Further, it appears that if you want to maximise awesomeness, you complement folks for the behaviour you want to see from them, before theyâve even forked it out.
Which is to say, people suck. The answer is Ars âignoreâ option and hide-on-excessive-downvote formula . If someone is clearly just posting to be a dick, regardless of why, then ignoring them allows them to be stupid and self-destructive without bothering anyone else.
I used to find considerable annoyance on Arsâ comments threads, but when they implemented their new system, I found I could go intentionally to things like climate change threads, scroll through a few pages clicking âignoreâ on denialist accounts, and as a result, my Ars experience has been radically more positive.
Occasionally Iâll go through a thread and check out the comments that have been hidden because of excessive downvote. In every case to date itâs been an incontrovertible douchbag. I say the system works.
And I get downvoted occasionally! Maybe Iâm some kind of neuro-abnormal freak, but generally that makes me stop and think about whether it was worth posting my comment.
I downvote this.
Ballâs in your court Doctorow, whatâs it going to be? Three posts about bananas? You haven;t got the grapes.
This doesnât seem like a very strong study to me.
It seems that they rated the quality of posts using a machine-learning algorithm that they trained to recognize âgoodâ and âbadâ posts. They then found that people who wrote posts with a scored quality x that received upvotes went on to write good posts, and people who wrote posts that were also scored x that received downvotes went on to write bad posts.
They say that the two groups of post writers are essentially the âsameâ before they were voted on, but the key thing is that they are prioritizing their own algorithmic scores over the actual votes that the posts received.
In actual fact, the reason the posts either got upvotes or downvotes is more likely because the posts themselves were worse or better for reasons their automatic-scoring couldnât recognize.
That people whoâs posts were downvoted (i.e. people who actually wrote crappy posts, whatever the algorithm says) then later went on to write posts that were scored poorly by their algorithm is not a surprise.
In order to do this properly, they would have to experiment with randomly-selected groups and controls, a la Facebook or OK Cupid. They would need to randomly assign people up- or downvotes regardless of the actual quality of the post, and then see what it did to the person.
Or it could be that some people are just assholes and proud to be one.
Some sites only count downvotes if the comment has positive votes, they never go below zero or show the number of downvotes, only the number of upvotes after the downvotes have been detracted. this is also an excellent way to allow quality comments to rise to the top without inflaming or encouraging trolls. It isnât an issue if done right, they things they point to as negative are easily neutralized while keeping all the benefits of the vote system.
also, i personally -LOVE- sites that have the IGNORE feature where you can click on an extra annoying user and make them disappear from all your comment thread views, and they no longer see yours either, it is like they arenât even there anymore. I never use it for contrarian opinions that are intelligent, as I appreciate those, but it sure comes in handy weeding out the a-holes or trolls that have absolutely nothing of value to add without further inflaming or encouraging them. More sites need to utilize this feature.
Reminds me of John Gardnerâs landmark âGrendelâ which revisits âBeowulfâ from the monsterâs point of view. Grendel ventures into the world of man, against the advise of much of the wildlife, in search of meaning and a sense of self. He is frustrated by the egotistical, futile obsessions that pass for menaing in manâs world (The Internet in this metaphore I suppose). Worse, his intelligent inquisitiveness gains him only constant treatmean as a monster. In the end Grendel is killed by a true monster but manages a run home to his mother, who would have nothing to do with mankind, before bleeding out.
The downside is that some people just blaze through the comments and downvote everyone who disagrees with them. Itâs a bit disheartening to see posts that are in no way driving trollies or rude or even very controversial sitting in the -6 votes total category just because theyâre sitting on the wrong side of the iOS/Android wars. Whatever the wrong side is today, maybe MacRumors linked to it, so any mildly pro-Android comment gets downvoted, or maybe Phandroid linked to it so vice versa. Then you notice the trend, and oh, okay, itâs just some tribal dopes.
But I think itâs pretty discouraging to the occasional commenter who said something reasonable and is now mentally sitting in the âa pox on youâ hole.
Now the ignore option, thatâs pure gold.
Why is it surprising that upvotes donât make users post âbetter?â Raising quality takes more effort than lowering it. In fact, if information can be measured as entropy, you could prove this with a little math.
Thatâs a great thing though! If youâre willing to listen, it tells you, âdonât waste your time commenting on sad-sack 14-year-old fanboi threadsâ.
And yeah, those are invariably the threads where Iâve gotten downvotes.
Off-topic-ish: I was very impressed with this movie when I eventually bothered to check it out:
Beowulf & Grendel (2005) (IMDB)
Gerard Butler is a surprisingly appealing, if incomprehensible, Beowulf, while Ingvar SigurĂ°sson is an unbelievably great Grendel.
Well I mentioned it specifically because it was about Ars, which usually (usually) has better comments than someplace like Boy Genius Report or MacRumors. If youâre posting there, or youtube, then yes, you just expect it or should learn fast.
Most such voting is based solely on how well the contents of the post match the opinions of the voter.
This study seems kind of odd to me. Theyâre suggesting that previously good posters got that 1 downvote and it was like that 1 hit of the Mary-ja-wana Cigarette in a DARE PSA. Next scene theyâre shooting heroin into their eyeballs or posting racial slurs just to reap maximum negative points.
Personally I think that sites that only have upvote buttons are a little too vulnerable to trolls and tend to suffer from excessive flamewars once the site grows too large to effectively moderate with traditional moderators. On the other hand, unlimited downvoting also has the downside of encouraging the kind of people described in the article: the negative vote collector. They are guaranteed to post only useless and usually vile material. I prefer systems like Slashdot and Ars where negative votes end up auto-hiding the material ones it goes far enough into the negative.
I also like sites that put a strict and smallish limit on up/down votes, as this makes the system harder to game and the rewards less sweet.
IMHO, BB mostly gets by because the number of active commenters is fairly small and they have a reasonably responsive mod staff, but itâs not a solution that scales well if each article starts generating hundreds of comments or BBS threads start exploding. Even Somethingawfulâs famed mod staff eventually got overwhelmed and now their General Discussion forum is worse than /b/.
I donât really like the voting system myself. Iâd rather someone tell me off if I say something stupid and offensive than just get a thousand downvotes and not necessarily know why.
Thatâs one of the reasons I comment on BB. In most places, if I say something offensive or stupid without thinking, I just get a landslide of bad karma. Sometimes I donât even know what I said. Whereas on BB, people wonât hesitate to explain to me like Iâm five why I need to think before posting. It at least gives me the chance to learn something. And when someone tells me off about something I think is fine, it gives me a shot at stepping back for a few days, hashing over what I said and seeing if the objection actually makes sense and I really am wrong, or if theyâre being too sensitive.
Comments are much better in my humble opinion. Upvotes and downvotes transmit so little information, and in reality just telegraph what a community agrees with or disagrees with, without enriching your brain. In that way the voting system contributes to the internet filter bubble on a community level.
âYour fatherâs kill file. This is the weapon of a Web Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a downvote button. A more elegant weapon for a more civilized age.â
There is also a powerful need to create âin-groupsâ and âout-groupsâ or otherwise engage in favoritism. Anyone that has ever worked in an office has experienced this and knows this childhood/schoolyard dynamic seems to grip most people their entire lives.
It also is not news that criticizing someone leads to a decline in their attitude and performance, and this is how a productive employee can be coached and coerced into the role of the black sheep.
Some time ago I pondered BBs lack of any downvote. IIRC, at the time I was particularly annoyed with some idiot I wanted to âpunishâ. After a time I realised that only having + votes creates an overall better experience; the punishment on BB for an idiot post is the outcasts postion of having no votes, and probably not many or any replys. Social ostracism is a powerful force. Meanwhile, granting upvotes (or hearts) adds to the positive karma in the world, with no buzzkill able to negate someone elseâs love.
Itâs a good system, I think.
Itâs probably aided by a generally literate, articulate and coherent audience, a fair bit of self-policing of community standards, and some reasonably sane moderation. Iâm not sure if itâd work on Youtube, for example.
