Chris, it’s super clear that your posts are well thought out and considered
Thank you.
I’ll be straight up here. I didn’t expect the leaderboard to be taken as seriously as it has been
It made me feel bad, and I thought you should know. It’s clearly well implemented and well intentioned, but it feels like it’s missing what I bring and that makes me feel unvalued.
One problem is that it’s called the contribution leaderboard. A board of leading contributors. You also said that “Our challenge to you is to one day see MoT Staff not in the Top 10”, which means that the ideal is that people engage more to increase their score. I feel like I laid out my concerns already, and I have others but the tone is much the same. It means something, because it says it does, but it doesn’t mean anything because it doesn’t describe it. It’s simultaneously the least and most important list. Still, it is an experiment and you did ask for feedback, so I suppose this is part of the process.
to “see where they are at over a period of time” and use it to motivate themselves in a way that works for them
I don’t want competition. I’m a service provider. A support class. I want to get zero kills in my FPS because I’m busy enabling my team to dominate. In ways that it can motivate it can demotivate - and new engagement will be difficult, starting at zero and seeing the mountain to climb.
How can we be sensitive and inclusive to folks who are uncomfortable with points-based systems?
By not using them. It’s also a diversity issue - how do we mark posts read by people with dyslexia, or posts created for people with mobility issues that struggle with typing? People with families cannot visit as much, or stay for as much time. Can we create a level playing field for the neurodivergent? Perhaps we don’t need a playing field.
What things help motivate you already to contribute to the MoT Community?
- Writing, explaining and coaching helps me think.
- I enjoy writing and researching.
- I like to engage with ideas. I’m a scientist and engineer.
- I like to support others.
- I like to be seen as good at what I do and get positive feedback.
- I like to be funny sometimes.
- Habit.
- I want good ideas to prosper and bad ones to not. I like the idea that people will use written test cases much less, and some people will be happier at work because of that.
- I like to be around good testers and thinkers. It helps me be better.
- I like to engage with people. It stops me being lonely without the anxiety of more direct social interaction or over-commitment to that energy requirement.
- I like fun. Sometimes I have fun.
This is why I think I engage. There’s also going to be a much larger contingent of passive readers, looking for value in absorbing not writing content who will have different motivations, and I think it’s worth thinking about them and how to provide them with what they want.
How might we build something that acknowledges that any form of points-based system can be gamed in some way?
Stop directly comparing non-fungible abstracts. It’s basically like counting test cases, but instead counting posts or likes.
Is there any form of metric or data point that would help you?
Not really, no. I can’t quantify a word of thanks or praise, or the warm feeling of work well done, and I don’t have a want or need to. I rely on the good will of strangers to tell me I’m a good boy.
Solutions Time
And what things that don’t exist do you think would help?
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry
I think about this a lot. You need people to want to engage, I don’t think they can be persuaded to - and studies show that rewarding people for doing what they love leads to them requiring the reward to continue doing so.
I’m not an expert on community management or anything, but here’s some ideas to think about:
Inspiring Behaviour
Identify what behaviour you want to see, and find a way for you and the community to call it out. You could create posts praising things that are particularly helpful, funny, kind, honest or patient, and others will want to be a part of that system. They see someone being highlighted for their positive influence and want to be in the same place. Share their stories, get their bios, make them important. Everyone can be at the top of their own leaderboard.
Community-Powered Rewards
You can create a sticker system similar to Reddit’s awards, for people to mark something as particularly helpful or nice or effortful. This will be a nice way to give feedback, and something one could collect if you wanted to go that way. It’s not measured against someone, just something people could look at and feel good about. If it costs something, like contribution points for example, then it has rarity and value above a “like”, that someone took their points and spent them saying “hey, that was really good, well done”.
Gamification
I don’t like gamifying the process, and it does Disnefy the place a bit, but if you really had to gamify it you could make stickers collectible, or issue points to spend on giving them, like channel points on Twitch, redeemable for nice things like custom icons or borders. Instead of collecting points to be better than others we collect them to do stuff. You could even give discounts or small freebies from other areas in MoT if you wanted. Issue emotes usable by people who have achieved certain things. Essentially break stuff down into what you want them to do and what you could give them for it.
If you hold things like group events you could reward the people that turn up. In fact scores for turning up to events is one way to create a more even leaderboard, if you wanted one. You need to attune rewards to the vision of the community.
It’d require a lot of thought and experiment, I predict, it’s a back-and-forth meeting you’d need in order to to iron that all out.
Customisation
Our profiles are our identity. Allowing us some level of expression, without breaking the clean image of the site too badly, would provide a sense of investment and expression, and therefore belonging.
You could make profiles more customisable, typical examples are icon frames, text colours, lists of interests, banners, backgrounds.
Low-Interactivity Support
Consider reaching out to those who don’t interact on the site as much and supporting them to do so. Very few people in a community actually take part in it. Some people just need a word of encouragement or some simple directions.
Some of this might be in a comforting welcome message, how to very quickly get started with something. Optional directions on how to do simple things, how to use the tools and so on.
Use the community
You have a large pool of good testers, it’s worth using them to find all the problems before you go ahead.
The community will use whatever tools they have to hand to express themselves. We could challenge (ask) people to take part in polls, debates, digital meetups, testing challenges, creative challenges, lunchtime talks, gaming events, collaborative writing, livestreams, and we can also source the community to provide them or ideas for them. We could even hold charity events where we test apps or websites of charities (with their consent), and find problems in their systems for free. It’d be fun, and useful, and people love stuff that’s fun and useful. You get to feel good about yourself, practice testing, and perhaps work with some great people and learn new things.
Consider subgroups with different interests and ways for them to find each other. → If anyone plays Deep Rock Galactic on BST time, hit me up by the way. ←
Give people the permission they’re looking for to create. While we could create an area for people to post personal wins, or book recommendations, perhaps a personal story day where the focus is put on expression without judgement, or on the other end a gladiator pit to present ideas that you want attacked to improve them (blog drafts would be one example). There’s a difference between having a place for pet pictures and “Pet Pictures Thursday!” (I do not have a pet, it’s just an example). This would have to be advertised pretty broadly, and people need to be asked to engage with it. It’d also need moderating.
You could also look to the navigators of the community. Those that influence its tone and direction. Consider creating a connection with the community by liaising with them.
Make it easier to be artful
People want less and less text in their life. People want images and video. They want colour and formatting. If we give them a focus on tooling that provides that level of expression perhaps we could give them a way to engage in their own way but also make things easier to absorb.
Consent
I have some thoughts about interactivity and consent I’ve expressed before. The desire to be heard without judgement and the desire to better the future with antifragile argument. A separation of concerns, with subgroups or tags or something is an idea I’ve had bouncing around for some time. I present it here, unfinished, as-is. This should help to remove the fear of people like me who could cut a user in half with my razor-sharp wit and my precise spear thrusts of reasoned argument, and provide a space for people just to talk about a bad day and get a “oh, that sounds awful” rather than what I provide, a short essay on solving that problem. Sometimes people want to be heard, not fixed. Not my expertise.
Again, I’m not a community management person these are just ideas I found laying around in existing examples, or ideas I’ve come up with while writing. HTH. If you want me to chip in on a session or anything let me know and I’ll find some time.
but I wouldn’t “hunt” for them actively.
