掲示板 Forums - [Discussion] Better way to handle usage note validation

The “gaming” aspect does seem to complicate things. Honestly i’d be happy to look at usage notes without any reward, and i’m sure enough people would be willing to as well. Is it not possible to just not give any rewards for it? Removes any incentive to misuse the system as well. Or maybe a tiny reward, but really not enough to make it even worth misusing?

I don't know exactly what the user distribution is and most of us are probably English speakers, but leaving the rating mostly to the community theoretically opens up the possibility for multi-language mnemonics, as in, mnemonics that are written in languages other than English.

If you speak English with a heavy accent it impacts what English words actually sound similar to a vocab term in your mind.

The question would just be how to handle those with mixed reception, since "just let the mike deal with it" won't work for 22 non-EN/JP languages. Plus, again, I don't know how many people would use these and how heavy the implication for dev time would be.

Also there'd need to be at least some guideline about what is and isn't to be considered appropriate, since you'd let people from various cultural backgrounds vote on that with limited supervision.

Edit: I didn't use this feature much so far and legit just now realised that mnemonics already have a language selection feature. I'm guessing I only ever sawEnglish ones because that's my display language outside the dictionary.

Many good points have been made already. I think opt-in widget with yes/no/skip would be good. I would add, that a mnemonic that gets skiped by many should probably go Mike. Because I think that shows that it's not straightforward (similar to mixed up/down votes).

As for rewards - I find the system of word tagging good. Why not reuse that :)

I think this would be a fantastic idea.

As I’m a very visual learner, I find mnemonics to be very useful (that might sound weird as mnemonics are words, but I’m also a visual thinker ((if that makes sense)) so they’re almost essential for some of the more difficult words). Quite often when I’m struggling to remember a word, I’ll check the mnemonics and be disappointed that they’re filled with very similar examples or ones that don’t make a lot of sense sometimes. I realise that might just be me, but some of them can be quite stupid and take up a spot that could be filled by something more helpful.

I’ll also echo the sentiment a couple of people have already made that I don’t think a reward should be necessary. I feel like the kind of people who would be motivated by that would be more likely to act disingenuously just to get the rewards. It might sound cynical but speaking as someone with some experience in reward based customer loyalty programs (in retail) it will always happen. Maybe not in the majority of cases but enough to muddy the waters. I realise also that not offering a reward may possibly lessen the number of people who participate. Maybe if it’s something like a small garden item or a rare gatcha for the top contributors that month? If it’s XP though it will definitely be farmed.

Anyway, those are my thoughts! Sorry I rambled a bit, but the mnemonics have always been important to me. Thanks for all your hard work Michael, this app is great :)

TL;DR: Firehose widget is a great idea, but imo rewards aren’t needed or at least shouldn’t be farmable.

I did not think I would write so soon again but I can't resist on that subject.

In my case, I would open the floodgate but with some statistical "security".
Like:
- Each notes should be validated (or pre-validated) by X user. Or even better X% of the active user (or advanced user, senior, etc, it's possible to add other criteria) that are actively and currently validating the notes. It would a first security (even with a positive ratio of thumb up, no validation).
- Second, enough thumbs up (or better a positive enough ratio of the thumbs up/down). The mixed ones could be check manually but I would do it with the second system after (perhaps a flag by the trusted user?).

But otherwise, I would not bother with the notes (mnemonics or not) that doesn't meet those criterion. It would probably not be perfect and may even prevent some good notes to be validated at first but with enough people involved, it will statically correspond to what the community like and found useful as a whole.
It's still possible to put a small reward for everyone. Or some tier reward for the people that really help the community, I'm thinking about the people that will maybe validate thousand of notes... not sure the "cheaters" would do that. The smallest should not be interesting enough for the cheater and the biggest one, too difficult to do. And there would be no need to check for people who incorrectly judge the notes, because with enough honest people (and I think in this community, there is enough honest people), those just won't be validated.

On a second part, a more logical system with a flag system for the rule breaker ones at any moment (nswf, inappropriate, etc) that immediately hide the note for example. And it's possible to add manual check for some of those (like the polemic ones). It could be also improve with time with a flag for particular case (a flag "other problem", "NA", etc). Then it could become another flag or another rule to let those pass.
Also a security/warning for people who validate too often some note that just break the rule. I think it's better that way because some notes are sometimes really hard to judge (the mnemonics are hard but the others are also complicated too sometimes). Except for the nswf ones and probably a few other cases. Those, with your choice for the community, could be shut down immediately with enough trusted/senior user or with enough flag from different trusted user. As for the more complicated/polemic -> manual check by you -> new flag to automate the system (like the automatic shut down flag) or new rule to make it easier to judge -> less work for you in the future.

Anyway just a few idea, hope it will be useful.

First, I had no idea you were manually checking every one of those usage notes. I’m a relatively new learner, and now I’m embarrassed because of how many new usage notes I added already🙈. I really hope you didn’t have to re-review every note that I edited after saving. Like you mentioned, the usage feature is one of my favorite features, and I find it very helpful to both create my own mnemonics and read other people’s. I actually thought that the heart system was already being used for the purpose of identifying the best usage notes and determining which stayed public. I didn’t realize until reading this thread that I could hide the ones that I’m not interested in. I just favorited the ones I liked, even if there were multiple ones. After reading through the thread, here is my two cents:

1 . I see no point in the reward system. It just seems like an added feature that isn’t needed and that just complicates things. To be honest, as a new user, I don’t really find any of the current reward systems to be a motivating factor for me as to whether I practice or not.
2. I like the idea of the flagging system for inappropriate content. You could have a drop down menu with different colored flags, like a red flag gets the note immediately removed, a yellow flag needs to be reviewed further, and a green flag indicates that it’s a good note, but needs to be tweaked.
3. You already have a voting system in place with hearts. Can you use those to help determine which notes remain public and which get switched to private? Perhaps a grace period for new notes. After a certain amount of days, if a note doesn’t get any hearts then it gets dropped off the public list. But it would be a shame, if somebody was using that mnemonic and it disappeared from their list. Is it possible for a public note to become private for other users who have previously favorited it, so that they don’t lose it?
4. I agree that the default should be private and the person has to make it public.

With the flagging system, the hearts, and the grace period, I would think that the whole process could be mainly outsourced to the community. There could be an automatic message that gets sent to the person’s email when a note is flagged indicating that their note was either removed or switched to private, reminding them of the community guidelines, and giving them the option to edit it and send it back for further review if they choose. If individuals are repeatedly getting flagged for inappropriate content then they can lose their public privileges.

Some notes on rarer words are the most valuable, but simply might not get the same coverage. Most things on the internet follow a 1% pattern (or something like that)

Of 100 users, 1% are logged in (doesn't exactly apply to renshuu)

Of those logged in, 1% will interact with something, like leaving a heart. You see the same thing on reddit - subreddits with huge numbers of followers (plus even more guests), with so few upvotes. It's not a bad thing, per se, but renshuu is pretty small, so when you go down the division rabbit hole, you're going to end up with many less "active" users for any given feature than you might expect.

If all works out, I'm going to make a test widget sometime soon. I might not act on the data, but I'd like to see how much data I get, and how quickly. If this system helped approve/disapprove even 20 mnemonics a day, that would be a huge dent in my workload.

This is precisely why I wouldn't want to see a policy along the lines of "get a like within X# of days or it disappears from view". I do branch out into words well outside of those presented in renshuu lessons, and they may not be "discovered" by users very frequently. Also, not everyone who finds a mnemonic useful necessarily gives it a "like", but probably wouldn't want to see it disappear either.

I have written mnemonics for a number of words I've come across that had no mnemonic already, and I don't know when they'll be seen, if at all (for some less common words). I hope they stay, in case they can help someone when eventually stumbled upon.

**Edit: I have made a number of my mnemonics/notes private... sometimes because they're mainly rewrites of existing ones with tweaks I find helpful for myself, but would likely be redundant to others, or for other reasons. Default privating mnemonics/other usage notes may help in reducing the number to review, but may also inadvertantly deprive the community of helpful notes if users are unaware they need to manually make them public or forget to select the public option. IMO. **

Yep but at the same time, it's "normal" without mechanisms to develop that participation.
And the deadlock with the notes doesn't help. Like "I'm sharing my notes with the community but it doesn't get publish/I don't get any suki point". I'm talking a bit egocentrically here but "I'm doing something for 'free' for the community and I don't even know if it was useful or not for other, so why should I continue?". It's a stupid basic human feeling but it feels nice when you know that what you're doing is useful for the community at a bare basic minimum. Feedback, at least, is really important for that. And when the active user don't have even that (or enough of that), they become inactive. Usually, in every community, it's always the same. New member are highly motivated but after some time, or past a certain point, the ratio of effort/reward is not enough anymore (member put also more effort with time, that's also difficult to have a good system for that). And by reward, I mean at least being able to know if what you're doing has any meaning to the community. If not, they became inactive and replaced by the next wave (so it's stay at that 1%).

I think reshuu's community is a bit stuck here but has the potential of not following that 1% rule (same for other aspect of the app like the community lists). Anyway, not saying it should go in that direction (for a number of different reasons, notably, it's a lot of work) but I believe it's possible in the case of that community

.

Another obvious nit that needs to be addressed is that no one should be put in the position of approving their own work, and ideally, their friends either.