At the moment reddit.com/r/churning is having issues with referral links. I share the moderators frustration because we run into many of the same issues on the site. As soon as there is a reward for something people seem to try to find a way to abuse it (kind of ironic given the nature of this site). We spend way too much time moderating comments relating to referral links, the upside is obviously huge though in that readers can share their links and receive a bonus whenever somebody uses it.
There is an easy solution for this problem though. If you’re using a referral link, don’t just pick one at random or at the top/end of a post. Pick somebody that you recognize as making helpful contributions. If you see a reader on this site (or on reddit) making a helpful contribution write down their name (and maybe a link to the actual comment) and then why it comes to time to use somebodies link go through your list and see if any of those readers/contributors have a link available. If everybody does this then we won’t have to worry about gaming the system as the only way to game the system is to provide helpful content.
I think it’s even a good idea to post a comment under somebodies comment letting them know you’ve used their link and why as well. That should help encourage readers to provide helpful content and comments rather than spending their time trying to game the system. The other solution to solve the problem is to simply not allow referral links here or on places like reddit. I think the community loses out with this solution, so let’s try my idea first.
