Award Karma

https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/iz7nnb/award_karma/

created by plgrmonedge on 24/09/2020 at 22:46 UTC

112 upvotes, 27 top-level comments (showing 25)

We’ve been sharing updates on new features and tests in the Direct-User-Pay space (including award karma) in an effort to build greater transparency and incorporate constructive feedback to make the experience better for everyone. Revenue from Direct-User-Pay is important to Reddit, as it makes us less reliant on advertising and creates a more sustainable business model. To that end, we want you to understand how we're making decisions about the Direct-User-Pay line of revenue. Today, we’ll share the results of the award karma experiment and tell you about what’s next.

In July, we announced an experiment[1] that granted users karma for receiving or giving an award. The amount of award karma given/received comprised a fixed amount for any award, and a variable amount, depending on the award. The variable award karma was based on the amount of coins spent on each award. For users giving an award, it was based on how early they awarded relative to others. In the experiment, we showed users their total karma, which included post, comment, “award giving,” and “award receiving” karma.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/hmdwxs/karma_experiment/

We ran the test as an A/B experiment for several weeks, and it proved successful -- meaning, we saw a statistically significant increase in revenue from coin purchases (more than +15%) and in awarding (+1.5%). We also found that core engagement metrics such as posting, commenting, and voting did not show a statistically significant change, which implies that the award karma experiment didn’t create a lot of spamming from low quality posts and comments (which was something we were looking out for).

We also wanted to address some of the concerns you shared in our previous post. We took that feedback to heart, looked into each concern more deeply, and found that:

The data does not indicate that award karma created a “shortcut” for users to earn a lot of karma. * We compared the top karma gains from the highest earning award karma users with those of post and comment karma. The increases from traditional post and comment karma were *10 times* those from award karma. * We also spot checked the top accounts for award karma - we found that they were not spam or questionable accounts, as was the concern.
Award karma does not increase lower quality posts and comments, such as for “award begging.” * To check this, we looked for an increase in posts and comment removals. Most posts and comments get removed *before* they are awarded (99.999% of the time). Total removals between the control and test groups were comparable (somewhat lower in the award karma group).
Lastly, user accounts that earned award karma do not exhibit higher incidences of safety actions. * To assess this, we counted the percentage of accounts in each group that were suspended or otherwise actioned by our safety teams. Both are in the 1% range and are on par with each other (somewhat lower, i.e. better, for award karma). This suggests that users who earned award karma were not suspended or actioned by our safety teams at a higher incidence.

Based on these findings, we plan to launch award karma to all users over the coming days. Users who were not in the experiment will *still* get retroactive credit for their award karma (we tracked the award karma changes for users who were not in the experiment). For mods, automod will still be able to reference post and comment karma (combined and individually), separately from award karma.

We are excited about this change to karma and we’ll stick around to answer questions.

Comments

Comment by TryUsingScience at 25/09/2020 at 01:21 UTC

86 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Can you *please* make it so each award has its name as alt text? There's a million new awards, the images are tiny and confusing, and it would be useful to be able to see the name just by hovering my cursor over one.

Comment by [deleted] at 24/09/2020 at 23:37 UTC

34 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Award karma does not increase lower quality posts and comments, such as for “award begging.”

Hope you'll monitor this after the rollout, since the experiment is surely not widely known, so people wouldn't've known to start begging more for awards yet. That may well change.

Also, potential spammers couldn't opt-in to the experiment, so their possible actions probably wouldn't've been measurable until this rolls out to everyone.

I'm not naysaying. I'm not fond of awards because people do beg for them already, but whatever. I also subscribe to reddit, even though I have mixed feelings on some things, but I receive benefit and it seems fair. And so I use my coins to give awards. So it's a huge mixed bag of irritation and being mostly fine with it all.

Comment by timawesomeness at 24/09/2020 at 22:53 UTC

42 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I'm not alone in thinking that this should NOT be included in a user's combined karma. It does not represent a user's participation in reddit. It's not a matter of abuse or anything, it's a matter of what reddit karma represents.

Comment by lazydictionary at 25/09/2020 at 01:47 UTC

7 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Generally karma is useless anyway, but what is the purpose of award karma?

Comment by Thecakeisalie25 at 25/09/2020 at 18:35 UTC

6 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Please keep monitoring this. Abuse of a system gets worse over time. It's great that you monitored these during the trial, but keep monitoring these for a while after it goes live.

Comment by kraetos at 25/09/2020 at 20:12 UTC

4 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I have no idea where to ask this so I'm just asking in the most recent admin post across the various announcement and changelog type subreddits.

I see you have implemented a big 'ol "MESSAGE THE MODS" button on classic reddit. This is great! A lot of users missed the small text below the mod box. However, it seems you removed the .helplink class from the underlying HTML as part of this change.

Can you please put that back in? I was using that selector. Or better yet, can you provide a class around each sidebar heading? That is, MODERATION TOOLS, MODERATORS, and RECENTLY VIEWED LINKS? Then we could select those elements directly.

Comment by UnacceptableUse at 24/09/2020 at 23:06 UTC

20 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Interesting to see, the emphasis that this isn't a way to 'buy karma' I think is really important, I've seen a lot of people who seemed to misunderstand the initial experiment

Comment by martinator001 at 25/09/2020 at 04:41 UTC

8 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Now that profits are secured and shareholders are happy, can you guys look at user feedback? Both r/ideasfortheadmins and r/beta feel like shouting at a wall

Comment by Cowsgomoo414 at 25/09/2020 at 02:29 UTC

5 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Will this new karma include awards we gave in the past or will everyone start at 0?

Comment by Orcwin at 25/09/2020 at 16:17 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I really appreciate the transparency on this, nice work!

Comment by justcool393 at 24/09/2020 at 22:51 UTC

12 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Nice! I'm glad to hear this is going well. It doesn't seem like it's harmed anything from what I've seen so far, so that's good on the moderator end too

Comment by nolo_me at 25/09/2020 at 12:25 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Will there be a corresponding reduction in advertising?

Comment by [deleted] at 24/09/2020 at 23:54 UTC

15 upvotes, 2 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by Attya3141 at 25/09/2020 at 02:21 UTC

5 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Maybe you should not include ads in post than

Comment by [deleted] at 24/09/2020 at 23:20 UTC*

7 upvotes, 2 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by 247drip at 24/12/2020 at 20:11 UTC

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

The analytical approach to this is fascinating. Crazy to see >15% growth in purchases as well as +1.5% in award engagement just by adding a point system...there's an opportunity for a really fascinating psychological study there.

Just now discovering this sub and its very cool to have this kind of transparency on features and supporting evidence available.

Comment by [deleted] at 24/09/2020 at 23:33 UTC

6 upvotes, 3 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by WTXRed at 24/09/2020 at 23:50 UTC

3 upvotes, 2 direct replies

How do we turn off stalker mode in the new app/reddit? where people will follow us anonymously . I want an approved follower list I can see and the option to remove them or turn off the ability to be followed.

Comment by aperson at 27/09/2020 at 04:58 UTC

2 upvotes, 1 direct replies

This is stupid.

Comment by CorvusCalvaria at 24/09/2020 at 22:56 UTC*

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

grab start mourn cooing fall dependent cake zonked whole fanatical

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact[1]*

1: https://redact.dev

Comment by [deleted] at 25/09/2020 at 05:03 UTC

2 upvotes, 1 direct replies

As long as it’s easy for users to see a difference I don’t have a problem with it, if it falls in the same category as say awards and is shown in the same spot that’s fine. I don’t know how this will work in the long run but I hope it’s very crystal clear that this is indeed paid karma in the initial post and not a break down after.

Comment by SillyTheGamer at 26/09/2020 at 12:58 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

So how is award karma determined?

Me and my father both use reddit and give awards, him giving small ones more, while me giving a ton of gold out. While I have clearly given more awards, let alone more expensive awards, I have 1200 less awarder karma than him.