-
Strive for initiatives to tap into users’ intrinsic motivation. The primary internal motivators: a sense of autonomy, a sense of competence, a desire for self-improvement, curiosity and the ability to share results with other people.
-
Do not use external incentives for activities that are interesting to users in themselves. External incentives undermine the internal interest in an activity for both those who receive the incentive and those who observe someone receiving it.
-
Create and maintain a culture of positive feedback to users’ actions on the platform. Feedback should be honest and given by real people for specific actions.
-
Strive for a good attitude of users towards the community. The better the users’ attitude towards the community, the more active they are. Anything that makes users like the community more increases their desire to help.
-
Maintain trusting relationships with the users. Users are more likely to help those they trust, value and have positive regard for.
-
Highlight the uniqueness of each user’s contribution. Users are more active if they believe that only they can help in a particular situation.
-
Divide large groups into small sub-groups. In small groups users are more active. One reason is that each user’s contribution is more visible. This allows users to believe that their personal contributions have a tangible impact on the overall goal of the group.
-
Design initiatives that assume social contact between users. Socialization and group activities create additional positive emotions and receive a greater response among the users.
This is a fragment of a draft of the book “Lessons Learned While Working On Stack Overflow”. Read the full book on kindle or the paperback version.