Suggestion to improve community behavior

[#1]

TL; DR: Closing loopholes in the community gamification may reduce kudos-mining and encourage better people interactions.

Over the last year, and increasing in the last few months, I have noticed more and more kudos-mining behaviors:

• Apparent bot-driven, automatic liking of every single new post or question
• Copy-and-pasting multiple questions into AI tools, and then as quickly as possible, posting whatever it churns out as an "answer", with no regard for accuracy or reference to the sources
• Posting the same article content in multiple areas, posing as if each was new content
• Pouring through ancient posts with no replies, and posting anything as an answer to welcome a one-time questioner from years ago (i.e., necro-posting)

Some long-time members have stated, "come for the kudos; stay for the community". I fully support that philosophy: many people first arrive to ask a question or two, find value in learning and discussions, and stay to interact with people. That is, to join in the community.

Yet others seem to only be playing a video game to mine kudos. I wonder if some simple changes would help those to better participate with people, engaging in valuable discussions, rather than focusing on their game. Perhaps we could:

For posts older than three months, disable earning of kudos and badges for any interaction with the post: answers, replies, welcomes, upvotes, and likes.

Detect posts which seem to occur faster than a person's think time, marking them for review. For example, posting answers to multiple threads in less than a few seconds.

What are your thoughts on such changes?

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Great ideas, also remove old posts without replies (older then, say a year). 

Maybe we, the community, can brainstorm more ideas. But in the end Atlassian should create a signalling system.

[Anne Saunders]

Some kind of lockdown makes sense. 

I would hate for the old posts to be *removed*, because sometimes they're still valid, and other times they can be a a sanity check, a la "This used to work, right?"

I've also had the worse experience, where I try something I found in a middle-aged community post, and it's already outdated, so some kind of highly visible "Aged Content" marker is smart. 

90 days may be a bit short for lockdown, but not crazy for point mining and kudos-earning.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

I mean, collecting points is fun (talking as an ex-gamer 😅), but yeah - I agree. The game I've spent countless hours (talking around 10k in total) was mainly based on a points system, and at some point, it became a zombie playground full of bots. You couldn't even compete even if you played 10+ hours a day.

Anyway... I went a bit off the topic, some of the ideas from my side, based on previous experience:

• More rigorous system, especially when it comes to suspicious activity review
• Penalty system - this thing REALLY hits you if you're actually 'farming', lol
• Removing/locking of old posts is what I've suggested a couple of months ago; hope this will be implemented

It's only a forum in the end, so some would say it's not a big deal, but I definitelly get your point of view @Bill Sheboy 

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

About 2 years ago I reported a bug that allows for a really easy accumulation of kudos. It hasn't been solved yet....

[Susan Waldrip]

I would agree with @Anne Saunders that I wouldn't want old posts necessarily removed -- I learn and get help from posts that are even a few years old, depending on the subject (just like I learn/get help from posts about Jira for Jira Service Management). But I've noticed some similar community behavior and would support some limitations being put on the common kudos collecting methods. Maybe we can still "Like" a post even if we don't get points for it?

[Debbie Lindsey]

Perhaps we could benefit with adapting iHeartRadio's philosophy of their latest hashtag:  #guaranteedhuman 'Guaranteed Human': Audio giant iHeartMedia says real people, not AI personalities, are at the controls - Los Angeles Times

[Rudy Holtkamp]

If a post only have a question and no answers (replies) does it have value?

[Anne Saunders]

@Rudy Holtkamp At a certain age, no. I don't know how long people are willing to wait for a response, but I'm sure it's not very long.

[Andy Gladstone]

I really struggled between the Mic Drop and Truth Bomb GIF for this. @Bill Sheboy as always you are on the mark and I fully support your suggestions. My feed and notifications are bursting with Kudos mining posts.

[Stephen_Lugton]

Thanks for the thoughts @Bill Sheboy , I must admit that at certain times of year I'm guilty of liking whatever I can find (but not using a bot, just find-read-like), but that's mostly likes for trees!

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

The kudos have been either broken or inconsistent enough that I forgot they existed.