In general I’m grateful that you’ve put a lot of thought into this, I think it shows in a high-quality forum experience. A few observations:
I agree that changing the default Karma settings is fine, in part because it’s easy for users to revert.[1]
As to churned forum users who forget the forum exists—EA is not for everyone. It’s ultimately some pretty serious questions and it attracts serious people. I know it’s your job to worry about this, but for my money, I do not think that such folks were likely to have generated the kind of content we’re looking for.
We face an unavoidable sensitivity/specificity tradeoff in terms of attracting users. Right now things are slanted towards specificity rather than sensitivity. I like that because I am unapologetically picky about how I spend my time. I’d be less likely tocontribute to a forum with a wider reach but a lower average quality of conversation.
Also I unironically like that you’ve changed the default but preserved the “Warning: Immediate karma updates may lead to over-updating on tiny amounts of feedback, and to checking the site frequently when you’d rather be doing something else.”
Hi Sarah,
In general I’m grateful that you’ve put a lot of thought into this, I think it shows in a high-quality forum experience. A few observations:
I agree that changing the default Karma settings is fine, in part because it’s easy for users to revert.[1]
As to churned forum users who forget the forum exists—EA is not for everyone. It’s ultimately some pretty serious questions and it attracts serious people. I know it’s your job to worry about this, but for my money, I do not think that such folks were likely to have generated the kind of content we’re looking for.
We face an unavoidable sensitivity/specificity tradeoff in terms of attracting users. Right now things are slanted towards specificity rather than sensitivity. I like that because I am unapologetically picky about how I spend my time. I’d be less likely to contribute to a forum with a wider reach but a lower average quality of conversation.
Also I unironically like that you’ve changed the default but preserved the “Warning: Immediate karma updates may lead to over-updating on tiny amounts of feedback, and to checking the site frequently when you’d rather be doing something else.”