Hey Searchfunder Community!
We're constantly trying to make Searchfunder work harder for you. We know that some users take advantage of our novel "free-if-you-post" mechanism and earn free access by consistently posting non-substantive comments. We occasionally see some people commenting random punctuations marks or even emojis. We flag this whenever we see it. Such users are probably not aware that we still try to read almost every post and that their comment history is clearly visible on their full profile page for all the world to see.
Our free-if-you-post mechanism is designed to encourage as many substantive comments as possible. And many times short comments are, indeed, substantive. And we certainly don't want to penalize anyone who generally makes substantive comments just for occasionally making a short one, .e.g., "congrats on acquiring," "I just sent you a PM," "tagging so-and-so," etc. Sometimes short comments are entirely appropriate.
We're trying to crack down on those serial abusers who consistently make non-substantive comments and never make substantive ones. We are aware that it clutters up notifications on posts-your-following, is very annoying, and generally makes Searchfunder much worse.
How should Searchfunder address low quality comments going forward?
Should we ban such accounts?
Should we merely flag them as low quality?
Or should we just live with them as a necessary corollary of creating a heathy ecosystem where we try to maximize substantive comments instead of minimizing non-substantive ones.
It's devilishly difficult to maintain an open collaborative community that doesn't devolve into spam. We're lucky we've made it this far. We need your help going forward!
Thank you for your insights!
With Best Wishes, ^Searchfunder member
How should Searchfunder address low quality comments?
by an admin from Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Sloan School of Management
More on Searchfunder
Searchfunder is an online community and toolkit for searchfunds. Over 80% of those involved in searchfunds maintain a Searchfunder.com account to help them network, problem solve challenges, and keep up with the industry.
We maintain partnerships with database providers that make searching more effective, efficient and affordable along with features that help searchers find deals and investors and vice versa.
We maintain partnerships with database providers that make searching more effective, efficient and affordable along with features that help searchers find deals and investors and vice versa.
a) ban abusers. People commenting with a simple "." are gaming the system intentionally. I'd be fine if you ban them outright w/o a warning if you can see it's been done repetitively (they can't be surprised by any ban given their behaviour)
b) introduce only an upvote functionality where people can highlight high-quality comments. If the average quality rating of my comments (i.e. on the last 180 days trailing basis) exceeds a certain limit, then i become a super user where the 'x days remaining free'-clock stops (or I get other goodies which incentivise high quality contributions)