What you are talking about with your football club example is coaching.
You could divide motivation on WIP into two categories:
- Indirect: Likes and comments
- Direct: Mentorship
If someone needs more hands-on help with their startup, a new feature could be a mentorship page, where members can subscribe to calls with successful makers.
It's like playing football with friends or strangers, vs. hiring a coach.
But then you have to weigh that against what sort of community you want to make. If people then get more reluctant to help others without getting paid.
Encouraging people is a valid point, but I think a better way to solve that is through community culture.
I think this disagreement is an empirical question that we won't be able to resolve through written debate. The only way to know who is correct would be to run an A/B experiment that measured the effect on people, especially new members. I'd be willing to bet it'll make people more likely to stick around, although I also suspect the effect will probably be minimal unless other things are done to encourage interaction with new members. For example, Facebook suggests that FB Group admins create "Welcome!" posts tagging new members and encouraging others to say Hi.
What you are talking about with your football club example is coaching.
It was a very casual co-ed club that met once a week for an hour or two to play, there wasn't any coaching involved. But I saw firsthand how important it is for new people to have a great first experience to keep them coming back.
What you are talking about with your football club example is coaching.
You could divide motivation on WIP into two categories:
- Indirect: Likes and comments
- Direct: Mentorship
If someone needs more hands-on help with their startup, a new feature could be a mentorship page, where members can subscribe to calls with successful makers.
It's like playing football with friends or strangers, vs. hiring a coach.
But then you have to weigh that against what sort of community you want to make. If people then get more reluctant to help others without getting paid.
I think this disagreement is an empirical question that we won't be able to resolve through written debate. The only way to know who is correct would be to run an A/B experiment that measured the effect on people, especially new members. I'd be willing to bet it'll make people more likely to stick around, although I also suspect the effect will probably be minimal unless other things are done to encourage interaction with new members. For example, Facebook suggests that FB Group admins create "Welcome!" posts tagging new members and encouraging others to say Hi.
It was a very casual co-ed club that met once a week for an hour or two to play, there wasn't any coaching involved. But I saw firsthand how important it is for new people to have a great first experience to keep them coming back.