Introduction

The article led me to write this: habrahabr.ru/post/233895

Direct appeal: admins Habra, please do not break us kayfomeshinu tightening the screws! Give a shake.

And now theses:
- evaluation of materials instead of personality assessment;
- The problem with participation in the active life of the community;
- fear and unwillingness to write articles;
- fun factor;
- Karma and scoop in the heads, incorrect leveling;
- kill the state in yourself.
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Before going to them, I want to remind an instructive story about a great outcome from one known resource to another. The story is perfectly illustrated by the following picture:

Evaluation of materials instead of personality assessment

There is one important thing that combines mailing lists (lkml, freebsd, apache, etc.), yuznet, slashdot, reddit, frinod, and other similar resources. It consists in the fact that it is not a person who is estimated, but his contribution. Somewhere it is estimated by magically useless Internet glasses, in other places they do without it, but the essence is the same: the contribution is evaluated separately from the personality of the person who made it.

In contrast to the leveling described below, this leveling is correct: writing something to the thematic community matters, and only what the person wrote. His gender, race, nationality, religious beliefs, social status, etc. do not matter. No At all. If you were an odd man from Nizhny Tagil (forgive Tagilchane, I mentioned your city exclusively for rhymes) skirt and living on the neck of my wife, if you sent a good patch, then they will consider it, if you ask a competent question, then they will answer it if You answered the question well - they will thank you.

This is a global principle, very, very important - it is not a person who is evaluated, but what has been done. And that's all.

The problem with participation in the active life of the community

In the newsletter can write, as a rule, anyone. In yuznet it was similar. On the slashdot registration is simple and you can immediately comment. On reddit for registration, even the mail is not needed, enter the username and password and everything, you can write. Frinoda is generally available through webchat, even registration is not necessary.

From this follows an interesting observation that even the developers of large and complex pieces do without known fencing. Let us ask ourselves the question: why should such enclosing be necessary at all? Why do it in principle? Offhand, considerations may be:
1. Elimination of unwanted participants.
2. Improving the quality of materials due to the fact that only those who deserve this right in some way participate. For example, in the sandbox.

Why these considerations are wrong:
1. Screenings are well done by moderators recruited from the community itself. Competent moderators with huge Banhammers but without watchman syndrome - and as experience shows there are many, a guarantee of success, self-regulation in the issue of admission to the community works poorly.

Why, oh why does it work badly? But why.

Suppose I am a mega-specialist, I know my field like no other. Lazily drinking beer and reading the mailing list at the same time I look at the Internet, and I see an article from my field. I go into it, I understand that I have something to say on the subject, and I am even ready to bother myself by climbing through the regwall, the only question is its height. I’ll think up a login, enter the email ... And then the HOP! This is not enough! Understanding that regwall is very, very high on Habré, I spit and go on to drink beer and talk about my topic on the mailing list.

2. Again, from the expert from the previous example spit and go write to a freer resource, yourself in a blog or somewhere else. Fencing does not work wherever you spit.

Eventually:
- good specialists are lost who could say something important and interesting in the case
- the problem of bad participants in other communities is solved, and moreover, it is well solved by moderators.

Fear and reluctance to write articles and comments

Again, imagine our mega-specialist. He can write an article on an English-language resource or his blog. But he is Russian and wants to write in Russian, and he also wants to write to a large community. I went to Habr, looked at the registration system, spat and left. Or even wrote a controversial article, or simply did not like someone, and he was leaked to karma. He can no longer write. Or he does not want to, it’s a shame after all, although they voted for his article 50 for, 60 against, and karma, yes, again, only in the negative. Or even wrote a controversial comment in another article, again, not even everything was against, 50 over 60 against, and again karma was merged. Evaluation means a person and not its merits. He spat and left. Forever and ever.

Small loss? Nothing like this. Is great.

He is not alone, there are many of them. And all these people Habr lost.

Fun factor

There is only one thing: to take part in the life of the community should be nice. Mistakes must say goodbye. There should be no wild pain in a certain place simply because someone did not like you. Reinforced concrete frame should not be. Better a little offtopic than many gone forever.

The picture at the very beginning of the article is about this and about what happens when written in this section is forgotten.

Karma and scoop in the minds, incorrect leveling

As I said came out, there are two types of equalization. Equalization is correct when only the contribution is assessed, and equalization is incorrect when the personality is assessed. I'm just going to quote my comment on the article, which prompted me to write this:

Here's the deal. For example, I almost do not read habr just because interesting technical articles like these are gaining 40 pluses and that's all. And therefore, there are few such articles here. I'm not even talking about the fact that the same amarao was blocked in ridonly, and for a long time I could not understand where his topics had gone, at first I thought that they had been lost at all. And there are many such cases. Habr, let's say, fenced. It is a fact. And further. But at one time I filled my karma with stupid translations of news, entered the then top 15 habrakhabra by rating for the month. Friends who wrote a sufficient number of interesting technical articles were not particularly noticed.

Think about it: there should be more than a hundred thousand people in Habré. Views from each of these articles are tens of thousands. As a result, a good article turns out 40 pluses. O rly? Something is wrong here. And I even have an answer to the question “what exactly”. He is like this: the official in our head really sits, so we invented this stupid system with karma that affects the ability to write articles and now m *********** on it.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING:

Karma as a number in my opinion does not represent anything bad from itself, BUT bad turns out due to the presence of stupid restrictions associated with this number. This actually turns it into an analogue of the ad hominem argument: “Well, you haven’t come out of the mug, and the article was written to me incomprehensible, now it's a minusan and you can’t write anymore.”

In the application of this number the main problem, but not in itself. I speak as a person who is not interested in karma, who for many years did not write on Habré and had at the time of writing this comment hundreds of karmaplus, i.e. I know well how to get this number, and I also know that it has nothing to do with the quality of the content.

Kill the state

As a result, with the current system of karma there is a fear. Fear of the community, fear of not saying something. Freedom of speech? What are you talking about, what freedom of speech. Everything is arranged so that it turns out: Stand all. All cost. All the alignment to the left. All are equal to the left. Everyone ku do twice. All twice ku do. Everyone write about android. Everyone writes about android. Well, and so on.

I exaggerate, of course, but the trend is evident.

A normal state has a separation. Citizens have freedom of speech. And freedom of action. Complete While the laws are not violated. For violating the law - the police. And on Habré it turns out that these two are completely different, I would say even the opposite, they are trying to assign functions to citizens. And everyone in the head gets such a small state, hence the title.

Results

1. For a good community, restrictions on writing articles and commenting are harmful, I tried to illustrate why.
2. Moderators are well-versed with people who do something fundamentally wrong.
3. You do not need to evaluate people. Evaluate only their contribution. Evaluation of people themselves is not just unprofitable, but harmful.
4. A huge number of successful communities working on the above principles, show that they are true.

PS I have a BIG amount of anecdotal evidence for everything written above.

PPS forgot important. When evaluating comments and articles, only the total score is shown. This is fundamentally wrong. There is a huge difference between (+ 90, -100 = -10) and (+ 0, -10 = -10). Especially in the comments it is noticeable. And yes, I know that you can hover the mouse and show how much specifically voted for and against, but this is hardly noticeable. Conflicting comments should at least be tagged in some way.