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| You know what you doing... - Tuesday, March 08, 2005 at 12:33 p.m. |
As it seems to have become customary for me, here's another link to another interesting internet phenomenon, one that is much older than the numa dance.
TmsT's Zero Wing Rhapsody
The newgrounds page for all things AYB can be found here.
Talking about karma systems seems to be leaving me dry of things to say so I've decided to broaden my topic a bit by looking into other systems of forum/comment control. Here's the agenda:
Today: Internet trends and newgrounds forum
Next week: Deviant Art and WebCT discussion forums
Week after: MSN and Xanga communities
Week 12: Return to Karma
Week 13: Conclusion and Final post write up before submitting
Of course I'll be comparing everything back to karma which, in my opinion, is the simply the best (and thus, the future) form of commentary control.
The commentary on internet trends is off on a tagent however, I just felt like talking about it since TmsT's parody of the All Your Base flash movie brought up the whole trend again. In the official AYB headquarters (linky), an interesting insight is made: "'All Your Base' is pronounced dead several times every day, yet it's 15 minutes of fame continue for some reason..." and the new parody that I linked above proves this as I, and others that I showed it to, still found it funny and not old/abused/etc at all (unlike, for example, the Wazzup phase that North Americans went through). I akin this aspect of AYB to the fact that it is very complex and flexible. There are many phrases and images from the original AYB movie that can be adapted to many things (for example, "XXXPlayer set up us the bomb" is unremovable in a Counter strike server mod).
Perhaps another reason why AYB is still alive is because of its popularity, not only with the public in general, but with the internet community as a whole. From gamers to the average user. Newgrounds is perhaps the one responsible for the strong internet following. Its forums uses an interesting system that integrates both the forums and the flash portal, where anyone can submit a creative (or not so creative) movie.
In an environment that promotes silliness (like the numa dance and AYB), serious discussions on politics, and boasts overly violent games (like Chainsaw the children) it is easy how NG would be desparate to have a system to keep their forums manageable and clean. However, they do not use the karma system. This may be because the peers of the forums may not be or even less than mature than the original poster (and this turns out to be a great flaw in the karma system). Instead, Tom Fulp, one of the two brothers that run the entire NG site, created his own system of moderation.
Similar to the karma system of SE, there are points to be earned on NG and it can be done by making good posts, making good flash movies, participating in blamming (the down modding and destruction of bad movies and posts), and making good comments on flash movies. Some elements, such as the commenting system for the movies, is exactly the same as the karma system (a simple "Is this comment helpful? Yes/No" question to raise or lower points). The real difference the level system that people have.
The points earn by users of the site are tallied up as "experience points" and after gaining enough exp, they advance to the next level. Those with higher levels have more influence (again, similar to the SE system). Auto downmods (or lowering of points) for offenses such as improper language, spamming, and flaming, work to quickly identify and eliminate problem users, leaving a beautiful system that requires no extra moderators other than the Fulp brothers.
Of course, there is still peer based rating, but this system is reserved more for the portal than the forums. Large NG communities such as the Review Crew dominate here and help the Fulps to keep the portal under control.
In an environment that is highly dynamic and prone to attract, NG does a great job to retain control. This is perhaps why similar sites have not really appeared (another reason would be the fact that NG is just so awesome that no one else would think it worthwhile to try). For NG, a karma system would not do on its own. Just like how SE modified the basic idea of karma for their site, NG incorporated karma controlled commenting along with its levels and experience points and downmods so that they can custom create a system that would work the best for them.
Even though I am a great advocator of the karma system, I know that it has severe limitations in its ability to control users. However, I believe that it is a powerful enough system that almost any site can adapt it to its needs.
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Cheers,
MrScaryMuffin |
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