Capping it is much better strategy, psychologically.
If you don't cap it, you're turning into a sort of intermittent random reinforcement learning pattern, decoupling effort from reward, something you don't want people to associate with. This's partially similar to type of hook that makes things addicting like gambling. Which'll mean boom and bust cycles based on reward pool amount, something undesirable. And fucking bots. You don't want mercenary bots having inflow/outflow based on pool either. Bot spam may be disproportionately higher in higher reward weeks vs. the steady distribution scheme. That would increase overall bot spam volume. the $ is enough conscious or subconscious hook for people themselves as is, we don't need to mix in the high variability in it as well. These two alone are enough reason to keep it capped.
I'd argue this incentive type is also incompatible w/ keeping overall quality optimal and how humans engage on such platforms. People have natural engagement pattern of engaging and writing about topics and discussions they're interested in which's something that's naturally variable. This'll create a perverse incentive structure in weeks w/ yuge reward pool people will be more engaging comparative to their base rate even thought otherwise they potentially wouldn't based on their interests, hollowing out the actual quality of their engagement/writing, diluting the overall meaning on the platform. And in weeks w/ smaller reward pool, they might feel less incentive in engagement and put less effort than otherwise they would've. That's another mechanism that'll skew and steal away from overall quality and concentration of it. These things happen automagically in people's minds weather they think about it or not. I made the assumption that the idea here isn't trying to recreate hallow addictive behavior that other platforms try to do.
Setting the dials just enough so people are positively incentivized about money here w/o turning it into the main thing that totally shapes and distorts behavior instead of being driven by what's actually happening here that's news and discussions is a delicate balance.
I may go even further than this and put forward the suggestion of hiding the pool amount? Do we even want the pool to be this big thing in people's minds this much? Why? Are we sure that this's overall better strategy?
Operant conditioning and schedules of reinforcement are fundamental concepts in learning psychology, and in psychology overall. It is one of the first things that should immediately come to mind with a question like this.
Capping it is much better strategy, psychologically.
If you don't cap it, you're turning into a sort of intermittent random reinforcement learning pattern, decoupling effort from reward, something you don't want people to associate with. This's partially similar to type of hook that makes things addicting like gambling. Which'll mean boom and bust cycles based on reward pool amount, something undesirable. And fucking bots. You don't want mercenary bots having inflow/outflow based on pool either. Bot spam may be disproportionately higher in higher reward weeks vs. the steady distribution scheme. That would increase overall bot spam volume. the $ is enough conscious or subconscious hook for people themselves as is, we don't need to mix in the high variability in it as well. These two alone are enough reason to keep it capped.
I'd argue this incentive type is also incompatible w/ keeping overall quality optimal and how humans engage on such platforms. People have natural engagement pattern of engaging and writing about topics and discussions they're interested in which's something that's naturally variable. This'll create a perverse incentive structure in weeks w/ yuge reward pool people will be more engaging comparative to their base rate even thought otherwise they potentially wouldn't based on their interests, hollowing out the actual quality of their engagement/writing, diluting the overall meaning on the platform. And in weeks w/ smaller reward pool, they might feel less incentive in engagement and put less effort than otherwise they would've. That's another mechanism that'll skew and steal away from overall quality and concentration of it. These things happen automagically in people's minds weather they think about it or not. I made the assumption that the idea here isn't trying to recreate hallow addictive behavior that other platforms try to do.
Setting the dials just enough so people are positively incentivized about money here w/o turning it into the main thing that totally shapes and distorts behavior instead of being driven by what's actually happening here that's news and discussions is a delicate balance.
I may go even further than this and put forward the suggestion of hiding the pool amount? Do we even want the pool to be this big thing in people's minds this much? Why? Are we sure that this's overall better strategy?
Operant conditioning and schedules of reinforcement are fundamental concepts in learning psychology, and in psychology overall. It is one of the first things that should immediately come to mind with a question like this.
*Whether or not lol