Why would I want to join a group goal with someone I don't know IRL?

Akrasia
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@dreev wrote in a beemail:

STRAW POLL: Would you potentially join a group goal with someone you don’t already know IRL?

My question: why would anyone want this? What is the use-case?

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Off the top of my head, one thing could be goals for big picture things out there in the real world.
I’m making this up on the fly, but as a starter: “we all commit to getting person X elected, and we’re gonna do it by improving their ratings in the polls - +1 goes on the goal for every +1% in the polls, target is 60 points”.

So it’s a statement of intent to join the group, and shared commitment to the goal, with some (modest) shared pain at the end if we don’t make it!

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I could imagine a scenario where a few open source devs have a shared goal linked to their github accounts where they together whittle down bugs/issues on the project to which they all contribute or another where they commit every so often (implement new features) to it.

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All kinds of stuff. There are lots of people I don’t know IRL who I’ve done projects with – writing projects, website projects, gaming stuff, other students… I haven’t met a single other student from my course, and until we graduate I probably never will, but I could envision a Beeminder goal to keep us working on a shared project.

If the question was “would you join a Beeminder goal with a total stranger”, that’d be different, but you don’t have to know someone IRL to know someone online well enough to have a shared endeavour.

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I just thought of a use case: book clubs. Specifically, a Book Brigade, where… UPDATE: Actually, lemme make that a top-level thread: Book Brigades!

So in terms of group goals, I’m thinking a handful of people share the goal to read a book and when it’s your turn to read a chapter or section, it’s also your responsibility to tell Beeminder the page number you’re on if it’s a beemergency. You’re also expected to take notes up to that page. When your section is done, you clean up and send those notes to the other groupies. (PS: Or a more live-blogging approach would be fine too.)

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I’ve found using the Challenges app, where by closing my Apple Watch rings I help strangers earn points, to be pretty motivating, so I could see myself joining a group of Beeminding strangers

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