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I've also had the worse experience, where I try something I found in a middle-aged community post, and it's already outdated, so some kind of highly visible "Aged Content" marker is smart.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

[Dave Liao]

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

Depends on the question. 🙃

I wish that there was a button "I have this question too" that users could click.

[Anne Saunders]

@Dave Liao That's how I use 'Like" on questions, but a separate option is also a good idea.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for your feedback, community!

@Rudy Holtkamp my idea was to disable the gamification features for older threads, not to remove the threads.  To the point from @Anne Saunders I would not necessarily want to remove older ones, as I occasionally observe things in Jira that seem to have changed and thus refer back to my saved links to compare / refresh my recall.  Several people note valid points of a very old question with no responses likely has limited value...and, could at least be automatically locked or deleted to reduce clutter.  This would both reduce confusion from the rapidly changing Atlassian features and manage my earlier concern about farming on the old territory.

@Stephen_Lugton -- I am all for the voting mechanisms, particularly to support the various tree planting and other initiatives from Atlassian.  And, I really like the idea from @Dave Liao on replacing the upvote for questions with "I have this question too" and perhaps removing any gamification features for that type of upvote.  (That is, why provide a "reward" when someone has the same concern?)  Making the change Dave suggests could also be used by product management to help measure similar concerns among community participants.

Finally, some enjoy the gamification features to fire their dopamine, seeking-reward cycle, providing them enjoyment.  But let's be honest: this is not just a forum.  Such platforms use long-known techniques to leverage human psychology at swarming human thinking to solve puzzles (i.e., questions).  While the Atlassian Community provides an excellent place to learn and...well...provide community, it is at its core a massive, labor pool to extend Atlassian's customer support team and product research by providing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per year in free labor.  Which is primarily why such platforms add gamification features: to keep people coming back.

Thanks again, and kind regards,
Bill

PS: I recently asked about opting-out of the kudos program and was told this is no longer possible after the large-scale, community platform updates last year.  The recommendation was to ignore the features when one does not want to participate.

[LarryBrock]

@Bill Sheboy - your thoughts are spot on with my own.  I will be championing them at the Atlassian Community Advisory Board level.  Thank you for articulating them so well and feel free to reach me here or via ACL Slack if you want to discuss further.

[Darryl Lee]

@LarryBrock Oh IF ONLY Bill would join us in the ACL Slack. >:-/

@Bill Sheboy If this kind of insight doesn't make you at least an honorary Community Leader Champion I don't know what does.

Anyways, what resonated most with me was you getting to the heart of the matter:

While the Atlassian Community [Forums] provides an excellent place to learn and...well...provide community, it is at its core a massive, labor pool to extend Atlassian's customer support team and product research by providing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per year in free labor. 

I added [Forums] there for clarity, because I do think Community programs like in-person meetings, etc. are slightly different. (Although also the same, since people are providing free labor, albeit with the complication that many Champions are also working for/paid by Vendors or Partners.)

But the part of the Community that you and I participate in most is right here. And yeah 100% we're saving Atlassian tons of $$$.

Although, I've thought about this a lot, and, at least in my experience, Atlassian Support does not have the depth of knowledge that many questions here require.

In one way, these forums take money away from Partners who would be providing answers like we do as part of their consulting services. (And yes, Atlassian keeps inching closer to doing the same with their Advisory Services and (I guess?) Enterprise Technical Support.)

On the other hand, would people on Standard or even Premium (👋) be willing to pay Partners or Atlassian just to ask their configuration questions?

I guess Atlassian would have to shut these forums down to find out.

And they're probably not willing to do that. Especially since these forums also serve as the de facto Release Notes Repository because their documentation/publishing process is apparently so convoluted/broken that PMs just end up registering for the Forum and posting their feature notes.

Ahem, but that's a discussion for a different soapbox.

Yeah, this isn't a game. It's free labor. Atlassian should fix that. :-D

[Darryl Lee]

BTW @Bill Sheboy just gave you a bunch of Kudos for this post. I think. I don't even know how that stuff works. :-D