The point is that using social status to motivate people who provide content or do other useful work is very common; it’s arguably one of the defining features of what the press calls Web 2.0. Karma is just a (crude) way of quantifying that.
I first saw a similar quantification scheme on Everything2, an early competitor to Wikipedia that morphed into more of a writers’ platform when it became clear that Wikipedia was winning. They called it XP, though.
IIUC these reputation systems are based on user votes. LessWrong karma is usually also generated that way, at least until now. But if MIRI starts to sell LessWrong karma in exchange of work, then what’s the point of having a karma system? What does ‘karma’ represent?
If your answer is “user votes,” as your comment suggests, then I guess what it represents now is “a combination of user votes and MIRI work.” Is the latter less valuable a thing to represent than the former?
The point is that using social status to motivate people who provide content or do other useful work is very common; it’s arguably one of the defining features of what the press calls Web 2.0. Karma is just a (crude) way of quantifying that.
I first saw a similar quantification scheme on Everything2, an early competitor to Wikipedia that morphed into more of a writers’ platform when it became clear that Wikipedia was winning. They called it XP, though.
IIUC these reputation systems are based on user votes.
LessWrong karma is usually also generated that way, at least until now. But if MIRI starts to sell LessWrong karma in exchange of work, then what’s the point of having a karma system? What does ‘karma’ represent?
What did it represent until now?
If your answer is “user votes,” as your comment suggests, then I guess what it represents now is “a combination of user votes and MIRI work.” Is the latter less valuable a thing to represent than the former?