YouTube actually pays with real cash people who upload popular videos. AFAIK the other organizations you mentioned don’t give away “karma points” in exchange of work.
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?
Volunteer organizations motivate and compensate their members in a variety of ways. Most of the ones I’m acquainted with do so via immaterial rewards, which was your original question.
With respect to the new goalpost of “karma points”—can you clarify what characterizes the set of “karma point” like reward structures? If the Catholic Church selling indulgences qualifies, I’m not sure why wikipedia granting wider edit privileges wouldn’t, for example… those things are certainly different from one another, but then again both are different from karma points. I’m not sure what differences are significant, on your view.
Quiz: what kind of organizations solicit hard work from their members offering only an immaterial reward as compensation?
Lots. Scientific publications solicit hours of work from reviewers, for every paper published, without compensation or even much in the way of professional credit to the anonymous reviewers.
Hrm? As a scientific reviewer, you get the reward of being able to list “reviewer for XYZ” on your CV. Which is an “immaterial reward”, probably about on a par with LW karma. Both are a mild point of prestige, but not really enough to boast about in isolation.
So, if reviewers are allowed to mention the fact on their CV, and this provides a significant, even if small, professional advantage, then that’s a real reward in the sense that it leads to material benefits.
I doubt that LW karma is of much help in that direction.
Quiz: what kind of organizations solicit hard work from their members offering only an immaterial reward as compensation?
Ah ok, keeping your browser logged in a website while attending to your own business is not hard work...
Wikipedia, YouTube, Reddit, any blogging service...
YouTube actually pays with real cash people who upload popular videos. AFAIK the other organizations you mentioned don’t give away “karma points” in exchange of work.
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?
What percent of YouTube uploaders would you estimate get paid more than, say, $1/month?
I don’t know, but I expect something like a power-law distribution over payments.
volunteer organizations
Do they award “karma points”?
The closest example I can think of is the Catholic Church selling indulgences.
Volunteer organizations motivate and compensate their members in a variety of ways. Most of the ones I’m acquainted with do so via immaterial rewards, which was your original question.
With respect to the new goalpost of “karma points”—can you clarify what characterizes the set of “karma point” like reward structures? If the Catholic Church selling indulgences qualifies, I’m not sure why wikipedia granting wider edit privileges wouldn’t, for example… those things are certainly different from one another, but then again both are different from karma points. I’m not sure what differences are significant, on your view.
Lots. Scientific publications solicit hours of work from reviewers, for every paper published, without compensation or even much in the way of professional credit to the anonymous reviewers.
so they don’t offer any reward. My point.
Hrm? As a scientific reviewer, you get the reward of being able to list “reviewer for XYZ” on your CV. Which is an “immaterial reward”, probably about on a par with LW karma. Both are a mild point of prestige, but not really enough to boast about in isolation.
No one cares about that. The real point of reviewing papers is keeping up w/ your field.
No one ever lists that in any field I know.
So, if reviewers are allowed to mention the fact on their CV, and this provides a significant, even if small, professional advantage, then that’s a real reward in the sense that it leads to material benefits.
I doubt that LW karma is of much help in that direction.
You addressed this in a rude way, but I think it was good this was addressed. It’s a shame this got downvoted.