Bad defaults is one of my favorite user incentive tricks. Can't get users to upload their photo? Give them a super ugly picture as the default. They'll change it immediately out of disgust
In a way I think this is less intrusive (and clever). These are merely "suggested defaults" that never actually get displayed on the user's profile. Actually using bad defaults may have the undesired effect of people not changing the bad default.
Another tip - always set default profile gender to "Female".
Women are less prone to feeling alienated by gender, but guys typically get uncomfortable with being labeled as a woman and will change it
This really rubs me the wrong way and I just revoked access to my Github account for Coderwall. You are adding content that appears to be added by me, but that I did not authorize you to add to my profile. Not cool.
I downvoted because the parent misread the article and as a consequence is taking a strong stand from a misinformed starting point. The discussion that results will not likely be very interesting.
You could use "Loving SOPA" or "Loving GoDaddy" too :) ...Seriously, I don´t like this approach, it´s much better find an objective to this information that seems mere informative in the site. And more, could you get this information directly from github?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 59.7 ms ] thread(I expect to get downvoted for my brutal honesty, and frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn).
* Coderwall set "suggested defaults" of "Loving IE6" and "Visual Basic" (which kind-of look like those are the skills set for your account)
* After that, 92% of users have configured their skillset.
It's simply a mind trick to get a much higher percent of users to add their skills to their profile.