Re: [UG-ADMINS] Karma System

I step away from this list from a few days an i'm thrown under the bus,
such friends. :P

I really understand all the points here, and i think we are talking in
different directions. I'll just add my words as someone who has bridged all
communities.

What Paulo is describing here is more of a Open Source karma system then a
"member ranking". To this end I agree with Beth and Liz on not gamifying
members, but i believe this is not exactly what the aim is here and the
scope is a lot smaller then that, so i think that can dismiss most of the
concerns.

PHPSP was born as any other UG with a clear leadership group of 5 ppl, over
time some of these stopped doing much, some more picked up, and we kept
going. I have mentioned the "enabler" concept we used here in Amsterdam,
where we let anyone champions sub-projects and how this empowers and
motivates people. PHPSP took this to whole new levels when i left, mostly
due to the loss of momentum that came with it, it was mostly all on top of
Anderson by then, so fresh blood was coming in to help the UG keep going.

Opening up the "leadership" was a great way to empower the people and solve
issues that are indeed very much cause by "brazilian culture", using myself
as an example again, more then once was i criticized as "organizing the
group to promote myself and bla bla bla. We have some cultural issues with
people being more successful then us. But going into this model gave power
to people who wanted it and freedom for everyone to pitch in a take their
15 minutes of fame, which is amazing and unique, since it did not suffer
from the "thousands of raised hands, but no one shows up when works needs
to be done" which most UGs suffer from. This is where the passionate UG
organizer keeps the ship pointing forward.

However this also can lead to "too many cooks" and now what is needed to
keep this idea afloat is what Anthony calls a "do-ocracy" ... everyone gets
a vote, as long as he is making an effort in helping and "has skin in the
game". Hence this idea.

About the idea

I would make this a bit different, in my head all contributions have equal
value, from moderating, to posting to the blog, to patching bugs, to
organizing events. So for the purpose of evaluating if you are "part of the
do-ocracy" i would take all of this at equal weight, not the points system
described. But, since i'm the example, i would say that even not doing
anything directly (indirectly i have been pulling tons of strings and
giving leads to Anderson where possible), i think i have opinions that can
help a lot. So does everybody else, active or not, but if they are willing
to give their opinion, this already shows engagement, so why not implement
a weight system.

Emergency Team: group of people who can make the decisions that need an
answer right now. (this is where passionate leaders fit in)
Active team: based on the "do's" of everyone, these change over time and
their vote has weight 2 for example.
Group at large: everyone who can reach the website and voice an opinion,
votes have a weight of 1.

So when emergency calls need to be made, the emergency team (who are also
active team members) can make the call. For all other decisions you can do
it slowly and gather opinions from everyone, but letting the group of
"active people" execute and set direction. This way you still get the valid
feedback, but the people with skin in the game control the board.

Obvious side effect of this is the lost of momentum, since every decision
leads to overhead preparation.

Which is why i always fall back on: if you really want something to happen,
then step up and seize the moment. Does not matter if you were active or
not, if you are willing to commit to action X then come on down, get it
done and i'll stay out of your way and try to remove any blocking points.
Which is what AmsPHP does. People come with ideas, i try to assign
resources, sponsors and etc to it and let them run with it. The 4 board
members get "veto" power obviously but we rarely use it.

pheeww.. that was long.

Anyway, i still want my PHPSP shirt and i will still voice opinions, simply
cause i can't shut up... :D I miss y'all at PHPSP! And i'm very happy to
see how far it has come.

ok, done.

oh, i want to speak at #phpexperience too! :P

now i'm really done :P



On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 4:15 AM Paulo Eduardo <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I will try to answer everyone on the same e-mail you are typing much faster
> than i can (and that's awesome, I'm loving the feedback).
>
> Cal,
>
> Thank you very much for your support, I'm anxious to see the blog post you
> mentioned.
>
> Ben,
>
> I will try to explain shortly how we manage things here, we also were a
> community with central leadership, at least this is what they told me, when
> i knew the community and start to contribute PHPSP was is some sort of
> "transitional government" and this was one of the things that drag me into
> the community and many more people came on the same time, so we noticed
> that opening the community was bringing more and more people on, and this
> was one more motivation to keep on the same path. In the beginning of this
> path a feel people were willing to help and we could manage this manually,
> but today, and don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to overestimate PHPSP, we
> are almost 1000 member on Meetup and at least 30% of us want to contribute
> even more than we already do, we are in fact with a lack of jobs for so
> many people. So we can't just ask for people to contribute because the
> volunteers will be much more than is possible. But the problem is that a
> feel areas of interests attract more people than others, the community
> members here really like to throw events, so with we ask for event
> organizers we will have much more than we need, but on the other hand blog
> posts is not our best (we're getting better on this too).
>
> And is not just about voting rights, is more about giving back the help we
> receive from every member, and is about to guide everyone where this help
> will be more useful.
>
> Beth,
>
> The idea of resetting points from time to time did already crossed my mind,
> and is in fact a point to consider, may be it could also be one of those
> variable that i mentioned and every UG can try and find which way best fits
> its culture.
> About loosing administrative privileges, i think at some point could be a
> necessity, otherwise we will start to accumulate a lot of managers for the
> same role.
> The second answer is included on my answer to Ben.
>
> Jun,
>
> We also want to receive contributions from people that are doing it because
> they like, but i also don't see a problem if they do it (keeping the
> quality of course) because they are competitive people wanting to earn some
> points.
>
>
> Atenciosamente
> Paulo Eduardo
> www.pauloeduardo.com
> www.psyco.com.br
>
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 10:40 PM, Jun Notz <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I love all the idea and members would probably work to earn points but I
> > always believe that joining UG is a free will. And being active in the
> > group is also a choice. For me, I would rather have few members that is
> > willing to contribute in the group because they like what they are doing,
> > not having a huge number of members joining because they want to earn or
> > get something. In my opinion, joining UG should be fun and not a
> > competition. Just an opinion. :)
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jun
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 8:24 AM, Elizabeth Tucker Long <
> > [email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Paulo,
> > >     Perhaps you could reset the points every six months or every year.
> If
> > > point values are reset periodically, that will prevent less-active
> > > long-standing members from having more points than more-active newer
> > > members (like in the example in my previous post).
> > >     A few other questions I am wondering about:
> > >
> > > 1. Would you remove people from leadership/management roles if their
> > > points drop below a certain point? Like in the Rafael example, if he
> had
> > > gained enough points to be the Facebook manager, but then moved to
> > > Amsterdam so his points began to lapse, would he at some point lose his
> > > Facebook manager role?
> > >
> > > 2. If the point of this is to fill leadership positions and worker
> > > positions, wouldn't it be easier to just ask for volunteers? (Just to
> > make
> > > sure my tone here is clear, I am honestly wanting to know this because
> > I'm
> > > wanting to better understand the problems that the gamification system
> is
> > > solving.)
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Beth
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 4/27/15 4:56 PM, Paulo Eduardo wrote:
> > >
> > >> Hi Beth,
> > >>
> > >> I undertand your point, i also have a little afraid that the
> > gamification
> > >> can create and unhealthy enviroment with people fighting for
> leadership
> > in
> > >> the ranking. But that's the point of start this discussion try to find
> > the
> > >> correct way to avoid this scenario and incentivate the participation
> on
> > >> the
> > >> user group. The first thing i have to say about that is that not at
> all
> > >> someone who does not frequently participate on the user group should
> be
> > >> put
> > >> aside in any way, at least at PHPSP everyone can spread their voice in
> > any
> > >> subject, we are always open for suggestions and participation from the
> > >> most
> > >> new member of the communitie to the most old one.
> > >>
> > >> The point is that some decision should be make by a smaller group, we
> > >> can't
> > >> wait for the votes of everyone to make an emergency decision, we need
> > also
> > >> to give responsabilities to some member to not give a lot of work to
> > just
> > >> one. For example, today we have a group and a page on facebook, a
> group
> > on
> > >> meetup, a twitter account, a group and a organization on linkedin,
> many
> > >> mailing channels, an organization and a lot of repositories on github,
> > we
> > >> throw a feel events every month, and we need the effort and
> > participation
> > >> of people to organize this things. Who would manage the facebbok page
> > for
> > >> example? we can't give administrative rights to everyone, it would
> > cause a
> > >> complete mess with everyone posting things and deleting things
> according
> > >> to
> > >> their criteria. But we can't alsdo let all of these channels just in
> one
> > >> hand, the person would get nuts if have to manage everything alone.
> > >>
> > >> So thats the poont of points, i even think in do pontuation by groups,
> > for
> > >> example, facebook points will grant you administrative rights on
> > facebbok
> > >> pages, if you post a lot on the blog you gain administrative rights on
> > >> wordpress system, and all this points together give you disccount on
> > >> events, something like that.
> > >>
> > >> And about new members catching up the old ones that's the idea of
> > loosing
> > >> points if you is not active anymore. I didn't mean loose all of your
> > point
> > >> if you spent a week without participate, i mean progressivelly loose
> > point
> > >> with a lot of time (months at least) without any participation. Lets
> > take
> > >> a
> > >> real example, Rafael Dohms (sorry man for make you an example) he is
> one
> > >> of
> > >> the founders of PHPSP, but he now lives in amsterdan for quite a
> while,
> > a
> > >> lot of things has changed since he went, now imagine if he came back
> to
> > >> São
> > >> Paulo, i don't think he can participate in all the decision same way a
> > >> currently active meber anymore, mosthly because he will at least need
> > some
> > >> time to understand how things are now, that's the point of loosing
> > points
> > >> over time. That's doesn't mean he can't give suggestions or atendee at
> > >> some
> > >> event, these are rights of every member, even if meeting the group for
> > the
> > >> first time.
> > >>
> > >> And just to be clear, my idea was to make all these variables
> > configurable
> > >> for each UG, so everyone can adapt to the reallity of each user group.
> > >>
> > >> Atenciosamente
> > >> Paulo Eduardo
> > >> www.pauloeduardo.com
> > >> www.psyco.com.br
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>  --
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