So why not borrow a page from websites for solving this apparent conflict between user generated and publisher generated content?
In 1997, CmdrTaco aka Rob Malda created a website that would have a huge impact on the internet, and that still serves as the prototype for many new websites. slashdot is a news aggregator website where users contribute (links to) news, comment on contributed articles, and so forth.
Back in the day, slashdot was the most prominent, if not the only website of it’s kind — and the buzz it created was so huge that we got a new word from it1: when web servers hosting articles that a slashdot post linked to failed under the deluge of users driven there, they were said to be slashdotted. Indeed, it was a mark of pride to be slashdotted one day — it meant your website mattered.
Naturally such a focal point of the internet was bound to attract users that used the creation tools provided to them for various means other than the intended: they’d promote their own interests, insult others, and so forth. That, as well as the general principle of slashdot, also isn’t new in itself: news groups had these issues for a long time before the web grew in popularity.
And over the years, slashdot has explored many systems to combat such behavior, some of which are implemented by pretty much any personal blog these days. Including this one.
At first, the solution seemed to be to appoint certain members of the community to moderate content. Then it became necessary to moderate moderations. Now story submissions are moderated long before they appear on the website via the firehose.
The interesting part here is how you’re selected to meta-moderate. The selection principles are not exactly clear to me, but you have to fulfil at least two conditions: you need to have good karma, meaning your comments cannot have been downvoted by moderators too much. And you need to have actively moderated for a while.
This can be distilled to a general principle of different levels of content creation, where each level includes higher responsibilities towards the greater community. You unlock each higher level by a certain score of points in the next lower level, which you accrue through participation.
That system, at last, is free from notions such as commenting or moderation, and could be transferred to user generated content in a virtual world.
- Google is not alone, nor the first in this. [↩]
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Excellent post! I quite enjoyed that keynote by Bartle and the follow up discussions by the naysayers at f13.net. They seem a very bitter group of people that lot for some reason, which I can’t quite figure out why. But let’s not get districted.
Firstly, let me start by saying that I think you have outlined some exceptionally good points, and I agree with most of what you say. But this statement is one where we have a fundamental difference of opinion:
“Now some of my readers may cry out that virtual worlds and websites are two entirely different things, and comparing them is comparing apples to oranges. I disagree very strongly with that”.
I’m going to cry out here and argue that they are entirely separate entities, the main reason I see is really because of “immersion”; the totality of the user experience.
What do I mean by that exactly? Well to start let’s try to make a loose comparison if we can between the user experience of Slashdot and say, Age of Conan. Slashdot is a content presentation site that has levels of user participation that allow for a self organising system of power/responsibility for the moderation of this content. But that’s really all there is to it. Oh for sure, there is a very strong community built around this, as this is a group of people who share the same interests and social ideals.
Age of Conan on the other hand is a virtual world that offers a rich environment for exploration which can literally take months of real time to do. This goes way beyond anything a site content presentation experience can replicate. There is are also other things like an economy and guild infrastructure that are quite complex and organise themselves on very sophisticated social levels. Guilds themselves can evolve to a point where they are microcosms of real world militaries in terms of roles and responsibilities. There is even in some cases apprenticeships involved in bringing new guild members skill levels up so they become fully functioning members of the guild.
For me these are just a couple of reasons I can’t consider a social website in the same league as a virtual world. I will admit there are some similarities, yes, but when taken in their entirity, one is a website that presents content with social features, and the other is virtual world, and all that implies. They are simply too different to consider in the same basket of goods, let alone as apples and oranges.
I do think though this exploration into user generated content is going to produce some fascinating results. I fully expect that 99% of what will get made will be midly interesting and mostly incoherently put together. However, I am certain that there will be a top level of amateur designer that will produce some truly awesome content. And much like the best MUD wizards areas were always the most populated ones, I see the same thing happening in games like City of Heroes. A few people will make names for themselves and most likely will end up on the staff of the game design team. The best part for the game company is, they get to know the talent of the person before they sign them on, and they’ll get umpteen amounts of top quality quests/scenarios out of them before they pay them a cent. Mind you, the downside is someone is going to have to moderate the stuff that is made by the other 99% of the amateur designers. But perhaps that will all get done mostly by the user base themselves. Who can tell at this point? It’s going to be a very interesting next couple of years for MMO’s from this point! :)
Cheers,
Andy.
Andy… I tried to reply with a new blog post, but it kind of ended up in a different direction.
I do understand your point about immersion, but disagree somewhat again. A lot of what you describe isn’t about immersion to me, it’s about communication, socializing – which is something I did manage to get into in my newer blog post.
Immersion to me is more about not realizing that you’re not sitting in a chair any longer, or that you have to type in order to get your ideas across to other participants. Maybe we need to discuss this more, preferrably over a beer or two :)