Comments on: What Would You Do for an eBay Star? http://blog.adamnash.com/2007/01/26/what-would-you-do-for-an-ebay-star/ The personal blog of Adam Nash Sat, 11 Feb 2012 06:00:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Adam Nash http://blog.adamnash.com/2007/01/26/what-would-you-do-for-an-ebay-star/#comment-2926 Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:02:16 +0000 http://psychohistory.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/what-would-you-do-for-an-ebay-star/#comment-2926 I totally agree, Ray. There is a double-edge to this sword – badging and rewards, even meaningless icons can and will drive activity. So you need to be careful which activities you reward.

I’m a big fan of recency as well in the badging. It seems to me rankings like “Powerseller” are more powerful because they reflect recent activity, vs. accumulation. It will be interesting to see how the recent move of Feedback % positive to only the last 24 months will affect that “badge”.

And stop rubbing the red star in… I’ll be there soon. Just 390 little positives left to go…

- Adam

]]> By: Ray Hill http://blog.adamnash.com/2007/01/26/what-would-you-do-for-an-ebay-star/#comment-2924 Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:17:22 +0000 http://psychohistory.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/what-would-you-do-for-an-ebay-star/#comment-2924 There is, however, a dark side to this phenomena. If you give your users incentives like this based on something that is irrelevant, it can negatively effect the way that they use your service. Case in point: every social networking site that lists your number of friends every time they show your username. This irrelevant “badge” leads people to behave in a disadvantageous way, adding anyone and everyone they see as “friends” regardless of whether or not they even know them. This unnatural behavior invalidates any data you might want to analyze about how social networks behave online, while simultaneously annoying the Hades out of everyone who consistently gets friend requests from complete strangers.

Sorry, per peeve. I’ll shut up now. (And yes, I did kind of miss my temporary powerseller star when it went away. But at least I still have my red star to keep me company.)

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