How to Game Gawker’s New Commenting System

Today Gawker did away with the special star-flake system and announced a new automated system that will judge each comment and thread with fancy computer code. Let’s take a look at the rules to determine what they imply and how to game the system.

Here are the rules as stated:

  • A reply’s acceptance (or dismissal) by the original contributor
  • The thoroughness with which a discussion’s participants have in general curated these replies
  • A textual analysis of the contribution
  • An editorial evaluation of the contributor’s track record, if any
  • The company a commenter keeps: don’t associate with trolls and bores!
  • The “shape” of each discussion thread
  • Recency of the latest addition to a thread

Here is what these rules mean and how to game the system.

A reply’s acceptance (or dismissal) by the original contributor

If you reply to someone and they don’t reply back then your comment must not have been very interesting and you get a demerit. Or if they reply and just tell you to go fly a kite then you also get a demerit. You will want to say something so inflammatory or congratulatory that they will have no choice but to reply with a novel.

The thoroughness with which a discussion’s participants have in general curated these replies

Did you use complete sentences? Plus one. Would Microsoft Word have underlined your sentence fragment or word choice in green since you’re barely literate? Minus one. Are you sure you spelled everything correctly?

A textual analysis of the contribution

Did you use the same words that appeared in the article or mention the subject of the article in your comment? Plus one. Keywords are key.

An editorial evaluation of the contributor’s track record, if any

There will be a behind the scene scoreboard for each commenter and comment. If you get too many demerits you’ll be drowned out by the other more impressive commenters.

The company a commenter keeps: don’t associate with trolls and bores!

It’s like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Don’t reply to trolls or people with a low score (even though you wont’ know what their score is). Don’t even reply to people who reply to trolls or lowlifes.

The “shape” of each discussion thread

If your comment thread is a series of one word responses the shape of the comment will be unacceptable. Go back to the point about using complete sentences. Plus one comments are for boring jocks.

Recency of the latest addition to a thread

Your discussion is so five minutes ago. If you don’t keep responding then some other commeter using complete sentences and keywords from the article is going to get ahead of you. Keep replying, but make sure to keep using sentences and keywords.

Image: Village Voice

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