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Regarding LTBcoin for the audience and associated problems

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CDJ990

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Location: Sydney, Australia

It seems that the elephant in the room isn't really being discussed (or it's just too dispersed) so I figure I'll bring it up here.

Basically I love the idea, being an audience member but it's also causing a lot of issues and is obviously being unfairly distributed among audience members. People are obviously creating fake accounts so that they get multiple shares of LTBcoin. The quality of the posts in this forum have also quite obviously rapidly declined of late.

I would like to hear peoples opinions on how this can be resolved or at least alleviated to some degree.

Personally I have a few ideas.

Firstly, in the podcasts it is very easy to just get the magic word without listening to more than 1 minute worth of podcasts. I could (but wont) tell you roughly where each magic word is given out in most of the podcasts. The exception to this is MMM which has done some different things in the past to make it harder for the viewers to get the magic word without legitimately listening to the entire thing. My favourite scheme is turning the magic word into a magic phrase, or a series of random words. Then, throughout the show, when there is a break in conversation another word is thrown in. I understand that making a bunch of random magic words is hard to remember for people who enjoy listening to podcasts on the run (like myself) but a magic phrase is actually just about as easy as a magic word to remember.

Secondly, I believe that posts in this forum need to be counted more a sort of reputation like system rather than just a count number. I'm not entirely sure about the LTBcoin benefits of posting on the forum beyond the initial requirement but it seems like the bottom of every podcast and article is just filled with 'Nice article' or some other annoying mindless spam. Perhaps this forum needs to have some kind of a top down reputation system in place. What I mean by this is for example Adam and other reputable entities are given a bunch of forum reputation points. Then when they give the "thumbs up" to a thread or post the reputation system calculates how much reputation they receive based on how much reputation the 'liker' of the post has. The liker of the post doesn't give away any reputation in doing this, it's simply a way to avoid people making many accounts and liking their own posts in order to rig the system. With a system like this in place it would be possible to reward audience members for participating in discussion in the forums and engaging in discussions about the articles/podcasts.

-edit- It's also worth noting that this does nothing to solve the fact that once somebody finds the magic word the first time there is very little to stop them entering it on 10 different accounts.

-edit- Out of curiosity I tested how long it would take me to find the magic word on a bitcoins and gravy episode without listening to the entire podcast. I found it in under 30 seconds of scanning. That being said I love what John and Lij, or did :'(, are doing/did so I went back and listened to it anyway ;) Keep it up guys, nothing personal.

Posted on August 24, 2014 at 1:48 AM
Last Edited: August 26, 2014 at 12:12 AM

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  Reputation systems are generally the idea used to validate the authenticity and worth of individual actors within a group. That is something I would consider - a weighted system based on reputation.

  Posted on August 24, 2014 at 3:50 AM
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• Omnibus

  

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  I would prefer a reputation system as well where your first 5-10 posts need to be approved as non-spam. Then after that maybe only every 10th post is approved and then they are reviewed less and less. This would cut down on the 'I aggree' or 'Sounds good' type of posts that are just there to increase the users post count.

  Perhaps some reputable posters would be able to approve/disapprove of new posts to earn additional credit so the work of approving/disproving is 'outsourced' to the community.

  It could also be useful to allow moderators to +1 posts they feel provide insights or are just interesting to the community. This would reward the poster for submitting engaging content.

  Posted on August 24, 2014 at 12:00 PM
  Last Edited: August 24, 2014 at 12:07 PM
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• exhaustedcover

  

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  I think it's a difficult problem to fix. On the one hand you don't want to discourage new users from joining and participating but you also need to get rid of the spam. One thing that might work (or help) is to have a minimum post character length.

  Personally, I'm not a huge fan of a reputation system as a whole. I think that will just make it easier for people to game the system in other ways to their favor.

  Posted on August 24, 2014 at 12:55 PM
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• CDJ990

  

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  @kerneloops @cdj990

  Regarding creating multiple accounts and LTBc disbursements, it doesn't really matter in the end, since a user posting under multiple accounts could just post more under one account. What matters is post count per day (especially on a low frequency day) and the number of days a user posts per given week.

  Similarly, the magic word LTBc disbursement gets diluted the more users plug in the word. So having multiple accounts will just reduce the individual payout value.

  Unfortunately I don't think this is really the right stance to take. It's like saying "it's not worth stealing gold because then there will be less gold in circulation for you to require legitimately". People with multiple accounts simply take potential 'earnings' in equal proportions from everybody in the pool, rather than disproportionally from themselves.

  Posted on August 25, 2014 at 11:58 PM
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• CDJ990

  

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  @exhaustedcover I think it's a difficult problem to fix. On the one hand you don't want to discourage new users from joining and participating but you also need to get rid of the spam. One thing that might work (or help) is to have a minimum post character length.

  Personally, I'm not a huge fan of a reputation system as a whole. I think that will just make it easier for people to game the system in other ways to their favor.

  How do you believe a system such as the one I described where a weighted reputation system is in place could help spammers?

  If it's simply a +1 -1 system then I could see what you're saying. Somebody creates 50 fresh accounts which all have the same voting power. However I'm proposing the +1 and -1 to be weighted based on the reputation of the poster. In that way if somebody were to create 50 new accounts which would all have 0 reputation then when they try to artificially upvote a post for reputation 50x0=0 reputation gained for the post they are trying to push up falsely in terms of reputation. I don't think I described that too clearly this time so I hope you get what I'm trying to say.

  Posted on August 26, 2014 at 12:02 AM
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• Cryptonaut

  

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  Regarding the Magic Words... there just isnt really any good solution for proving that you actually listened to the entire podcast. I guess this really comes down to how each individual podcast goes about giving the word or phrase. Like you said, MMM has done some interesting things for this, but on the other hand the LTB show makes it pretty easy :p @adam thoughts?

  For the article comments.. I noticed this to. The problem is that its a bit more difficult to manage since the comments are actually outside of our system (using Disqus). One thing we might be able to do is incorporate Disqus' existing upvote/downvote system into the reward calculations.. I will look into it. In the mean time make sure to downvote any spammy comments you see.

  As far as the quality of the forum posts goes.. yep its a constant battle. I think when we get the current "likes" system replaced with upvoting/downvoting it should help with this. If you downvote somebody, it will take away from their weekly rewards (Proof of Participation points), and heavily downvoted posts will simply be buried. Downvotes will also take a little bit away from yourself, to discourage just mass downvoting everyone.

  I like the idea of having some sort of reputation system factored in as well. Maybe even something like you don't get any rewards for your posts until you have received a certain threshold of likes/upvotes, which must be given by other people who have also reached that threshold (so you cant just create a bunch of accounts and upvote yourself)

  Posted on August 26, 2014 at 8:37 AM
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• dpc

  

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  I would leave magic words as they are. If fake accounts and multiple entries become a problem just add a capcha to the magic word entry. That would stop most from creating 20+ accounts and just entering in magic words. If we need a pencil and paper to write down words in an episode the authentic listeners magic word participation would drop off more than the fake users.

  I expect/hope the reputation system/reddit like voting will help with the forum curation. I think the sub-par posts are an unintended cause of the current rule set not a problem with the users. Kicking or banning people for following the rules and posting a bunch of minimally valuable posts is a bad idea. Currently the rules aren't optimized for good content.
  They are optimized for a volume of content.

  As I was writing this something popped into my mind that was most recently presented to me in daniel kahneman's "thinking fast and slow": Paraphrasing Dan Kahneman and Dan Ariely: "adding a financial arrangement stifles community behavior and promotes individualistic behavior, even at the cost to the community." Not a shocking or profound statement but it's applicable here. LTB will need to be careful how they mix community and financial arrangements. Especially since the long term value of LTBn doesn't directly affect the long term value of LTBc. I know there is a possible connection with ad fees paid in LTBc, but it is not a strong or direct enough connection to get people to want to build LTBn for their own financial gain (not that that was ever a stated goal of LTB anyway).

  I do hope when users can curate posts the signal will separate from the noise. I've enjoyed reading what a lot of people on here have to say and I'm glad there are more users posting. I don't really fault a new user for throwing in 5-10 garbage posts for every 1 thoughtful one given the current incentives. I just wish it didn't make sifting for good content so hard. This will all get worked out in time.

  Posted on August 26, 2014 at 4:09 PM
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• ltb4me

  

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  @exhaustedcover I think it's a difficult problem to fix. On the one hand you don't want to discourage new users from joining and participating but you also need to get rid of the spam. One thing that might work (or help) is to have a minimum post character length.

  Personally, I'm not a huge fan of a reputation system as a whole. I think that will just make it easier for people to game the system in other ways to their favor.

  I think it's a matter of choosing between the lesser of 2 evils, where the chosen outcome is going to always have problems. You could really only solve it with certainty by making each account associated with an implanted RFID chip or something in the actual user so duplicate accounts could not be created.

  Posted on August 26, 2014 at 4:22 PM
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• CDJ990

  

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  Location: Sydney, Australia

  @cryptonaut

  As far as the quality of the forum posts goes.. yep its a constant battle. I think when we get the current "likes" system replaced with upvoting/downvoting it should help with this. If you downvote somebody, it will take away from their weekly rewards (Proof of Participation points), and heavily downvoted posts will simply be buried. Downvotes will also take a little bit away from yourself, to discourage just mass downvoting everyone.

  I like the idea of having some sort of reputation system factored in as well. Maybe even something like you don't get any rewards for your posts until you have received a certain threshold of likes/upvotes, which must be given by other people who have also reached that threshold (so you cant just create a bunch of accounts and upvote yourself)

  While that does sound like a much better system than the current system without upvoting counting towards the points I could see it potentially leading to a few issues. Mainly that it disincentivizes people to downvote spam and the more spam that there is, the more expensive and less practical it will be to fight it; so the more they spam, the more they win. Obviously the cost of the downvote would also have to be equal to or greater than the benefit of taking somebody out of the pool in order to not incentivize people to mass downvote (not sure how that would be calculated).

  I really really like what you said in the last paragraph there, it could potentially help alleviate the double account entry to the magic words rewards as well as help the spam problem. However, once somebody creates one account that reaches the threshold it then becomes easier for them to get another account past the threshold artificially through upvoting themselves. Even in a system where you have to get each upvote from different verified user it becomes even easier to gain the system and get a new verified account with each account they make to the point where the cheater/spammer doesn't even need to be posting anything of value and can entirely upvote themselves through the threshold for as many accounts as desired. It also does nothing for people dropping the quality of their posts to spam quality levels after they reach that threshold. That being said it's still a huge improvement over the current system for both multiple account magic word entries and for spam. Nice.

  Posted on August 27, 2014 at 5:23 AM
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• CDJ990

  

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  @dpc I would leave magic words as they are. If fake accounts and multiple entries become a problem just add a capcha to the magic word entry. That would stop most from creating 20+ accounts and just entering in magic words. If we need a pencil and paper to write down words in an episode the authentic listeners magic word participation would drop off more than the fake users.

  I expect/hope the reputation system/reddit like voting will help with the forum curation. I think the sub-par posts are an unintended cause of the current rule set not a problem with the users. Kicking or banning people for following the rules and posting a bunch of minimally valuable posts is a bad idea. Currently the rules aren't optimized for good content.
  They are optimized for a volume of content.

  As I was writing this something popped into my mind that was most recently presented to me in daniel kahneman's "thinking fast and slow": Paraphrasing Dan Kahneman and Dan Ariely: "adding a financial arrangement stifles community behavior and promotes individualistic behavior, even at the cost to the community." Not a shocking or profound statement but it's applicable here. LTB will need to be careful how they mix community and financial arrangements. Especially since the long term value of LTBn doesn't directly affect the long term value of LTBc. I know there is a possible connection with ad fees paid in LTBc, but it is not a strong or direct enough connection to get people to want to build LTBn for their own financial gain (not that that was ever a stated goal of LTB anyway).

  I do hope when users can curate posts the signal will separate from the noise. I've enjoyed reading what a lot of people on here have to say and I'm glad there are more users posting. I don't really fault a new user for throwing in 5-10 garbage posts for every 1 thoughtful one given the current incentives. I just wish it didn't make sifting for good content so hard. This will all get worked out in time.

  I'm not really suggesting we should need a pen and paper to write down the magic words. I can't remember which episode it was (the magic word for it is surely timed out though) but I remember listening to a MMM podcast while driving in my car. He split the magic phrase of "bit license sucks" or something along those lines into three different parts and released the words throughout the show. I was easily able to put it together as the podcast went along and enter it as easily as a normal magic word when I got to a computer.

  A CAPTCHA will do nearly nothing to stop people creating multiple accounts.

  Definitely agree with that second paragraph, the incentives are currently all wrong.

  I also have to echo your support for that comment by Dan Kahneman and Dan Ariely as well. I really do believe that to be true and it does very much put me in two minds about rewarding community participation in such a way at all.

  Posted on August 27, 2014 at 5:31 AM
  Last Edited: August 27, 2014 at 5:37 AM
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