People Gaming & Trolling Blog Comments

The front page of today's blog comments is ridiculous: people have pumped three comments and just trashed everyone else who said anything.

Check it out:

+16

+17

+17

-11

-9

-11

-7

-8

-11

-11

-11

-7

-9

-13

-10

Nothing close to this has EVER happened before, and constitutes foul shenanigans. It's getting way too risky to post a blog comment. You make one comment, and on average, you lose 30 rep. For what?

That is... bizarre. Tom Ashley Any thoughts? :/

You lose rep for bad comments!?

Haha! Why yes: this very day I have lost 50 rep for my comment about the unpopularity of MS's Win8 on that front page. I'm up to -10.

That's why the comments in general are so overwhelmingly positive, because the system is designed that way.

There's a powerful incentive to post at all (which makes the site look good, because posts are seen as being engaging and drawing community feedback) with a +5 reward, and an additional +5 for every like (which encourages people to posts comments they believe others will look favorably on), and a -5 penalty for every dislike, which discourages people from posting critical comments.

Clearly, I wasn't sufficiently discouraged =P and so I'm being "punished" for making an observation which isn't explicitly pro-Scirra (just how the community behaves, and in accordance with the gamified system).

The problem today, though, is that certain individuals are going unreasonably beyond and piling on illogical punishment on not just myself, but everyone outside the first three posts, even standard "huzzah"-style posts which are normally ignored or receive +1 or +2, and to make it even weirder, the top three posts, regardless of their merits, have been massively pumped.

Clearly, I wasn't sufficiently discouraged =P and so I'm being "punished" for making an observation which isn't explicitly pro-Scirra (just how the community behaves, and in accordance with the gamified system).

No, no, please do go on.

Just be careful when attributing malice - perhaps the system just doesn't work as intended, and instead of fostering free speech like it was intended, it encourages mindless following due to a design mistake?

In this case, it needs fixing.

Just take away the anonymity then.

Q-uid pro quo.

One more thing, you can edit tutorials from other author.

Now it's really not amusing. People have between 14 and 16 dislikes, in many cases for making *positive* comments.

Can someone please delete my comment on the front page? I don't want to lose 90 rep because I have an opinion, and it's better not to post.

Looks like it has been fixed.

Nice forensics. Thanks, all.