January 14, 2009

• Legislating Timestamping is a BAD Idea

  Several proposals have surfaced that attempt to gain control of what people perceive as a marked increase in the amount of timestamping Xangans have been doing. In case anyone doesn’t know, that’s the process of updating a entry to the current datetime by editing an existing post and clicking edit under Time and then clicking the hyperlink that appears saying “Update to current time”.

  Two classes of proposals seem to have the most momentum. They are, proposals to eliminate the timestamping feature, and proposals to create some kind of additional cost to timestamping.  So far the extra cost idea has been mainly talked about in terms of a credit cost, but we can easily imagine the price being set through some other kind of xangan currency such as comments or reputation.

  I think both approaches are terrible ideas. Not in so far as they do nothing to correct the problem, but in so far as they do worse than correct the problem. They make matters worse.

  This may be a case where the Xanga “government” hits the wall of over-regulation of the private industry of the blogging industries it polices. And we know, that too much inefficient government interference can have a devastating effect on economies around the world. Most notably in terms of tarrifs and trade barriers prolonging and extenuating international wealth disparities. Whether Xanga bans or taxes timestamping it will have much the same effect as such efforts would in the international community. It will drive people out of the economy and at the same time it will create a black market for it.

  By driving people out I mean this. If you are restricting a feature of Xanga or making it cost more you are creating a competitive incentive for an alternative business to undercut you by providing that feature for free. If people feel they lack the effective tools to advertise their blogs within the Xangan landscape they have every incentive to look for a blogging platform that enables them to advertise more effectively, increase their traffic and their reach.

  Sure Xangan loyalists will stick with Xanga, but on the margins you’ll see resource flight. Talented bloggers may well find it in their interest to look elsewhere to blog. 

  There’s just a fundamental disconnect here. If your goal is making more people use Xanga, adding a Tax on existing Xanga features is the absolute WRONG strategy. If anything you want to create more incentive to move to Xanga, not incentives to leave. If anything Xanga should either increase the amount of credits people get or give them more things to buy with credits increasing their relative market value or preferably BOTH.

  The blank market issue is perhaps even more devastating.  To a certain extent this whole issue is kind of about Plugz. What do I mean? Well Xangans have an arsenal of resources to try and float their blog in front of the Xangan public to increase views on any particular blog entry. These include, tagging, mass messages, timestamping, posting to blogrings,  the process of leaving multiple comments or footprints on lots of peoples blogs (often called comment whoring), asking for recommendations, self-starring, and plugz. These are the methods Xangans have direct control over. Plugz is one of the very best of these. The problem is plugz costs money. Every other method is free.

  The issue here is that if there is a stigma about timestamping, then the person who timestamps can achieve an approximation of the phenomenon of a plugz by repeatedly timestamping.  It can have much the same effect. For free. As long as you are in the minority of the timestampers for whatever reason, you will radically increase visibility if you timestamp. And it’s one of the easiest ways to do that. Much easier than setting up a plugz in fact.

  So the idea of charging people for timestamping is that it will in effect equalize the playing field. No more free rides as it were.  If it costs to plugz, it should cost to timestamp too. This will presumably increase the usage of plugz meaning more credits are spent, and ultimately credits translate into money for Xanga.

  But here’s the problem. Timestamping isn’t like plugz.  If whatever pressuring are pushing people to use timestamping to compete for viewership aren’t reduced, people will ignore any legislation placed on timestamping. At least the unscrupulous or the desperate amongst us will.  And it is in fact trivially easy to do that.

  First you can increase your usage of any of the other free means of advertisement. That means more tagging, more comment whoring, more mass messages saying to read your blog and pulses pointing out a particular blog entry, etc.

  Second it is in fact trivially easy to “timestamp” without clicking a “timestamp” button.  You can use future or past posting to specify the exact time. Or maybe just a bit in the future. Even if you make this cost more or ban it as well (not sure how you’d do that short of disabling the feature altogether), you can always just REPOST an entry. Copying and pasting isn’t hard. Admittedly doing that has a disadvantage of splitting up your comments and your recommends and stars. But for many this will still be better than nothing.

  Think about it. If you ban timestamping, if it’s important to people, they will either enter try to substitute for it, or will jump ship on Xanga entirely. If you add a tax on timestamping, and it’s important to people, either you tax a little in which case it has no appreciable effect on the amount of timestamping, or or you tax it a LOT in which case it’s effectively similar to banning it. Again, people substitute for it. If timestamping doesn’t matter to people that much, why are we wasting all this time and effort talking about it in the first place?

  This is not of course a guaranteed analysis. Since this kind of market doesn’t exist anywhere else, we don’t have empirical evidence to back it up. It’s possible the very fact that timestamping is taxed or banned will increase the stigma against it and make people use it less even if that means less traffic for their sites. I personally highly doubt that.  People are far too selfish.

  So what I see happening is a slippery slope. After the timestamp complaint is “rectified” by adding an extra price, the mass messages and tagging will grow out of control and people will complain to see an end to that. A price will be put on that and then people will try  pseudo-timestamping. Then, if draconian methods are put into place to curb that too, people will get discouraged. Over time they’ll use xanga proper less and less since they can’t seem to get appreciable traffic from it. Maybe they’ll focus on the xangan-subsites. I don’t know.

  Even if my predictions prove to be false, I still have a philosophical objection to this kind of a tax. I honestly think it’s a matter of freedom. It’s always better to preserve freedoms wherever possible rather than inhibit them.

  Let’s not legislate timestamping. Let’s talk more in depth about what has caused the increase in timestamping and why people dislike it so much. Then let’s figure out togther what kinds of REAL changes we can make to make both of these situations better.  It may be more challenging than just slapping on a timestamping tax, but in the long run I believe it will be far more effective at improving Xanga as a whole.

  What do you think?

  • 11:51 am
  • 9 Comments