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Vlad!
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« on: September 14, 2009, 01:02:43 PM » |
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Here's a thought exercise for you guys. Consider a weblog author or webcomic artist or anyone who regularly creates online content. Imagine this hypothetical content creator is fairly well established in the online community.
Now imagine that there is a new feature: next to each post, there's a button, and clicking that button gives one cent to the author. Consider the following questions:
1. Do you think this would alter the content of the posts? How about the quality? Positively or negatively, and from whose perspective?
2. Would it make a difference it the cent was deducted from the account of the person clicking the button or was donated by some third party for every button click (assuming there was a system in place to enforce a maximum of one click per person)?
3. Would it make a difference if the author were supported by revenues from this site? What if the author created this content as a hobby but could become self-supported if enough people clicked the button?
4. Would any of these answers change if the amount were a dollar instead of a cent?
5. How would it affect this scenario if the author were just starting out instead of well established?
Discuss.
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #1 on: September 14, 2009, 01:15:04 PM » |
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fun, fun. before I start thinking about this, I'd like to know if you want us to assume that the author/artist is one whose work we already look at regularly and/or that we have an overall positive feeling/opinion towards the author/artist or if this is a new-to-us person.
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Vlad!
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« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2009, 08:33:56 PM » |
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I didn't think it would matter, because I was asking how it would affect the content, not your perception of the author. But you can add in your musings along that axis as a question 6 if you want.
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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NinjaRob17
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« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2009, 10:03:40 PM » |
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I think it would depend on how much the person got. I mean, if they were well-established and wanted people to keep clicking the button, I assume they'd try to keep the quality to try and keep the clickers. Or, if they were lazy, they'd depend on their core audience to click it no matter what and severely reduce updating (or stop updating altogether). It depends on the person I guess.
Sort of off-topic: Schil, you read Nedroid, we're best friends now.
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2009, 12:34:35 AM » |
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Sort of off-topic: Schil, you read Nedroid, we're best friends now.
*high five* let's have an adventure! ...after I buy groceries. so, I was thinking about the questions some more but can't manage to get into a hypothetical author's head to determine if the content of posts would necessarily be altered by the presence of a penny (or dollar) button. it depends; it might; it might not. I could maybe answer similar questions if I thought of myself as the clicker ("would I click a penny button if...? would I be concerned that the overall content of a site would change because of the button?") or even as the author ("would I want to provide content for the possibility of pennies? would I be inclined to provide better content? would I sell my soul or become a spammer for clicks?"), but I don't know if that's what you're looking for. |
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Vlad!
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« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2009, 02:54:20 PM » |
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I was just interested in pholks' thinking around the issue. The biggest question in my mind is first of all whether authors would try to create more of the types of posts that get a lot of clicks and, if so, if that would have a direct (or even inverse) relationship to quality. For instance, take hypothetical author Alice. She used to write posts about her job, her hobbies, and her kids. Then she implemented the penny-per-click system. Since her hobby is fairly niche but her job is pretty common, she gets way more clicks about her job than her hobby. Her kids get very few clicks because nobody cares about her kids except for her few RL friends and some "aww, all kids are cute" people. So do you think Alice would stop writing about her hobby and her kids? Do you think she should?
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2009, 04:49:14 PM » |
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it would depend on her motivation for writing in the first place. I imagine that she would have already had an idea of what her audience likes, based on the comments or other feedback she gets. if she wanted to tailor her posts to them, she would probably have done so without the penny button. but perhaps the penny button would be added incentive to do so, especially if she has a large audience. whether or not that would be an improvement, who knows.
based on the blogs I read, it seems that most people who write about job/family/hobby do so all in one post rather than separate ones. often those things are connected, anyway. perhaps that would complicate interpreting penny button clicks--maybe many people clicked because the post contained a topic of interest, or few clicked because the post contained topics not of interest. people are different and do things for different reasons. (profound and helpful, I know.) perhaps the penny button would have better results the more it is ignored. I don't know. overall the penny button seems like it could be a pretty good idea or a very bad one.
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Vlad!
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« Reply #7 on: September 15, 2009, 10:26:18 PM » |
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I'm especially interested in the cases where you think it could become a very bad idea. My thinking on the issue is that it would tend to turn a weblog into the equivalent of pop music: accessible to the masses and catering to the lowest common denominator, and thus generally converging on mediocrity and conformance. But it could also allow even moderately-popular webloggers to become self-supported and possibly inspire them to create better stuff (and this applies for webcomic artists and video webloggers and whatever else it is that kids these days do when they're not hanging out on my lawn as well).
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #8 on: September 16, 2009, 04:18:06 PM » |
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yeah, the mediocre, lowest-common-denominator, appealing-to-the-masses thing. and I think an author could become spammy about promoting the blog/site or find other new and annoying tactics to get more clicks. "who wants to see me do this outlandish/stupid/shocking/whatever thing? if I get so many clicks I will do it and blog about it". I don't know.
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Vlad!
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« Reply #9 on: September 16, 2009, 04:55:51 PM » |
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Well, sure, I think unquestionably there'd be a lot of that. But there's already a lot of fail on the web. But what I'm not sure of is whether weblog authors who regularly create engaging, high-quality content would continue to do so in the face of economic pressure to cater to the masses.
Where this idea came from was thinking around ways to keep the content we now enjoy free even if ad-supported models end up collapsing. I know when the first webcomic artists and weblog writers were able to quit their jobs and become full-time web celebrities thanks to ads, some thought it would become the Götterdämmerung that destroyed the web as we know it because we wouldn't know if the voices of these trusted personalities were being controlled by their corporate overlords. This mostly has not occurred, I would guess partly due to human integrity and partly due to third parties such as Google acting as the middleman and thus isolating the content providers from their patrons. I'm sure you still see people pimping books and movies more than they would otherwise because they have Amazon referrer accounts, but honestly it seems as though corporations have largely chosen not to exert their will on web content not directly under their control, so much so that when one does and it's found out it becomes a major scandal.
The biggest evidence I have that authors would not cater to the whims of the masses is because they don't generally cater to the whims of the corporations. The contextual ads that visitors see are determined by the content of the page (hence "contextual"). Thus, by writing about topics that advertisers bid higher for and topics that are likely to be of high interest to many people, content creators could easily increase their profits dramatically. However, a "clicks = cash" scheme does away with even the thin veneer of separation between the patron and the author that we now enjoy, so it's possible that some authors just don't realize how they could exploit the system and for others setting up the feedback loop that's necessary to execute such a scheme is beyond their ability. Both of these would not be the case for the simple program I described.
For example, I recall when YouTuber and noted engineer Paul Klusman tagged one of his videos with 'boobies' he got significantly more views. He observed this fact in one of his videos and joked that he should add this tag to all his stuff, but he did not in fact actually do this. I think in the same way the more scrupulous content creators might understand how to game the system but won't. (On the other hand, I'm obligated to mention another YouTube video weblog author, Philip DeFranco, who regularly makes the thumbnails of his videos scantily-clad women and constantly begs his viewers for subscriptions and five-star ratings. However, his content seems to still be whatever it is that he is interested in (and I suspect that the scantily-clad woman aspect comes about at least partly because they seem to be one of his primary interests), so it's possible that authors would find a way to slightly game the system while still mostly producing what interests them).
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #10 on: September 16, 2009, 05:23:51 PM » |
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whose pocket does the penny come from and why are they even interested in paying the penny?
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Vlad!
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« Reply #11 on: September 16, 2009, 08:53:19 PM » |
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Well, I had two thoughts. The first would be that the viewer would pay the penny. They are interested in paying the penny because it gives them a chance to vote with their dollars. I don't know about you, but when I can use my money to bend the world to my will, I like it. The second thought is that, much like with the existing advertising model, companies would pay the cent on behalf of the viewers in exchange for some service (clicking the button would pop up an ad which the clicker would then view, perhaps, or would donate a certain percentage of the user's computer's power to some distributed problem for a certain amount of time).
To elaborate on the first thought, I had considered that there are certain sites where I would gladly pay one penny to read a post. In fact, there are a handful of sites where I find the posts to be of sufficient quality (and sufficiently infrequently posted) that I would pay a dollar for every post. However, what would be a barrier for this is that I don't want to have to go through the PayPal website or Google Checkout or whatever, and also the fees that PayPal, et al extract on each transaction would be crippling (and credit card transactions of one cent are probably disallowed anyway). Thus, what if there were a central service that content creators would sign up with. As a user, I would set up an account with this service, and then clicking the button would deduct one penny credit from my account and add one penny credit to the creator's account. Creators could request their credits to be converted into cash at any time, and once an individual person had accrued, say, five dollars worth of clicks then it would deduct from their account. The service could take a small cut once a site gets large enough--small sites would get 100% of their revenue, but after a certain point a percentage of the revenue would go to the company for providing this service.
(I love my job, but I'm also frequently trying to predict the future and then come up with ways that, if my predictions are true, I can be in a position to get rich. The prediction I am toying with is the collapse of ad-supported media and the profit center is obviously filling the void that would leave).
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #12 on: September 16, 2009, 10:33:02 PM » |
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hm. makes me think of tipjoy.
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Vlad!
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« Reply #13 on: September 17, 2009, 08:13:52 AM » |
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You mean the micropayment system that failed? Yeah, in this current climate there is obviously no market for that sort of thing. Why would viewers bother setting up an account and paying their own money when there's so much free, ad-supported content available? But if that market were to collapse, there would obviously be a need to fill in that gap. But my concern, and hence this thread, is that allowing users to directly influence the authors the web would lose a lot of controversial or unpopular but worthwhile content.
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #14 on: September 17, 2009, 03:06:54 PM » |
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but even if some authors become less controversial or try to be more popular, they'd lose those in their audience who appreciate the controversial/less popular stuff. and then I would think that others would fill in that gap, or try to.
I don't know. I'm no good at thinking about what groups of people will or won't do--I just think some people will and some people won't. my thing is that I want to know if individuals have done or would do certain things (see random poll thread), and those are the sorts of questions I find more answerable. so my thought is to survey authors/artists and/or their audience on what they'd do and/or like to see.
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Vlad!
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« Reply #15 on: September 17, 2009, 03:35:06 PM » |
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Well, it's sort of like radio. Here in Raleigh there's 96.1, which plays nu-metal and rock of all sorts, and 88.1, the university radio that plays everything from electronic to house to awesome 80s hair metal. There's also 100.3 out of Winston-Salem that I can sometimes get on good days.
How many stations do you figure there are that play pop or country or pop-country? Conversely, how many progressive metal stations do you think there are?
Yes, someone will come in to fill in the gaps, but the more specialized your interests, the less likely there will be much (if anything) out there for you. Sure, there will be blogs dedicated to ham radio or paranormal phenomena or funny hats or whatever you want. This is the Internet after all. But how many authors--and not just the teenybopper crowd, but actual authors who could write a respectable weblog if given the chance--would fill their pages with celebrity gossip and current political events?
In case you're dubious, a Google blog search for Kanye West yielded about 16 million results, while the comparatively popular hobby of knitting had only 2.7 million. Ham radio was 1.7 million (which surprised me, actually...until I put "ham radio" in quotes, which dropped it down to 200 thousand. Must be a lot of people talking about ham sandwiches on the radio). A search for 802.11x wireless security yielded just 436 hits.
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #16 on: September 17, 2009, 04:37:31 PM » |
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but the more specialized your interests, the more you appreciate the little quality content that is out there and the more likely you are to support it, I think. maybe few people care enough about ubiquitous stuff to support it at each place it shows up, and thus maybe it would actually diminish. who knows. I haven't seen any Kanye West coverage on any of the knitting blogs that I loyally read, and in a world with a penny button, I don't think knitting bloggers would be like "oh, fewer people are interested in knitting than in celebrity gossip; guess I'll start writing about that instead". however, among knitters there are popular patterns that everybody and their cat seems to knit, and I think it would be unfortunate if more knitbloggers knit and blog the same pattern just because everybody else is doing so. this could actually be good for those knitting the pattern, as they would be using different yarn, making different sizes, and/or making alterations or adaptations, and they could benefit from others' ideas and tips. but *I* am not interested in the endless variations on said pattern. so I wouldn't click the penny button on such posts, but if a bunch of others do on every other knitting blog out there, well, all the more the ubiquitous pattern will not go away.
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« Last Edit: September 17, 2009, 04:39:05 PM by schilleriana »
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Vlad!
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« Reply #17 on: September 17, 2009, 05:21:30 PM » |
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Probably established weblog authors would not completely switch topics (though as in the previous example if they wrote about multiple topics they might gravitate towards those that garnered them the most clicks). However, they would still (as you say) reach local minima in their respective topics. I guess that, especially in general, the number of clicks is directly proportionate to the number of viewers. It's certainly possible that on a niche weblog four or five users in ten might click the button for each post while on a more general-purpose weblog maybe only one or two in ten might, but if the general one had an order of magnitude more viewers then it would still be more lucrative. (I did some messing around with alexa but I'm too stupid to use their interface so I'm just posting the screenshot here in hopes that it means more to you than it does to me. 1up.com is a gaming news website, ycombinator.com is a tech business website and host of Hacker News, and drudgereport.com is a celebrity gossip/news/rumor site).  Obviously the people running Ravelry aren't going to change it into a video game site or an entertainment site just to get more clicks, but say they did a post on famous people knitting or something like that and it got a lot of clicks. They might start to make more posts about famous people, and maybe eventually those posts would become less and less knitting related. It would still be a knitting site, but the content would be converging on the mean. |
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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enemy anemone
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« Reply #18 on: September 17, 2009, 06:54:32 PM » |
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hm. I don't see that happening because it doesn't work that way. the chart doesn't say a whole lot to me because Ravelry isn't a site that focuses on delivering news or other stuff going on. the content comes from the people using it, not the people running the site. I could go on and on but I think you are not so much interested in the particulars of Ravelry.  |
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Vlad!
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« Reply #19 on: September 17, 2009, 11:28:24 PM » |
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OK, so obviously I'm not at all familiar with Ravelry, but even if you substitute the other two example sites I used, I think you can see my point.
I don't know if you're familiar with it, but digg.com illustrates in microcosm the problem with this model. Getting on digg can dramatically (and profitably!) increase traffic to a site, so many sites will cater to aggregators such as digg and reddit and slashdot by posting content likely to attract users of those sites. This unquestionably has contributed to the attitude among tech news sites that it's important to break the news first, regardless of whether it's actually, you know, true (not to say that this attitude hasn't always been present in the media--see Dewey defeats Truman--but I feel like editors and even individual weblog authors like John Gruber's daringfireball.net are more likely to release rumor and speculation even if it's baseless because they know it will drive traffic and traffic means money).
However, I feel like a lot of these problems exist currently with ad-supported media, which is OK because this theoretical system would be designed to supplant ad-supported media and thus could reasonably be expected to share its problems. What I'm now pondering is the following:
* Is there a significant difference between having a site's income be given directly from its viewers and from third-party sponsors?
* In the ad-supported world, revenue scales directly with traffic. Could it reasonably be supposed that in the model I propose with the penny button, revenue would still scale directly with traffic?
* Could an author depend on a steady percentage of clicks regardless of content or would the system reward good or popular articles?
* Would allowing such direct 'voting' affect a site's content in ways that passive voting via site visits does not?
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If you don’t have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times when for one reason or another there’s some practical convenience in making an exception.
rms
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