16 March 2020 - Nick Hoernle Speaker Nick Hoernle Title Incentivising Crowd Work: A Study of Badges in Stack Overflow Abstract According to the goal-gradient hypothesis, people increase their efforts toward a reward as they close in on the reward. This hypothesis has recently been used to explain users' behaviour in online communities that use badges as rewards for completing specific activities. In such settings, users exhibit a "steering effect," a dramatic increase in activity as the users approach a badge threshold, thereby following the predictions made by the goal-gradient hypothesis. I will present a probabilistic model of users' behaviour, which captures users who exhibit different levels of steering. In applying this model to data from the popular Q&A site, Stack Overflow, I will present a study of users who achieve one of the badges available on this platform. The results show that only a fraction (20%) of all users strongly experience steering, whereas the activity of more than 40% of badge achievers appears not to be affected by the badge. In particular, the results suggest that for some of the population, an increased activity in and around the badge acquisition date may reflect a statistical artefact rather than steering, as was previously thought in prior work. Feb 24 2020 14.00 - 15.00 16 March 2020 - Nick Hoernle Incentivising Crowd Work: A Study of Badges in Stack Overflow G.03, IF
16 March 2020 - Nick Hoernle Speaker Nick Hoernle Title Incentivising Crowd Work: A Study of Badges in Stack Overflow Abstract According to the goal-gradient hypothesis, people increase their efforts toward a reward as they close in on the reward. This hypothesis has recently been used to explain users' behaviour in online communities that use badges as rewards for completing specific activities. In such settings, users exhibit a "steering effect," a dramatic increase in activity as the users approach a badge threshold, thereby following the predictions made by the goal-gradient hypothesis. I will present a probabilistic model of users' behaviour, which captures users who exhibit different levels of steering. In applying this model to data from the popular Q&A site, Stack Overflow, I will present a study of users who achieve one of the badges available on this platform. The results show that only a fraction (20%) of all users strongly experience steering, whereas the activity of more than 40% of badge achievers appears not to be affected by the badge. In particular, the results suggest that for some of the population, an increased activity in and around the badge acquisition date may reflect a statistical artefact rather than steering, as was previously thought in prior work. Feb 24 2020 14.00 - 15.00 16 March 2020 - Nick Hoernle Incentivising Crowd Work: A Study of Badges in Stack Overflow G.03, IF
Feb 24 2020 14.00 - 15.00 16 March 2020 - Nick Hoernle Incentivising Crowd Work: A Study of Badges in Stack Overflow
