Can Gamification Help Solve the Online Anonymity Problem?

As Google refuses to accept anything but genuine user identities in Google+, news sites are experimenting with rewards for good behavior to cut down on anonymous abuse

By Mathew Ingram

A lot has been written recently about the issue of online anonymity, particularly how Google believes that a “real names” policy is necessary so that its Google+ network can maintain a certain tone and level of trust. We’ve talked at GigaOM about ways in which Google could allow anonymity (or pseudonymity) and still maintain a healthy community. Now media analyst Ken Doctor has put his finger on another option—one that some news outlets are experimenting with. That’s “gamification,” or rewards for reader behavior and engagement. If Google is serious about creating an actual community on Google+, it’s an idea it might well think about.

Despite a torrent of criticism from users and anonymity advocates such as sociologist and Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd, who argues that Google’s real-name policy is “an abuse of power” in favor of a privileged few, the search giant seems determined not to budge on its requirement. In a recent interview in Edinburgh, Google chairman and former Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt argued that the Internet as a whole would be better off if real names were the norm. He also made what appeared to be a case for Google+ becoming an “identity service” on which the company could build other services.

As we’ve argued, there are substantial benefits in allowing anonymity or what some call “persistent pseudonyms,” including the fact that this enables those with unpopular or even politically dangerous views to use such networks, as NPR journalist Andy Carvin notes in a recent interview about his use of Twitter and Facebook. But whenever the issue of anonymity comes up, advocates say that anonymous comments allow trolling, flame-wars, and further offensive behavior, an argument Financial Times columnist John Gapper made a few days ago in defending Google’s real-name policy.

Gamification to Build User Engagement

Could “gamification” help solve this problem? The concept has come in for criticism over the past year or so, since it became a trendy buzzword and popular idea with marketing agencies. In many cases, adding badges to an existing service doesn’t really accomplish much. But as Ken Doctor notes in a post about how some news sites are using a gamification-style approach to improve reader comments, the idea has some merit when it is part of a broader outreach program.

Citing Redding.com, a site run by the Redding Record-Searchlight, a newspaper in Redding, Calif., Doctor says: “The goal here isn’t simply to build core customers. It’s to bring greater civility and perspective—what [Editor Silas] Lyons calls ‘insight’—to the site. Readers now can mark others’ comments as ‘insightful,’ resulting, over time, in higher ranking of commenters the community seems to value.”

The site Doctor describes isn’t the only news outlet to experiment with reader badges and reward programs as a way of influencing behavior: The Huffington Post launched reader badges last year. While it hasn’t released specific numbers about the effect on traffic or comments, the site’s former social-media editor Adam Clarke Estes told me the program was seen as a success, both in terms of traffic and its impact on behavior.

It’s not so much that badges or other rewards—Slashdot, a pioneering geek community, has long used “karma points” to reward users and select moderators—cure bad behavior or prevent trolls from coming to a site. They merely make it easier to distinguish between what Slashdot calls “anonymous cowards” and participants who have gained the trust of the community. Over time, it becomes obvious (theoretically) who is worth listening to and who isn’t. (Jeff Sonderman at Poynter has also written about the advantages of reader badges for news sites.)