No one reads the rules.

The other day, at the request of the peoples of the Internet, I started a small service for simple distribution of invitations (aka invites) to various correct services. I do not give links, not to promote the post, but there was one moment that surprised me tremendously. It is possible and even certain that everything is perfectly known to everyone who ate a dozen dogs in communication with users, but as a person who writes programs for nonhumans, this experience seemed interesting and new to me.

The service, although it will be the proud word “service” to bend, is just a small static blog generated by octopress and lying on S3 . Each post there is one of the services to which admission is by invitation only. In the comments, the distributing invites either puts them directly, or (if a direct invitation by reference / code is not possible) writes in the comments “And I have X invitations here!”. Those who wish to get this invite respond to the distributor, “Give me too, here is my email / twitter ...”.

All this was so conceived and described in the section "How it works."


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For invitational recipients there is such a rule:

You have a passive role - you saw an invite, took it, said “thank you” and maybe come back as a donor another time. No need to ask “but give me ...” - if the invite was, it was already given. Ask only when the donor asks “to whom ...?”.

This wording seemed to me to be extremely clear, but yes, I agree - some confusion can be found here, although as it turned out, it is not the point. After the launch of the first theme (the distribution of invitations in Prismatic), all comments instantly flooded with dozens of requests from those who wanted to invite, “but give me here at this address”. Those. exactly what I asked not to do. Thoughtfully looking at the statistics of visits, I found that about 10% of new visitors enter the "How it Works" section. The rest apparently have an inner understanding of how it should work and alas, this understanding does not coincide with mine. To bring the correct understanding to the masses, I began to sweep comments and wrote to all violators "read the rules." This method showed almost zero result. Violators violated faster than I managed to remove and exhort them.

Realizing that no one entered the instructions section of their own accord, I added a formidable post and attached it to the very top:



It seemed to me that not to notice it is difficult. I even added a translation into a simple language (the last abazaz) for the most dull. As a result, no noticeable effect. There may be fewer violations of the convention, but somewhere on the verge of statistical error.

The next step I added was the block “Important!”, The meaning of which I saw in the fact that it is in the sidebar and is visible on any page.



No, nothing helped, everything was overwhelmed with “give me” and under this pile to find those who really give it was very difficult.

And then I added this, at the end of each post, right above the elephant distribution section (comments).



And, as you can see, it added a disgusting red. Overcome my inner sense of beauty laid out this version on S3 and then a miracle happened! The activity of "violators" fell instantly and almost disappeared. From the initial amount left on the strength of 5 percent, and possibly less.

What conclusions to do from this? I have no idea. I do not fully understand this whole situation, but it became clear to me that something that seems obvious to me might not seem very good to someone. Common sense and the justified expectation that visitors will read the instructions, completely broke on the reefs of reality. It seems that as long as you don’t poke a person with your nose, you don’t repeat the procedure many times and you make this poking as intrusive as possible - there’s no sense.

PS If suddenly there is a "fresh" idea to add there and habr, carefully look at the pictures, there is already an answer.