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What if rather than losing your streak count during an off-day, it drops by 1 (or more) ? #wip

Right now the Shipping Streaks incentives people to ship every day. Shipping often is a good habit, but doing so for weeks in a row without rest is unhealthy.

Some people log non-work activities, but that feels like a hack and leads to spammy todos.

Maybe we can redesign the streak. It should still empower you to ship consistently, but with the freedom to take days off.

What if every day you complete at least one todo your score goes +1. Like it does today.

But when you skip a day rather than dropping back to zero it would just -1 (or maybe -5 ?).

You get to keep building up your streak, but it's not as big of a deal if you skip a day or take the weekend off.


Omg I love this idea!

Then on the 2nd off-day it drops by 2, 3rd day by 4, 4th day by 8 ... that would be some crazy fire under butt!

Agree! That would be less painful, than losing whole streak T_T

What? No that wouldn't work haha. Then you'd end up with a negative streak. (E.g. day 4 your streak is 4, and it drops by 8, you end up with -4).

Progressive pain, but only until 0 otherwise it's unfair. Maybe something less aggressive, but I like the idea of being punished more for 2 days than just 2 points. Skipping a day should be a slap on the wrist, 2 days is no, 3 days should be a big no-no and so on.

Otherwise someone like @pugson could take 8 whole days off and not drop a single spot in the rankings.

Maybe look up game design? I'm sure this is something game designers have solved already.

There goes my 8 days off! Thanks, Swizec.

This will be great! For people high on streaks count, would -1 be discouraging enough? Maybe it should be -1%?

Just reset to 0, problem solved! I like this multiplier idea.

I love this idea. Just be sure to stop at 0 and not push the member negative.

I like the "-n idea" instead of the lose-streak penalty. I would want to add something like an "intentional break". For example, I'll be offline in September (28 days). Although I'm not super obsessed with the streak I like seeing it grow like one generally likes seeing things grow (ok, not a virus or bacteria but anyway ^^). So, there could be a "shipping status" with 2 options shown on the shipper's profile with a text plus an icon, like: Option 1: "is shipping 👔" and Option 2: "is off-duty 🛀"

Love this idea! Hate logging a small task if it isn't true shipping! + Would be motivating to get back to work.

You know what is crazy fire under the butt? 💣
Losing the whole streak when not doing a single thing in a day aka how it works at the moment.

It is called streak for a reason.

+1 great idea
As others have suggested, it could just stop at 0 in order to avoid negative streaks.

1) How about you don't lose your streak only if you get your MRR to ~10k? or some other milestone? Otherwise you really should be shipping everyday :p
2) We have a holiday. One day on which if you don't ship you don't lose your streak but don't get to add that day to your streak, however if you do ship you gain +1
3) You don't lose your streak if you don't ship on weekends. But if you do ship you gain +10 or +5?

How about 3 metrics:

1) Streak Count 🔥 (Current consecutive days of shipping)
2) Streak Peak 🏆 (Highest number of consecutive days of shipping)
3) Total Shippin' Days 🚢 (All streaks combined)

3rd would make it easy for people to lose their streak.

And a single value can be calculated to use for rankings base on right weightage to all 3 metrics.

FWIW we already have Streak Peak, but it's called 👻 Ghost Streak. (Because the streak is dead, but it refers to the "ghost cars" in some racing games where you race against your previous best lap). You can find it on your profile page.

I think the difficulty with adding a third streak is that it's complicated and I'm not sure it really solves the problem. People would still feel bad for losing their Streak Count.

And if we would make the Total Shippin' Days more prominent then there's not as much an incentive to ship daily since you can "just ship tomorrow" which is what the whole streak thing is meant to prevent.

A single value based on 3 metrics combined might just do it. How well that could be depends on weightage assigned to metrics. That figure surely becomes more of a rep than streak then.

Then leaderboard could be split in 2 sections:

1) Rep score - Helps people who let the streak go away + are going to.
2) Underdogs - People who are gaining streak (Crossing certain milestones, like 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days) specifically highlighting people who don't show up all-time rep.

This is starting to feel overly complicated perhaps? At some point it just should become a karma system if you're gonna implement some opaque algorithm. Ship on consecutive days, karma goes up by 0.2 or something science-y.

I like the current streak definition, but maybe the main leaderboard could focus on another metric instead. Eg "days shipped in the last year" like github does.
Also to limit spammy todos you could add an option "call BullShip" next to each todos. It would mean "dude that's not shipping get back to work" but in a nice way. Also adds a public accountability effect

Also clapping for a /done would be nice.

EDIT as said later in the discussion. Let's forget this comment. I clapped on the on eat the bottom also. 👏

Resting and going on vacations is crucial! I thought about this for a while now and does it even matter if someone spams #life todos? It even takes effort to build a streak with fake todos.
I like the idea of reducing the streak by 1 every day though.. But I dont think it will stop non-work activities.

Maybe we should be able to flag #life-projects, let the crowd decide whats BS and exclude these flagged projects from the streak-calculation.

Unpopular opinion but here it goes. Idk why Streak is so much hyped. Its all in the mindset.

I joined Github & was consistently coding for getting those Green Marks on my profile even though some of my commits were pure crap 💩Eventually I lost it somehow because my internet was off & it was a great thing because I wasn't doing anything productive. I was just committing my code on Github for those Green Marks. Although, it got me many offers but it didn't feel right because I wasn't doing anything productive.

The streak should help you commit good stuff & not some garbage. I like @swizec's idea. @wimgz's thing won't work because as human nature goes people will wanna go up the streak so they will make everyone else go down. Lots of spammy thing which you Marc won't be able to control. Or you can assign 2 people to check on each other but what if someone goes off of WIP. Then again problem problem. Also, other than Swizec's idea anything else like "Fake Ship" or "StackOverflow style downvoting" would be a problem as people complete a lot of todos in a day.

Anyways guys & gals Streak is all in your mindset. Being on the top of leaderboard won't give you anything. So losing streak is not a bad thing to do. Believe it or not WIPs biggest strength is its community, not streak. Sorry had to say it someday.

Idk why everyone's obsessed with Pieter's #life streaks LOL😂
Bdw just like Pieter's #life I'm starting my own #workout streaks too😜
And I #workout everyday🤪

Keep it simple. I love @swizec's addition to marc's idea, but I'd stop there and not get any more complicated.

At the end of the day, if there's a scoreboard, then humans will find a way to game the system to climb the leaderboard.

I'd really love to see people stop adding banal life events (took shower, ordered takeout, folded laundry) as shippable events.

I wish there were a simple way we could give applause to the "good" ships so that users who consistently ship "good" things (created landing page, interviewed three potential app users, launched to PH) can move ahead of the others who are just shipping mundane life things so they don't lose their streak. And helping to promote the good behavior, rather than implementing a downvote system, is a much more positive spin on nurturing the behavior you're hoping to see more of while subtly discouraging the rest.

I mean, it'd be easy to add the applause icon next to completed ships in the web app. In the telegram channel, if a user replies to a WIPbot post showing the /done message with a +1, that would count as one vote as well.

Don't mess with the streaks! Streaks are a 'pure' sort of thing, and I think the goal of WIP is to keep things moving for people in a build+launch phase (not so much in a chill, day-to-day phase). Right now my streak is reset and it's making me want to get it going again. The only thing I would suggest is to maybe have a 'weekend' mode where two designated days of the week don't count if you miss on those days. But I think messing with streaks will dilute the value of WIP and lead to a less effective product really quickly.

Then it wouldn't be a "Streak"... it'd be work days.. Streak is a continuous thing. But I agree with using "life events" to keep a streak alive.. cheese. If you're not shipping to a #product it shouldn't count. Problem Solved. Honestly though, being able to add teammates to products is far more valuable than changing how streaks work.. #please

Would be cool if you could also have a metric for total tasks shipped

I would keep it like it is for the streaks. Then its more likely to see some new faces at the ranking