What’s Plurking?
Note: newest/interesting information often shuffled to the top.
The Karma Controversy
It’s no secret what I think of Plurk’s karma algorithm, and why. If you don’t already know what I’m talking about, then I suggest that you read this previous post before you go any further.
I’ve also suggested to various plurkrs in the past that I suspect several people of running bots on Plurk, based upon my examination of their karma trends.
One of those people was @martinbogo. So what’d he do?
It’s now pretty obvious that @martinbogo is running a bot on Plurk to avoid losing karma for inactivity.
This is so wrong I expected a quick response by Plurk once they became aware of the situation. So I made a single innocuous comment in this plurk and waited for the problem to be resolved.
Fast-forward two days without any response from the A-Team, despite increased awareness and comments about the bot by other plurkrs. Which led to this.
Followed by these comments and this plurk.
So, there you have it. If my Plurk account suddenly gets deleted and you don’t see me on Plurk any more, you’ll know that Plurk decided to censor me permanently.
Oh yes, one more thing. If Plurk wants to examine my karma history and all of the karma that I’ve lost because of their stupid algorithm (which penalizes honest people and puts them at a disadvantage to dishonest ones) and restore all of that penalized karma, that’d be very nice of them 😉
Examining CSS-Customized Profile Page Code
You do not have to install somebody else’s customized code (replace your own profile page with theirs) in order to examine it. There’s a better way, and it’s not difficult.
First of all, right click on their photo and choose ‘Properties’ to get the unique number that’s associated with that user. For example, my avatar is: http://avatars.plurk.com/14674-small.gif and my profile page photo is: http://avatars.plurk.com/14674-medium.gif
Note the number (the 14674 in my case) and ignore the rest.
In your browser address bar (you may want to open a new tab first) paste this: http://www.plurk.com/Users/getCustomCss?user_id=0
Replace the 0 with the id number for that user and press to load the page.
Badges
Have you seen all of these?
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10 friends recruited to become Plurk members. |
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25 friends recruited. |
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50 friends recruited. |
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Creator of a Plurk community site. |
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Managing to get 100 replies to one of your plurks? |
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a Plurk language translator. |
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Reached karma nirvana. |
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It’s the ‘Routine’ Part That Annoys Me
It isn’t the first time, but previously I cut them some slack. Well, I may have plurked something about it, but I didn’t spout off here 😉
The “it” that I’m referring to is the graphical explanation for the site’s 2008/08/11 10:45pm EDT downtime, which refers to the server’s unavailability as having been “scheduled.”
Well, the A-Team may have scheduled it, in which case they knew about it in advance, but I didn’t.
The Replies Timeline
Have you noticed that the functionality of the timeline appears to have been changed with respect to displaying unread responses? For quite a while, I presumed that it was simply another Plurk bug. But I finally clued in that this might be some kind of response by the A-Team to the many calls for improvement with respect to managing replies and the way that they’re displayed and the disappearance of the timeline calendar. In other words, another excellent example of the A-Team’s serious communication problem.
In any event, the ‘View New Responses’ function which previously showed newest responses first (LH side of the timeline) has recently been displaying the (apparently) oldest unread responses first (RH end of the timeline).
Related Plurks: 2a4gn,
What’s a Community Site?
Plurk has just announced a kind of a rewards program, where it awards special badges to plurkers who are members of Plurk ‘community sites.’ (Caveat: they didn’t announce it on the Plurk blog, but simply in a plurk that could be easily overlooked by many) Trouble is, Plurk has skipped some necessary disclosure, as usual. Specifically, what constitutes a Plurk community site? Who decides … the community of Plurk users, or Plurk?
And getting very quickly to the point that I especially want to ask about, why has this Plurk-centric site been ignored by Plurk and by the other so-called community sites? Is it because I dare to be constructively critical here and on GetSatisfaction/Plurk and on Plurk itself about Plurk’s karma algorithm and the A-Team’s poor history of explaining things in a timely fashion so far?
Related Articles: Plurkable: New Community Badges…,
OMG! Look what I just got tagged with, way early in the quiet dawn of a Friday morning! Thanks to the eagle-eyed Leonniefm for pointing it out to me after another one of my rants 😉
This just in… it seems that martin wasn’t happy with the way the original debate was going so he decided to slither out of it and start it over again here. And what’s worse, he only made veiled references to the debate (and to me without having the courage to provide a permalink to the previous discussion.
The Plurk blog has now been updated (2008/08/14) with an explanation about community sites. Disgracefully, the A-Team continues to play favorites by omitting this site from it’s list.
KarmaKlub
Let me start right off by addressing the arguement put forward by those who pretend that karma doesn’t mean anything. That it’s just a silly distraction.
Karma is a ranking system. It rates the “worth” of plurkers, one against the other. You only have to go to Plurk’s Interesting Plurkers page and examine the Top Ten Plurkers list. They’re ranked by karma.
Is your name there? I’m guessing that it’s not. The karma system designed by Plurk seems intended to attract those “social media experts” from other sites who have large followings, in order to get those followers on Plurk. Nothing wrong with the desire from a business standpoint, but it doesn’t show much respect for the ordinary Plurk user who plurks away day after day, keeping conversations going.
2008/08/08 Addendum: It gets worse. After 14 straight 0.04 increases since reaching the so-called ‘nirvana,’ I’ve dropped from 85th to 100th on the global ranking. IOW, Plurk penalizes you for not bringing in new members no matter how much you plurk/reply. A-Team, I think that’s abhorent! Shame on you!
There have been hints from the A-Team about what may influence karma, but the fact is that it’s a secret. And for that reason, you have to take their word for it that we’re all being treated fairly, according to their rules. We don’t know what those rules are exactly, which means that we haven’t been able to initiate a robust, healthy discussion about what should be valued more than other things, and that’s leading to mistrust and resentment by many.
I’d like to offer an alternate karma system for your examination. I don’t pretend that it’s as good as it could be, it’s simply to get the discussion started. It’s meant to exemplify how publication of the formula could lead to understanding and acceptance on the part of most users, and how even those who might disagree with one aspect of the formula or another would at least be able to offer up intelligent arguements about why there might need be further modification.
At present, if you don’t log onto Plurk and post something, even if you were sick or simply sleeping, you risk losing karma. Under my proposal, the worst that would happen is that your karma wouldn’t increase.
Let’s devise a very simple, very understandable formula, at least to begin with. We’ll assign a value of 1 point for each plurk. Because conversation is the goal on Plurk, it stands to reason that replies should be worth more. So let’s assign a value of 2 for each reply. But that really doesn’t guarantee success, does it? However much more you value replies over plurks, enough plurks could conceivably give somebody a very high ranking. That’s where a plurk:replies ratio comes in. The better the ratio, the higher the ‘sociability’ bonus. So let’s total the value of plurks and replies, and multiply that sub-total by the P/R ratio. With me so far?
We don’t want to totally forget about the people who bring aboard new Plurkers though. New plurkers may have a much greater value to the company than they do to the existing community, but they do add some value for us. The question is, how much? Should somebody’s ability to being 100 new Plurkers on board guarantee them a place in the Top Ten list forever? Is that contribution to the Plurk community as valuable as the Plurker who participates in discussions every day? I think not, and so I propose that for each new member, a healthy bonus of 1000 be given.
Plurks, replies, and new members. The more you do, the higher your karma goes. Do nothing, and it stays the same.
What’s it look like in practise? I’ve manually taken a snapshot of a small subset of the Plurk community (mostly members of my karmaKlub clique and Plurk’s Top Ten) at a single point in time (2008/07/31 @03:00EDT 2008/08/05 ).
If you want an up-to-the-minute look, the calculation isn’t hard or time-consuming. OTOH, if there’s anybody out there with the programming skill and willing to help me write a script for my new Linux account, then I’ll expand it to rank everybody and more frequently.
What do you think? Suggest changes, additions, etc. and let’s see if we can come up with a system that’s better than what exists now (email: mailATplurkingpoppaDOTcom).
p.s. have you checked out The Official Karma Post yet today and replied to it again?
Related Plurks: 298kx,
Using CSS with Plurk
Click here to find out how. You may also be interested in a couple of plurks by @amix: this oneand this one. If you’re a developer, check in the sidebar Resources section for the link to the Plurk CSS Project.
More Plurk Problems?
If you’re having trouble with Plurk this 2008/07/20 EDT Sunday morning, you’re not alone. It took me more than an hour to get connected with the server and when I did there was a severe lag writing/reading responses to plurks.
PlurkCAST Contest
Click here and let Plurkiverse tell you about the PlrukCAST contest and the prizes that are being given away.
Plurk Code Swarm
Visually tracking the project’s commit history here. Hopefully they’ll continue to update this.
Datestamped Timeline Request
I often forget how old the unread plurk replies I’m browsing through might be, since they’re timestamped but not datestamped. So I submitted a request for that feature. If it’s something that you’d also like to see implemented, please click on the link and voice your support.
Privacy Setting
I noticed earlier this afternoon (2008/07/13) that the plurk widget on my grandson’s computer stopped displaying my plurks because privacy had been set to “Allow friends and friends of friends to view my plurks.” Changing it to “Allow the whole world to view my plurks” solved my grandson’s problem, but does it create one for me? I’ll have to give this some added thought.
I was previously alerted to the fact that you can now “Allow friends and friends of friends to view my plurks” by this 2008/07/11 plurk. The setting can be found in the MyAccount/Privacy menu.
Unfollow
Did you know that you can “unfollow” somebody rather than “muting” them or “remove…as a friend”? I didn’t, until Alvin clued me in here. Do you fully understand what it does? One thing that I found out is that it allows you to still plurk to those people that you’ve “unfollowed.” I’m getting a headache 😉
140-char Limit
There appears to be a bug in the algorithm that limits replies to 140 characters. Instead of warning you by turning the characters red (as used to be the case) the input box now simply doesn’t allow any more. That wouldn’t be so terrible, except that you can’t backspace, or delete chars, or even copy what you’ve already entered. The only option is to quit the plurk window and lose all of your input. This GetSatisfaction bug report addresses the problem.
I’ve surpassed the 140-char limit a number of times so far today (2008/07/13) without encountering the freeze bug, so it appears that it’s been fixed.
The first thing that went through my devilishly devious mind when I saw this plurk was … the 140-character limit is dust! LOL
The Meaning of PlurkLife (condensed version)
In this 03:00pm EDT 2008/07/11 plurk, while I was pondering the meaning of PlurkLife, some of my PlurkBuds displayed examples of their own philosophical brilliance:
Got any of your own to contribute? The best of them will be immortalized in my sidebar!
Browse Page
According to this 12:15pm EDT 2008/07/11 plurk, Plurk now has a browse page. By default, it showed me a timeline which was only populated by users in my community, which is cool. Cool !!!
Name Linking
This 2008/07/10 ‘Name Linking’ tip that’s over on MyPleeps may be of interest to you. Very nicely presented too, btw.
Comment a non-friend plurk into your timeline
According to this 01:56pm EDT 2008/07/09 by @nethead plurk, “if you comment on plurks that arent from a friend [eg. from the universal timeline] that plurk comes into your timeline.”
Smart Nickname Detection
@nethead announced in in this 11:48am EDT 2008/07/09 plurk that “now if you type a nick that isn’t the ‘real’ nick plurk changes to the real nick in the plurk/response (@butterflychild” becomes “Tyranny”)”
The term ‘real nick’ refers to your account name, as opposed to your display name.
According to this 01:13pm EDT 2008/07/09 plurk by @amix, “we have added smart @ nickname detection when you respond to people … for example to complete my name you can write “@ AM” (without the space) -> @AM … (this is useful for users that use display names) … but i can see that it’s a bit confusing … it can be made better, so when you type “@ roc” it will be set to “Rocket Red” and point to his profile … typing “@ steve” will resolve to “Steve Crane” and a link to his profile … “
More discussion in this 03:36pm EDT 2008/07/09 plurk.
A-Team Promises
In this 11:37am EDT 2008/07/11 plurk, we’re told by @amix that “this will be a fun day in Plurkville…we are going to push out new stuff…no downtime required…but stay tuned.” So, what happened? Let me know so that I can link to it.
Keeping You Informed
For those of you who may miss notable announcements of a Plurkish nature on your timeline, I’m going to attempt to log them for you, eg. you’ll notice in the sidebar that I’ve got an article about the rollout of Plurkpix, and I’ve just started another article about the rollout of Plurker.
Local-based Universal Timeline
The timeline on the Interesting Plurkers page is now local-based.
Problogger’s Newsletter
ProBlogger has started to republish this newsletter.
Who Uses FriendFeed?
ProBlogger plurked this interesting question: “Who is using FriendFeed?“ but I haven’t had time to read it yet.
User Block
I submitted this incident report about the ‘user block’ function to Plurk via GetSatisfacton.
Nickname Display
I just discovered that you can change your displayed nickname to something other than your registered one, which is when I transformed from fowgre to PlurkingPoppa. But if it isn’t registered to me, how safe is it? So I submitted this inquiry about name stealing to Plurk via GetSatisfaction.
Clique Functionality
I submitted this suggestion about cliques to Plurk via GetSatisfaction.
Transparency
After many ignored emails to Plurk via their contact form, and after discovering that questions about Plurk were being answered on GetSatisfaction, I submitted this question about transparency to Plurk via GetSatisfaction.
Plurking Poppa 
2008, August 10 at 11:42 pm
This is my first visit here. It is an amazing sequential look at everything plurk. I have read 3 other sites. This one impressed me the most with how Plurk listens tot the community. I came early-mid July and a lot if this was implemented already. I did no how well the testing was going. Thank you. Veronica
2008, August 24 at 2:08 pm
Plurk listens to the community? To some people some of the time, maybe. But I believe (and have been saying all along) that they’ve got a serious problem with communication and need to work on it a lot more. The fact that Plurk may look good compared to the unresponsiveness of other social media sites isn’t much of an endorsement. But that’s just my opinion. For what it’s worth, if anything.