world there’d be a light shining on the bad diggers all the time. and the majority of diggers have nothing to lose.
what’s occurred to me as i’ve further mulled the post and responses is this: it should be algorithmically manageable.
apparently it’s not being managed. therefore, it must be the intent of the system (by default if not design) to be susceptible to abuse.
again quoting mu on sel:
http://searchengineland.com/071128-122432.php
here’s what i mean — how hard is it to demonstrate “trust” in digg (as a proxy for social sites)? you *can* leave all sorts of tracks to your real identity.
think of amazon’s ‘real name’ feature. who’s review do you trust more, a real name or a pseudonym.
there are items i don’t digg because i’m personally identifiable and i may not want my good name associated with iffy (or even too left-of-center) content.
in lawrence’s example above, the looters must see no consequence — no morning papers read by their neighbors to report their behavior.
i have no rep on digg, but what i do there, and elsewhere online, can have an impact one my rep on the other side of the screen which necessitates prudence.
surely this could be algorithmically addressed. and if it isn’t then the behavior is intended — by the designers if not the community.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:08 am
@gerard, @will, interesting points. Thanks for helping me to see it that way.
With your argument, one question comes to mind: does it mean that we humans must always have “consequences” to regulate our behaviors? Can we not choose through our will to do what’s right or wrong?
Then again, I may have sidetracked. Pardon me.