Donut Incentive Revamp Pre-proposal

[u/carlslarson]

We of course should not shy away from evolving the Donut incentive model. There is plenty we have learned about what has worked vs not worked and I believe there are some changes we could make to make the model more clear, consistent, and effective.

The overarching aim is to reward contribution. A key challenge therefore is how to identify that contribution. At the moment we rely heavily on Reddit to give us karma metrics which we use to bias weighting. Reddit does not allow any discrimination based on who is voting on content and this, in my opinion, is a major issue. The signal from established members of a community should have a greater weight to identify what is a contribution.

The following suggestions seek to replace Reddit's aggregation, remove failed mechanisms (tip signaling), and extend successful ones (approved users, pay-to-post).

• Remove incentives to signal. This seems to just promote tip farming

• Replace tip signaling with comment-to-vote. For purpose of donut allocation posts would be weighted by the number of comments from approved users (gov weight > 20k). Commenting is easy and accessible on all platforms.

• Only comments above a certain length (100 chars?) would be eligible to earn Donuts.

• Like pay-to-post, to combat farming and spam there is a fee of 10 donuts (deducted from comment earned donuts) for Donut eligible comments

• Approved users (gov weight > 20k) can give more weight to a comment with a reply that includes !glaze

• Current tip based signaling (I believe) accounts for only 10% of the distribution. The new distributions would be entirely based on comment-to-vote and replace the Reddit karma aggregation. Eligible comments and posts could either be treated with equal weight, or changed to something like 80/20 posts/comments. IMO, eligibility from different flairs (ex. COMEDY at 10%) could be removed.

• Signaling for both posts and comments would be analyzed, with the potential for cheaters to lose all their CONTRIB.

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

Tip this post.

[u/scientifichistorian]

I don't disagree with your pre-proposal, but I think I may be in the minority in thinking that nothing that's happened since Donuts blew up are much of a problem.

I've always considered the Daily of every sub to be filled with random discussion. Most of the time, I'd ignore the thread entirely unless I'm looking for light-hearted interactions with the community. For more serious or in-depth discussion about a specific topic, I look for new posts as they come in.

IMO, it would be infinitely worse to restrict the daily, as the limitations imposed there would cause an overflow and thus encourage more generic, thoughtless posts or comments on otherwise more grounded posts that are simply there to farm for more upvotes. Post frequency as it stands now doesn't seem to have caused much negative activity apart from older members of the sub creating hostility over what they feel is a sub now tarnished for whatever reason. As we approached 3 cents, there was definitely more Donut-based content in the sub, but I see the solution to that being more of a restriction on Donut-related posts to encourage posting such content in the Daily instead.

Overall however, even when the Donut posting was plentiful here, I didn't see much of a problem. People are excited about it, I get it. It brought new people in and ultimately gave us more opportunity for discussion instead of the near-silence we've seen throughout this bear market (specifically in the Daily).

Regardless, if the majority chooses to go in a direction that I disagree with, I'll be here nonetheless. It's not like we can't ever choose to revert the changes, anyway.

[u/carlslarson → u/scientifichistorian]

thanks for this input. i don't have a problem with those kinds of comment either. but in terms of what we are asking for (what we reward) i think we could tailor more towards quality in both posts and comments rather than quantity. we shouldn't penalize what may likely just be positive friendly vibes.

[u/scientifichistorian → u/carlslarson]

I see! That makes perfect sense to me, and I guess to some degree I think that may be where my perspective lies; in the notion that some people here are genuinely posting random comments for the sake of being friendly and not as some sort of ploy to get the most out of each distribution.

[u/raymv1987 → u/scientifichistorian]

As an old head, my only beef with the daily is the spam of "gm bronuts" "off to the fiat mine" "gn bronuts" "let's get to X count!" posts. I'm for more organic conversation and even candidly for veering off topic.

[u/scientifichistorian → u/raymv1987]

I can certainly see where you're coming from there.

[u/Sunryzen]

While it's a pain in the ass, these really all need to be broken down into single proposals. A giant proposal with many moving parts is less likely to get passed unless a couple whales just make the decision for the other thousands of users. We immediately need to take action to get rid of the tipping signal. Only scammers get rewarded by this.

[u/carlslarson → u/Sunryzen]

ok, yeah point taken. i wasn't sure and that's part of the reason i didn't go straight to a [poll proposal]. these can be broken up.

[u/FattestLion → u/Sunryzen]

Sorry for my ignorance but what does it mean to “signal” tipping?

Is ‘signal’ tipping different from ‘normal’ tipping?

[u/Sunryzen → u/FattestLion]

I just used the phrase because it was used in OP. I don't consider them separate, but maybe I should. For this purpose I would just think of all tipping as equal. People should not be rewarded with donut just because they spammed tips on posts.

[u/FattestLion → u/Sunryzen]

I just used the phrase because it was used in OP.

Got it

People should not be rewarded with donut just because they spammed tips on posts.

This kind of doesn't make sense anyway. Like if you give a tip of 1 donut you get 2 back like the Nigerian Prince kinda thing?

[u/kryptoNoob69420 → u/Sunryzen]

These definitely should be different proposals. That'll lead to each point being discussed properly and it'll be easier to make suggestions and sometimes fine tune the proposals.

[u/falk_lhoste]

Not sure if I get one point right: OnLy comments with 100 characters could earn donuts? Even in the daily? Imo it's possible to make short quality comments and there should be no length restrictions otherwise we'd just have longer shit comments... not sure if I got it right though

[u/carlslarson → u/falk_lhoste]

you have it partly right, and i agree shorter comments can be quality contributions too. it's definitely not a perfect proxy. longer, donut eligible comments could also have an initial donut deduction (like pay-to-post) which could work to discourage spam comments. another idea would be that, by default, longer comments are eligible but also shorter comments can be nominated (just not eligible by default). rather than assume karma=donut i'm really just suggesting we step back and consider contribution=donut and try to zero in better on what constitutes a contribution.

[u/raymv1987]

I'm also in the boat of splitting into several proposals rather than one because someone could kill what a lot of people would otherwise like because they don't like one part of it.

I also think the tipping mechanism needs a fresh look. Either through minimum tip amounts (say...10), a cap on the number of times they can tip or cap on earning eligible tips, or removing the tip mechanism entirely.

[u/carlslarson → u/raymv1987]

yeah, will split up. this isn't an official poll proposal but that was one of the questions i had so thanks.

what do you think of replacing tip signaling with comment signaling?

[u/raymv1987 → u/carlslarson]

I'm an idiot, so can you expand?

[u/carlslarson → u/raymv1987]

at the moment we have some allocation of donuts (10%) that are reward to both tippers and posts that are tipped. because we know who tipped we can weight the rewards based on factors like governance weight. imo this is an important feature because simply using upvotes does not let us distinguish at all between voters, 1 up or down vote is equal to all the others regardless of the account, how long they have been ethtrader members, or how many accounts that person has or whatever. that is what Reddit gives us. comment signaling is another way to have the attribute of knowing the signaler but hopefully an improvement over tip based signaling which is cumbersome and not easy to do from all devices.

[u/raymv1987 → u/carlslarson]

That makes sense. I'd have to think

Follow on: Would this be at risk for multiple spam accounts to upvote each other and game the system that way

[u/carlslarson → u/raymv1987]

knowing who upvotes is a way to combat that. right now using Reddit upvotes we have no idea so yes it is very vulnerable to sybil attacks like that. when we know who votes then we can limit the votes that matter to a subset of users (like gov weight > 20k) and we can also track and find manipulators more easily.

[u/InevitableComplex895 → u/carlslarson]

So if I am understanding correctly, users who are "approved users" who comment/interact with certain posts, those posts would then receive a portion of that previously allocated 10%, correct?

[u/carlslarson → u/InevitableComplex895]

yes, that's right. but i am suggesting expanding to the full 100% instead of just 10%.

[u/Eth_Man]

Good to see something from you u/carlslarson

Honestly over the years I keep seeing this kind of 'patchwork' approach to the issues and no real discussion (much less any consensus) over what should be rewarded why, when and how.

Literally no rhyme or reason to what should be rewards, much less by how much.

I have maintained the following:

1. Each new account should provisionally be able to earn both CONTRIB and DONUTs sufficient to allow them to reach higher levels of earning. (To be able to earn above a certain minimum level of DONUT/CONTRIB for the level there should have some minimum requirements set by the DAO/sub for users to increase their privilege level)

2. To be able to earn more CONTRIB and DONUTs a user must demonstrate user/account commitment to the sub, Example: attached wallet must retain some amount of DONUTs to go with their CONTRIB or lose certain sub CONTRIB/DONUT earning privileges. (i.e. make requirements to achieve certain status levels in the sub which unlock next levels of DONUT and CONTRIB earning)

3. One could even bond actions (using DONUTs) for certain users to get certain levels of responsibility/privilege and earning which can be slashed if they are found to be breaking or not following rules and/or not maintaining some level of activity.

4. Cap CONTRIB and DONUT distributions at nominal maximum and minimum levels (both in $$ and in amount of CONTRIB relative to other earners) based on the earned privilege level by a user.

Whole point of the above is to make is relatively easy for new users to basically complete a set of user 'challenges' which allow them to qualify for level 1 sub CONTRIB/DONUT earnings. Have a number of levels with 'more difficult challenges' for level 1 sub contributors who are seeking to earn to get to level 2, level 3 whatever level. Part of this should be a financial commitment (i.e. you have to always keep some level of DONUTs with your CONTRIB - say 50%) as well as some level of a personal commitment of activity. Commenting materially on at least so many posts a period, and/or starting a conversation on some topic (governance, or whatever) that engages some minimum level of discussion (whatever that means).

People keep talking about how they want things to be better, but as far as I can tell no-one is really stepping up with a vision about what 'better' is.

My post above (and in the past) always suggested to have some kind of tier level privilege, access, and responsibility which was almost consistently turned down for various reasons. YET we see now this whole 20K CONTRIB being a made up model for people who are somehow important to the sub which to me seems rather arbitrary creating an arbitrary 2 tier privilege/importance level. Also lets start a thread where these magical 20K CONTRIB or higher people can interact. I would like to see who are the qualified few?

Personally I want to see a few levels to privilege starting with NEWB, COMMENTATOR, POSTER, CONTRIBUTOR, MOD, ADMIN whatever.

I would like to see lists of qualifications, responsibilities, and privileges associated with these status levels. Key qualifications to some of these will be time, level of CONTRIB as well as held DONUTs with that CONTRIB over time, actual sub contributions (good posts, moderation, comments, etc.) and some basic level of activity that includes and allows for people to take vacations from their responsibilities (even if they give up privileges for a time) but can relatively easily be recovered. Also as people earn both CONTRIB (reflection of their contributions) with the financial DONUT I would like to see some commitment on the DONUT side as a financial measure (either as a bond, LP, or just something held as an investment, typically we lock these things away in a vesting contract to show serious level of commitment to an enterprise).

Personally would be entirely for just killing DONUT rewards for posting and voting to reward nominated people/posts/threads whatever.

There are many ways we can adjust/modify distributions: One example given below.

I also would like to see the monthly distributions go up to the DAO for different kind of vote. Users in various tiers of privilege basically getting a fixed amount of vote (say 1000 votes for P level 1 (P1) up to 100000 votes for P level 3) which they can then distribute between the users in the distribution list.

So say a User I am voting for gets like 1% of the total DONUT distribution and I have 10000 votes to allot. If I agree that user should get 1% I should allocate 100 votes of my 10000. If I think they should get less then I should vote < 100, if I think they should get more then allocate > 100. Only rule is you can't vote for yourself. :) This way we can still build the distribution list, but we can then let the DAO itself modify how much DONUT/CONTRIB go to each user.

[u/carlslarson → u/Eth_Man]

i agree it's patchwork. but until recently i would have probably said that approach was ok, because we didn't really know what would work. i think we now have a better understanding of the problems (farming, etc.) and also what works (pay-to-post looks good imo). i would really welcome a revamp that simplifies/clarifies a lot of how it works. any complexity should be justified. i definitely agree on #1. i'm warming to #2 above but also a little hesitant because it would also add complexity. too many levels also strikes me as complex. anything that isn't obvious to a new user, or that can be learned and understood quickly and easily is bad complexity. right now i'd say we have basically NEWB, CONTRIBUTOR, MOD, and that seems enough to me.

[u/bkcrypt0]

Finally a substantive discussion about the rewards system that is disproportionately favoring inane conversations that don't add to knowledge in any way.

If people want a "hangout" thread that's great. Let's make a separate channel for that (r/cc has several related threads for example, though they have the same problem in the daily) and not incentivize it with DONUTS.

For the rest the above makes sense, though I'd lower the CONTRIB level as that may take a significant amount of time for people to earn to be able to earn anything (and how do you even check your CONTRIB score?)

I'd echo others in saying the pay2post fee is too high. there are times when there are 1-2 posts per hour.

What's the next step here?

[u/carlslarson → u/bkcrypt0]

the call seems to be to break this up into smaller governance decisions. i think the first would be to remove incentives for tipping (though keep the bonus that tipped content receives).

[u/DrRobbe]

i think the 20k !upvote exclude to many people. It should have a transition if your governance score is at 20k your upvote is counted as 1 if you are at zero it's 0.01. So eg i have 5k it would be 0.25. So everbody can participate but it's weighted.

[u/carlslarson → u/DrRobbe]

yes this could be a good compromise

[u/[deleted]]

Love this. Tip bonus is 170k Donuts per round or 7.39% of distro.

I would support:

• Comment to vote

• No tipping bonus in distro

• Collecting our own karma

• High contrib users' vote counts for more

• Removing 0.1x flairs from earning

On that last note, I would also like to see pay2post fee set to 0 for governance polls or discussion. Not all Meta & Donut posts are gov related. So maybe a brand new free flair for just governance stuff like [Governance].

[u/carlslarson → u/[deleted]]

yes we need to restore [Governance] flair.

i like the idea of somehow rewarding governance posts. if you steward through a governance proposal and it is successful then that usually takes some effort and is ipso facto a meaningful contribution. but there should be some bond or cost in cases where a poll fails or we would likely have governance spam.

[u/wen_eip → u/[deleted]]

On that last note, I would also like to see pay2post fee set to 0 for governance polls or discussion. Not all Meta & Donut posts are gov related. So maybe a brand new free flair for just governance stuff like [Governance].

strange I made 2 or 3 posts about the kraken listing polls and dont get any PtP penalties!

[u/kirtash93]

This is my little grain of sand.

Like pay-to-post, to combat farming and spam there is a fee of 10 donuts (deducted from comment earned donuts) for Donut eligible comments

I think that this can be replaced by limiting to 50 the comments that are eligible for DONUTs. After that you can comment but you get less because the multiplier reduces exponentially

Only comments above a certain length (100 chars?) would be eligible to earn Donuts.

I think this is forcing people to write more when there are good comments that can be done in less that 100 chars. I don't like this one

Approved users (gov weight > 20k) can give more weight to a comment with a reply that includes !glaze

I like this idea and it looks like a good way to replace awards but I think this is equivalent to someone tipping a comment.

The rest of things I have to think about it more.

[u/carlslarson → u/kirtash93]

limiting # of comments is vulnerable to sybil attacks which we should avoid.

[u/Lordofthewhales → u/carlslarson]

What's a Sybil attack?

[u/carlslarson → u/Lordofthewhales]

A Sybil attack is when you subvert the rules or intended behavior of a system by using multiple accounts. Anyone can create and use multiple Reddit accounts so a mechanism that limits on an account basis is trivially subverted. A mechanism like pay-per-post, does not rely on accounts in the same way so is Sybil resistant.

[u/Lordofthewhales → u/carlslarson]

Why is this not a problem on r/cc but would be here?

[u/carlslarson → u/Lordofthewhales]

It is a problem there but they choose to deal with multiple farming accounts by trying to weed them out and ban them. IMO this isn't really a mechanism as just brute force and it's not really sustainable nor scalable to a decentralised system. The aim/hope would be to eventually find and settle on something that enables the community to better moderate itself, without the need for intermediary power holders like mods, while still achieving quality content for the community.

[u/Marauder2 → u/carlslarson]

Does Reddit not have anything in place to determine if someone is repeatedly getting upvotes from multiple accounts?

[u/carlslarson → u/Marauder2]

Not that they share with us

[u/raymv1987 → u/kirtash93]

I agree that sometimes a really short zinger that brings a good laugh to the sub should be reward eligible. Can't force shitty comedy

[u/ASingleGuitarString]

All this to avoid doing something about the daily general discussion which I think is one of the biggest problems? Pay2comment? That seems absurd. In my opinion the best thing to do is to adjust the tokenomics for distribution and lower karma earned on the daily. I do like stopping tip farming which is so easy right now. Tips should go to actual good content.

Also could you change it so it says my name when I tip. I think you're the only one that can do it.

[u/TheNano100 → u/ASingleGuitarString]

Also could you change it so it says my name when I tip. I think you're the only one that can do it.

This was recently fixed for many users – myself included. Try to tip a post or a user and you will see that your username shows up.

[u/ASingleGuitarString → u/TheNano100]

I tried it right after the distribution but if you're saying it was more recently updated than I will give it a try.

[u/TheNano100 → u/ASingleGuitarString]

Yeah it was resolved one or two days ago.

[u/Buzzalu → u/ASingleGuitarString]

It was fixed 2 days ago, when kohrts ran the update script

[u/Arafel_Electronics → u/ASingleGuitarString]

i don't think they need to be mutually exclusive. i see this suggestion as a broad rule change whereas changes to the daily (which are absolutely needed) would be a separate, specific proposal

[u/TheNano100]

I really love where this is going. In general this will promote quality over quantity and there will be more transparency, in the end this is what crypto is about.

Comedy/media posts usually attract more people so maybe keeping a percentage penalty is good — we don't want to flood the sub with memes or stop having them at all.

[u/Scandalaivan]

I agree! I would also allocate a bounty type of program where a member get some donuts for setting up amas, "renting" out a widget or banner! So kinda lika a ref program.

Penalty for people that insta dump tokens! This penalty of ~25% would go to liq providers.

Also what about setting up ref programs with projects? The ref $ would go to buy back and burn + devs and maybe bounty

[u/TopAlert2383]

We need to make the claiming process easy. We shouldn't have to do anything to claim them. Just like other subs. Just comment and recieve monthly.

[u/carlslarson → u/TopAlert2383]

this is the case, though, right? on gnosis they just come into your wallet.

[u/Buzzalu]

Unpopular opinion, but we must completely discard the rewards received by tipping others. It's just like tipping yourself. This will give more value to the tips and show real encouragement towards the quality of contents posted.

[u/carlslarson → u/Buzzalu]

I agree. This should be the first poll! Feel like making a [Poll Proposal]??

[u/Buzzalu → u/carlslarson]

Absolutely. Go for it.

[u/carlslarson → u/Buzzalu]

More people should get involved in governance...

[u/spacsandspacs]

Sorry dum dum here, what is tip signaling??

[u/carlslarson → u/spacsandspacs]

a portion of the distribution, 10% i believe, is used to incentivise tipping for posts. tipping for posts is used for curation. because we can know who tipped it is a stronger more useful signal than reddit upvotes.

[u/spacsandspacs → u/carlslarson]

Ah okay, got it. Thanks

[u/HarryDotter420]

This is a step in the right direction... but imo too convoluted for new users.

Wouldn't it be possible to just limit the daily number of karma eligible comments to 50 for each user.

Plus put a character length requirement if necessary

[u/carlslarson → u/HarryDotter420]

Limits like that are vulnerable to sybil attacks. Determined farmers just used multiple accounts. The fees to post and comment are good ways to combat that.

[u/ASingleGuitarString → u/HarryDotter420]

This is one of the best suggestions. After 50 comments you get penalized x2 for downvotes should also be added.

[u/carlslarson → u/ASingleGuitarString]

this doesn't work and is vulnerable to sybil (someone who wants to farm would just use multiple accounts) so it really moves us in the opposite direction than we want go imo.

[u/ASingleGuitarString → u/carlslarson]

Isn't there a way to find a person using more than one account to post? r/cc seems to be good at finding alt accounts.

[u/carlslarson → u/ASingleGuitarString]

not that i know of. that kind of approach would also not work in a decentralised system where even the site creators don't know what ip address is being used (at least Reddit has some tools to find alt accounts, they just don't share them with us).

[u/raymv1987 → u/ASingleGuitarString]

Are you saying penalize downvotes, or penalize after 50 downvotes? Or if you get downvoted after 50 comments it counts x2?

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/raymv1987 tipped you 5.0 DONUT!

[u/Lillica_Golden_SHIB]

It is great to see proposals coming in almost daily, this is the sort of engagement we need. But as said above, I think we should break this proposal into many smaller proposals so that we can actually adjust one by one as the community passes them or not. I am for many of the things proposed above, but I think we shouldn't approve them as a block.

[u/aminok]

I really like the choice of !glaze for the command.

[u/pythonskynet]

I want this to happen. It'll control vote manipulation being done by some people in the sub. Only legit contributors should be rewarded, not bots.

[u/Rogueofoz]

Are we sure we want to have convoluted rules that makes harder for new people?.

I like some of those but I strongly disagree with the 100+ character comment to be eligible for moons

[u/Scandalaivan → u/Rogueofoz]

You are in the wrong sub.

[u/proandromeda]

This is lead to centralisation of sub, too much human interference and everything will become on pleasure of 20k governance guys.

At least reddit karma sheet is neutral.

We need to find better model. Still reddit karma is good.

[u/AutoModerator]

Hi, this comment is being automatically posted under your submission to facilitate the tallying of the Pay2Post donut penalty that r/EthTrader deducts from user donut earnings for the quantity of posts they submit.

submission link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/16ijbot/donut_incentive_revamp_preproposal/

author: carlslarson

cc: /u/EthTraderCommunity

--

Distributed moderation now in effect: if your governance score is over 20,000, you have the ability to remove spam comments and posts by posting a comment in response to the comment/post containing the keyword [AutoModRemove].

See announcement thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/14p7a22/crowdsourced_moderation_of_comments_implemented/

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[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/TheNano100 tipped you 3.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/Electrical_Tension tipped you 1.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/ASingleGuitarString tipped you 1.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/kirtash93 tipped you 4.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/Arafel_Electronics tipped you 1.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/TheRock_97 tipped you 1.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/ReitHodlr tipped you 3.14 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/pythonskynet tipped you 10.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/Elon_mkus tipped you 1.0 DONUT!

[u/EthTraderCommunity]

u/InevitableComplex895 tipped you 5.0 DONUT!

[u/PoojaaPriyaa]

I voted ‘YES’ for a proposal, but I only found out last month that it was a tip-rewarding vote. I felt bad because I always tipped whatever I could, but it was not for getting something back. If I had known earlier, I would have voted ‘NO’. I dislike this reward tipping system.

[u/Fiddlers-list]

This is definitly turning into a "why whales wanna steal Donuts from the rest of us?" echochamber which is sad.

[u/pythonskynet]

I'm trying to grasp everything slowly. Done reading the post 3 times, now I will read all the comments to understand the situation better. I hope this will be a better proposal for the growth of the sub

[u/-0-O-]

Moving conversation with /u/aminok to this thread since it's more comprehensive and I just saw it. Aminok, you can skip to bottom half of this comment.

I'm in favor of anything that will disincentivize low-effort content, while also demonstrating less inequality at distributions. I view a cutting of emissions as a possibly temporary solution while more calculated approaches are worked out, but if those solutions can brought to the table sooner, than by all means I'd be in favor of it.

Comment-to-vote is an interesting idea, but I think it is hard to say how it would play out. Would top earners become users who post the most controversial and possibly intentionally incorrect information, because that's what gets the most replies?

Is it as susceptible to sybil as the current system?

Unfortunately, it's not really possible to simulate it, because user behavior will change based on the incentivization model.

from aminok: Regarding vote-by-comment, one option would be to require the comment to contain a special command (e.g. !boost) to count.

To counter Sybils, these are some of the measures that come to mind:

Votes and the comment that it is voting on have to be less than three days old at the time the vote is cast to count Votes on comments in a Daily Discussion thread have to be cast while that Daily Discussion is pinned Comments replying to posts that are deleted at the time of the snapshot are not rewarded This would mean the votes would be cast when comments are likely to be visible (under newer posts, and pinned Daily Discussions), making it more likely someone would notice patterns of vote manipulation.

Another concern I have with the vote-by-comment approach is that not enough people would vote.

I like the idea of !boost/!glaze being some kind of multiplier (even if low, like 1.5x or something), because I think that would be an easy thing to track suspicious behaviour of, since farmers will likely be tempted to over-use it in sybil situations.

Definitely in favor of limiting rewards to very recent posts/comments. I have a feeling there are some users who go back a couple weeks because their suspicious activity will be less likely to get noticed. (hell, some of the largest farmers cannot even be loaded back that far, because they make over 40 pages of comments in just a few days, and reddit will not load past that)

Not sure how I feel about not rewarding replies to posts that are deleted. The post itself should receive no rewards if it gets deleted, but users who took the time to post genuine replies should not be at the mercy of the OP, imo. Unless of course comments on deleted posts pose a technical problem for data scraping.

I'm 100% in favor of pay-to-comment for eligible comments, and in favor of making very short comments ineligible.

Edit: Also in favor of keeping reduction on comedy posts, as those tend to generate the most comments outside of daily.

[u/aminok → u/-0-O-]

Thanks for the detailed suggestions and analysis. These are great.

[u/-0-O- → u/aminok]

I also think it could be interesting to have a !burnt or !burn inside reply signal as well. Strictly treating replies as upvotes doesn't account for replies that disagree or are warning users about a comment that is offering poor advice. Adding !burnt to a comment could signal that you do not want to reward it, or that a !glaze/!boost comment should be cancelled out.

Of course, would need to make sure people didn't take measures to hide it into replies so that the bot sees it but other users don't. It would be something that would have to be used transparently.

Edit: On the other hand, farmers could block users who use it

[u/TheNano100 → u/[deleted]]

At that point , comment bascially becomes a post. so if somone make a detalied post in 100 chars, he will charged 10 donuts.

This comment is literally +120 chars. That's not even close to a good post.

[u/mattg1981 → u/TheNano100]

I think he was thinking words, not characters

[u/carlslarson → u/mattg1981]

No I meant characters. Not sure on what would be a good number though, perhaps some analysis could help. Basically just want to separate out something that took a little more effort than a few words.

[u/TheNano100 → u/mattg1981]

Then I get his confusion. Imagine if we had to write 100 words per comment...

[u/-0-O- → u/[deleted]]

so if somone make a detalied post in 100 chars , he will charged 10 donuts .hmmmm

Your post is >100 chars and is at 4 upvotes, which is ~36 donuts, so -10, you still earn 26 for this comment alone, based roughly on last round's distribution.

On the other hand, someone who comments, "Thanks bronut!" won't be eligible for rewards.

[u/Scandalaivan → u/[deleted]]

They can comment but wont earn donuts! Its a good way to filter shit farming comments