Right now I'm reading through (and loving) Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards". [1] I'm wondering if this had any influence on Wikipedia's early days, as our culture seems to fit well with his views.
Kohn's basic thesis is that a lot of common reward mechanisms have perverse effects. In this he includes incentive pay, symbolic awards like gold stars, and even many kinds of praise. He believes that although those systems can work in the short term for mechanical tasks, they harm intrinsic motivation over the long term, corroding relationships and reducing creativity. He also suggests that reward and punishment are two sides of the same coin, and have a lot of parallel negative effects. And he cites a raft of research (none of which I've looked at).
The relationship I see with Wikipedia is our near complete lack of a reward or approval system. There's no official merit ladder, no point-scoring system, no way to trade your edit count in for valuable prizes, no special goodies for the editor of the month. We do have barnstars, but those don't imply a power relationship between giver and receiver, and they're never dangled as bait.
Just as interesting is the strong streak in our culture against incentive plans and formal scoring systems. People continually rail against editcountitis. We try hard to make sure people understand that adminship is no big deal. We even do a good job at making sure admins live that.
The naive behaviorist view, which Kohn sees as pervasive in our society, is that people would never do a bunch of creative work for nothing; you'd have to reward them somehow. In my eyes, Wikipedia is a fantastic counter-example to that notion.
I didn't really start paying close attention to Wikipedia's culture until 2004, at which point I think a lot of these norms were well established. Does anybody know the history, and whether there were external sources or inspirations for the things I mention? Was there an explicit decision to avoid reward systems? Or did it just happen?
Thanks,
William
[1] http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
On Nov 4, 2007 9:12 PM, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
I didn't really start paying close attention to Wikipedia's culture until 2004, at which point I think a lot of these norms were well established. Does anybody know the history, and whether there were external sources or inspirations for the things I mention? Was there an explicit decision to avoid reward systems? Or did it just happen?
I make no pretense of having a great recall of what transpired in those days, but I never recall any conscious decision to discourage incentives as counter-productive; we just believed in what we were doing because that is how it had been done before. You may have to go back a year or two (i.e. to '03 or '02) to see if there was an explicit decision behind this.
Johnleemk
This may answer some of your questions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=wikimoney&go=Go
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
This may answer some of your questions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=wikimoney&go=Go
Fascinating. Thanks! I never noticed that. For the curious, this seems to be the main description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimoney
And this is a nice collection of reactions to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiMoney/Archive_%28initial_rea...
Given the small number of actual transactions, it looks like it was never very popular. It's interesting to me that even this wasn't a top-down approach, unlike a lot of more common reward systems. But it does have another characteristic that the "Punished by Rewards" author warns against, which is using rewards to manipulate others for your own ends.
Thanks again for pointing this out.
William
On 11/5/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Ah, but unfortunately [[WP:CASH]] is a redirect to the "California State Highways" project (snort).
Given the small number of actual transactions, it looks like it was never very popular. It's interesting to me that even this wasn't a top-down approach, unlike a lot of more common reward systems. But it does have another characteristic that the "Punished by Rewards" author warns against, which is using rewards to manipulate others for your own ends.
Selected concerns regarding a pseudo-economic or "monopoly-money"[1] system:
Origin -- Where does it all come from? Who gets to be the banker? Do you collect anything for passing "Go" (or by creating new accounts)?
Utility -- What could it be redeemed for? What would be worth spending it on? Would it draw interest[2]? What about "get out of jail free" cards?
Inflation -- Would there be a finite amount, or would it be printed at will like the U.S. Mint does? If it ever is "worth something" would it become less so, when more of it exists?
[1] MONOPOLY(R) is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc. [2] Of course I meant monetary interest, as in money awarded for already having a lot of money, but psychological interest might also be worth considering -- questions like whether this actually make people more likely to contribute, or whether the wacky logistics of a system like this, particularly if enough people took it seriously, would cause others to quit in disgust.
Food for thought, bring your own fork (vague pun intended, maybe).
—C.W.
On 11/5/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
Selected concerns regarding a pseudo-economic or "monopoly- money" system:
Forget to mention the "white-washing the fence" principle as featured in the "[WikiEN-l] Get PAID to make content for Wikipedia!" thread, which should probably be merged with this one (and of course so should the "chore wheel" one).
—C.W.
On 2007.11.05 08:41:21 -0600, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com scribbled 0 lines: ...
Inflation -- Would there be a finite amount, or would it be printed at will like the U.S. Mint does? If it ever is "worth something" would it become less so, when more of it exists?
[1] MONOPOLY(R) is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc. [2] Of course I meant monetary interest, as in money awarded for already having a lot of money, but psychological interest might also be worth considering -- questions like whether this actually make people more likely to contribute, or whether the wacky logistics of a system like this, particularly if enough people took it seriously, would cause others to quit in disgust.
Food for thought, bring your own fork (vague pun intended, maybe).
—C.W.
(Disclaimer: I don't think this would actually be useful in any hypothetical Wikipedia economy, I'm just mentioning it because I find it a really interesting topic).
You can actually devise digital cash schemes where one can prove the validity of the cash and also that only a limited amount has been issued, based on proof of work schemes - I like Nick Szabo's 'bit gold' idea myself, http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html.
-- gwern SUN Pox DDR&E HAMASMOIS NIMA Trade SFPD FBI DOE warrantless
On 11/6/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Given the small number of actual transactions, it looks like it was never very popular. It's interesting to me that even this wasn't a top-down approach, unlike a lot of more common reward systems. But it does have another characteristic that the "Punished by Rewards" author warns against, which is using rewards to manipulate others for your own ends.
Looks like it has a lot in common with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bounty except that the latter is pretty much a system of barter (I'll write your FA if you write mine), rather than a general economy.
I don't think they're really "reward" systems as much as they are a way of making social contacts and getting a bit of variety in one's editing. Or at least they should be viewed that way...
Steve