Incentivize permies.com with an altcoin?

Not sure how familiar the premies community is with Bitcoin or crypto currency but a surprising number of parallels are in both worlds. Just a shout out to Paul, since your a techie, I thought creating an altcoin that is just used in the premies forum for people to "tip" posts.

I realize you just got done sort of purging the malfunctioning parts of your fiefdom and are working on building out the ant village model......but I do think this sort of element could be really valuable to the premies forum.

Take a look at the way Let's Talk Bitcoin website did it.

Could be pretty easy to incorporate it with the existing rewards system.

Again, i know you're probably hesitant to take on more projects......maybe shelve it for a while.

FYI you can create your own tokens fairly easily on some rather new companies and nascent technology on bit coins block chain.....check out Counterparty

Cheers,

Chris

Like this? - PERMIES coin

Burra Maluca wrote:Like this? - PERMIES coin

Nice! should searched crypto currency in the forums first

seeing as it was posted last year it didn't seem to integrate well into the forums....thats why it could be interesting to write it in from the backend

I'm going to ask "Why?"

It sounds like a solution looking for a problem.

Fairly recently the option to flag posts was created so we could draw attention to them in the forums, based on the number of apples earned. There was a bit of a buzz over it for a few weeks, some folks used it, then it quietly slipped out of use.

Regarding integrating it to the back end of the forums - you are adding major complexity and time that would also make all subsequent work on the forum architecture harder. There would need to be a very clear benefit that could not be delivered in any other way.

Michael Cox wrote:I'm going to ask "Why?"

Well, really it was just an idea. And I do understand it would be rather demanding to integrate it. I don't know enough about how to design the code for such systems to know how simple or complex they can be.

I guess really it was just something I thought to put out there to see if the community would find it valuable. Granted enough value would need to warrant the workload for any one individual.

For example let's take the PERMIES coin

- It might make the apples, thumbs up and other incentive structures more attractive if they were redeemable for something of value...say a discount for the rocket mass heater videos or w/e Paul deems appropriate

- the community could express the value they receive from particular posts
- members of the forum could place bounties for possible solutions or sources for problems
- coins given for bringing in a new member to the forums, connecting someone for a podcast and such
- Maybe there are things to come in the Ant Village where a means of exchange other than say work for trade/work for food and this money can only be spent within Paul's Laboratory/Ant Village community and thus keeping the "wealth" in the community.

There are probably countless spinoffs to this. But again, this kind of thing takes a lot of care and attention to designing, and ultimately, crypto coins, and even the things they can be redeemed for, are not to be mistaken for the inherent value in permaculture projects themselves.

Anyways, maybe your right....more headache than its worth. Or maybe like I said, something to shelve for the future....maybe not.

Personally I think the intangible rewards system on the forum is working well. It is subtle yet meaningful. Apples are an obvious (and hard to earn!) measure of status in this community. They do give some, very minor, benefits such as being able to post in the ulcer factory and use flags on your posts but basically they are just bragging rights. They get earned by making valuable contributions to the forums, which is precisely the activity that keeps these forums running so well.

Removing apples also serves as an effective way to rap the knuckles of people stepping out of line - I should know, I've lost a few over the years.

If you start equating apples with tangible rewards you actually risk undermining and devaluing the apples. You start an equation going... "So 20 apples is worth a DVD, so my apples are worth £60.00. After all this time I've only earned that much? Well this place is a waste of time then... bye!"

I'm inclined to agree with you that the intangible rewards are working are working well..at least for what they were designed for. And maybe messing around with it would be a bad idea, especially where the forum is in its development.

And yet it is my opinion that the reward system is just limited...perhaps for good reason. Interesting questions to me are, if we tried it and it failed, what would the negative impacts on the community be? Are those worth risking given the opportunities provided by other potential benefits?

Michael Cox wrote: Apples are an obvious (and hard to earn!) measure of status in this community.

And in my case Quite puzzling. I noticed I got an apple, but going back through my posts, couldn't see which one the apple was awarded for!




I'm one of those who also think tangible rewards are not especially viable on a forum system, because then you get people starting to flood the board with attempts to not just be helpful and gain bragging rights, but to actually earn money. An activity that should be limited to Pay Per View Boxing, not forums.

Rhys - sometimes apples are not tied to particular posts. I think I have picked up apples in the past for reporting spammers.