Control Option Command

Every once in a while in between loads of spam ¹ someone adds a thoughtful comment on a blog. Nothing particularly interesting to other readers perhaps, just a “Good job”, “Well put” or “Thanks for sharing”. It’s a wonderful thing to anyone that ever puts a bit of heart into a post and if you’re anything like me (and why wouldn’t you be?) you treasure these comments. We raise our voice, sadly, more often in disapproval than support, and the friendly nod or encouraging smile that is so inexpensive to give and so valuable to receive in meatspace is fraught with barriers on the internet. You may agree with someone in a heated discussion but not wish to get involved or publicly make a stand in the matter. You may not want to register or leave your email or you may just feel that wording your approval is too much of a hassle.

Call me a sucker for praise or an insecure sissy if you will, but there’s no denying the basic human need of positive feedback from your peers. Don’t take my word for it, take Maslows.

There are some mechanisms on the web that implement something close to what I’m getting at. With different mechanisms you can rate, favorite, digg or reddit posts to share and / or support the content. But this isn’t really what I’m after for a couple of reasons. Firstly this is far removed from the personal nod of encouragement I’m talking about. These “diggs” and their ilk too often take the shape of some sort of currency or popularity contest. They’re meant as much for your audience as for you.

So far I’ve seen a single example on the internet that I feel really gets this right. I’m a member of the Norwegian community site Underskog (invite only, so that link is really only helpful to existing members. Sorry.) lovingly crafted by the guys at Bengler. Discussions on Underskog range from trivial postings of YouTube vids to heated high-brow debates on immigration politics. What’s unique (at least in my experience) is the Kudos-system used in the threads which allows a user to give something akin to a karma point or a digg to any post by another user. The uniqueness lies in that only the user who received the “kudos”, as these “endorsements” are called, is able to see it. Let me show you what I mean.

Here is a screenshot of the last part of a post I made as seen by other people:

Note the “Gi Kudos” (Give Kudos) after the date in the footer.
Now here is the same post as seen by me:

The pixelated blue areas are the usernames of people who have, unseen to other users and without qualifying their position, given me kudos. The user may have agreed with me in a discussion, enjoyed a link I posted or laughed at some joke I made. It’s exactly the “silent nod” of approval I keep coming back to. It doesn’t run the risk of developing a “please digg this”-culture, which I find to be a nuisance, or a show-off item like karma points because it’s really only visible to the author and the person that gives the kudos. A truly personal pat on the back.

I’d love to see this implemented in the *shudder* blogosphere. I know that I’d be much more generous with kudos than with comments personally, and I’ve got a hunch that this goes for many others as well.

I’m sure a system like this wouldn’t be hard to create or implement as, say, a WordPress plugin. I might even try to hack one together myself some day although my PHP-fu is weak. I’m gonna have to think through the pros, cons, why and how of it first. I imagine it looking something like this (I’d probably design it prettier though):

Even more than usual I’m very interested in your opinions, good or bad. Do you like the idea or am I just being insecure and / or narcissistic here? Would you say this encourages involvement on a small scale or discourages active participation? If you do find the idea appealing, do you have any opinion as to whether it should be implemented only for authors as an encouragement to write or also for commenters? What are the obvious flaws you see; In terms of spam, usability or otherwise?