What Are Perverse Incentives?
Lets start with the definition:
Undesirable incentives, which lead to undesirable behavior. Think for example of unwanted reward systems. That particular behavior reward to success, but not punish it if it becomes undesirable. But just encourage to continue this behavior.
Perverse incentives are incentives that encourage people to greed, short-term profits and taking irresponsible risks. Perverse incentives are then incentives built within the rules of an organization that turn people into behavior that is fun for the economy or society. The meaning of perverse is unnatural or wrong behavior. The reversal gets a negative meaning in pervert, such as undermining, degenerate or unnatural.
The rating system of Wealthy Affiliate
It's well known to many here that the more you are active in the community, the higher your rank will be. It's a very complex system, but the bottom line is, every click here counts.
Incentives for ambassador ranking:
- Log in to Wealthy Affiliate
- Writing blogs
- Creating training
- Commenting
- Welcoming new members
- Liking everything
- Chatting
- Give feedback
- Give comments
- Asking questions
- Answering questions
- .... every click counts
Incentives, which lead to undesirable behavior as
- Writing one blog after the other with no meaning
- Asking dozens of questions without looking at the search bar first
- Adding "Thanks for sharing" & "Good blog" directly on the main dashboard
- Answering questions with "I like to know that too" or good question
- Chatting without helping
- Welcoming hundreds of new members
- Using the questions section as blog when the blogs are done
- Using misleading headlines and titles
- ... anything to rank ...
Perverse behavior to achieve the Ambassadors rank....
Recent Comments
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Gosh....to be perfectly honest I'm afraid to comment for fear of doing it wrong or saying the wrong thing. I really would prefer that the members let Kyle and Carson run their business the way they want to. If they want to change the rules, keep the rules, or remind us of the rules, it is up to them. I have noticed several members have either stopped posting or changed the way they write their posts, and I miss them. Loes, you provide excellent Training and really helpful information, which I have benefited from and appreciate. Everyone has different needs. I benefit from every single post written even if it isn't directly related to building our websites. To see all the different writing styles gives me lots of ideas and confidence to improve my content. Every member has the right to be who they are. I hope this comment will be received in the spirit it is intended so that all of us can enjoy and benefit from the community.
Thanks for reading,
Debbie
I understand what you want to say, Debbie, and I do appreciate also the differences of posts presented, and I enjoy a lot of posts too. When I just arrived here 3 years ago, it was obvious that WA was a business community, the posts were 80% about business and progress and displayed 20% to other kinds of posting. Today it's the other way around. And I do see people leave the forum because of that.
Thanks for replying....I understand your position as well. Let's just hope everyone gets what they need.....and please stop leaving!
Great title! As I was reading your first paragraph, I found myself thinking that awarding people points for asking questions would be a good example of a perverse incentive.
Your examples and explanations that followed are great. I like point systems, but the current WA system is incentivizing some undesirable behaviors.
Answering questions with "I like to know that too" or good question
Doing that removes the original question from the "Unanswered" tab which can prevent others from seeing that the question hasn't been answered.
[added]
That would also prevent the question from being included in the daily "Pay It Forward" email.
Yes, I know Bob, and it's very annoying because you are waiting for an answer, and then you get something like that.
XXXXhas answered your question!
Good question
WTF
The "XXXXhas answered your question!" responses aren't nearly so bad as the "I want to know too" responses.
With the first "I want to know too" response, the question gets removed from the Unanswered category. At least with the "XXX has answered..." responses, there has been an answer posted.
That all makes sense!! :) Good blog..lol.. j/k No, it is good to know all this! Ya, I'm honest and I like my rankings going up, but want to do it the right way! I sincerly like to help people, and actually not every post I hit like on..I did at first because thought I was supposed to, but if it's just a long ramble about nothing and confuses my brain, I don't click like now! I don't like a confused brain very much....lol I'm learning a lot, and I always love your posts because I learn so much from them, and they mean something to the community! :)
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Maybe that's the reason why my rank goes down instead of climbing up. I'm doing the perverse thing so the system demerits it. lol.
Hi Jimmy, I don't believe you ☼
Thank you, Loes for believing in my capacity but I know don't have it. Maybe I will be forced to do something if I'll be there.
No-one will force you to do anything here Jimmy:) You might have to force yourself to keep on going though ;)
That's right.