My thinking is that participation in online communities is mostly incentivised through status and inclusion. Upvotes or informal status mechanisms enable someone to be perceived as a valued member of an online community that they identify with. But power and status are subtly different—moderators have the power to ban, admonish, censor, and sometimes signal-boost, but they don’t necessarily gain respect or status based on this—in fact, it’s often the opposite.
Creators acquire status based on the quality of their output (through formal (Karma) and informal (general reputation) mechanisms), but the power that this affords is usually quite indirect (extra upvoting power on LW and EA forums). This can potentially transform into real-world power over the moderators in the case of a coup or a protest, but I’d say that this attracts a different kind of person to moderation.
I’m not sure how useful the “duty vs. privilege” framing is, but the idea that some of these activities may be over- or under-incentivised is an important question. I’d have thought that moderation would be under-incentivised, which is why I’ve always been a bit fascinated by voluntary moderation. 4chan-type forums are the most bizarre example; it has always perplexed me that someone is taking this “responsible” social role to make sure that /pol stays “on-topic” despite the sub-forum being an anarchic cesspit, and probably getting influxes of hate from censored/ banned participants while doing so. But the existence of moderation suggests that there must be a type of person who genuinely enjoys the power that it affords.
Writing high-quality original posts is probably appropriately incentivized—there are enough people who like writing and it provides internal and external validation. Like with meta-analysis and replicating in academia, there are probably some curation tasks that are under-incentivized in most online spaces, but LW/ EA seem pretty good at that.
Some good thoughts here.
My thinking is that participation in online communities is mostly incentivised through status and inclusion. Upvotes or informal status mechanisms enable someone to be perceived as a valued member of an online community that they identify with. But power and status are subtly different—moderators have the power to ban, admonish, censor, and sometimes signal-boost, but they don’t necessarily gain respect or status based on this—in fact, it’s often the opposite.
Creators acquire status based on the quality of their output (through formal (Karma) and informal (general reputation) mechanisms), but the power that this affords is usually quite indirect (extra upvoting power on LW and EA forums). This can potentially transform into real-world power over the moderators in the case of a coup or a protest, but I’d say that this attracts a different kind of person to moderation.
I’m not sure how useful the “duty vs. privilege” framing is, but the idea that some of these activities may be over- or under-incentivised is an important question. I’d have thought that moderation would be under-incentivised, which is why I’ve always been a bit fascinated by voluntary moderation. 4chan-type forums are the most bizarre example; it has always perplexed me that someone is taking this “responsible” social role to make sure that /pol stays “on-topic” despite the sub-forum being an anarchic cesspit, and probably getting influxes of hate from censored/ banned participants while doing so. But the existence of moderation suggests that there must be a type of person who genuinely enjoys the power that it affords.
Writing high-quality original posts is probably appropriately incentivized—there are enough people who like writing and it provides internal and external validation. Like with meta-analysis and replicating in academia, there are probably some curation tasks that are under-incentivized in most online spaces, but LW/ EA seem pretty good at that.