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Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

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Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#11

Post by endisneigh »

I think up and down voting are great, however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If you think of karma as an economy, taking an action should have a cost.

Of course this leads to the question: if voting has a cost, then how do people accumulate irrespective of themselves receiving a vote?

You could give everyone say, a fixed number of karma to begin with that could then be allocated. You can then give people more karma for successfully being a user without being flagged or receiving certain amounts of negative karma for a time period.

It's a shame there's not more experimentation here. This could lead to more interesting sort of dynamics. For example, if the #1 person believes something is being said that is really damaging in some way, they could put at stake the entirety of their karma and downvote it, which would pretty much obliterate the comment. Conversely, if someone is speaking a truth no one else is acknowledging someone with a lot of karma could sacrifice a good chunk to bring it right to the top.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#12

Post by cjsawyer »

endisneigh wrote: post #11

I think up and down voting are great, however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If you think of karma as an economy, taking an action should have a cost. Of course this leads to the question: if voting has a cost, then how do people accumulate irrespective of themselves receiving a vote? You could give everyone say, a fixed number of karma to begin with that could then be allocated. You can then give people mo…

Each user gets 10 votes per day, and can only vote up or down on a topic once?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#13

Post by sanxiyn »

paxys wrote: post #7
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #3

I personally don't like this. Hackernews and slashdot do good jobs of moderation by making you have to be a participant that's contributed with well thought out comments. Reddit fails because the "upvotes/downvote machine" is just an opinion meter. Also the gaming of it is not good either so it's a matter of time before Twitter publicly displays your stats as you tweet. It's another slippery slope for them to show ig…

Every single upvote/downvote mechanism on the internet (including on HN) is an opinion meter, regardless of what rules/etiquette the site tries to push. And I'm pretty sure that's what Twitter wants, because it means that all the safe, popular replies to a Tweet will automatically bubble up on top and they won't have to deal with the controversial ones because the community will take care of them.

I like the design where you must give reason for downvotes. This seems to discourage mindless downvotes.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#14

Post by randomdata »

endisneigh wrote: post #11

I think up and down voting are great, however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If you think of karma as an economy, taking an action should have a cost. Of course this leads to the question: if voting has a cost, then how do people accumulate irrespective of themselves receiving a vote? You could give everyone say, a fixed number of karma to begin with that could then be allocated. You can then give people mo…

> I think up and down voting are great

It is great as a poor man's analytics system, providing knowledge that at least someone read your comment, allowing you to evaluate if it is worth posting more or if your efforts are disappearing into the void. However, having both up and down seems redundant. The both provide the exact same information.

> however what is dumb is that neither has a cost.

If there is a cost then there will be reduced incentive to let you know that your comment was read, which reduces future engagement, which is not ideal for the platform.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#15

Post by yellow_lead »

endisneigh wrote: post #11

I think up and down voting are great, however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If you think of karma as an economy, taking an action should have a cost. Of course this leads to the question: if voting has a cost, then how do people accumulate irrespective of themselves receiving a vote? You could give everyone say, a fixed number of karma to begin with that could then be allocated. You can then give people mo…

I like your ideas that voting should have a cost. I think though that your last paragraph (staking much of your karma) would inevitably lead to a karma market and marketers abusing the feature.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#16

Post by endisneigh »

randomdata wrote: post #14
endisneigh wrote: post #11

I think up and down voting are great, however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If you think of karma as an economy, taking an action should have a cost. Of course this leads to the question: if voting has a cost, then how do people accumulate irrespective of themselves receiving a vote? You could give everyone say, a fixed number of karma to begin with that could then be allocated. You can then give people mo…

> I think up and down voting are great It is great as a poor man's analytics system, providing knowledge that at least someone read your comment, allowing you to evaluate if it is worth posting more or if your efforts are disappearing into the void. However, having both up and down seems redundant. The both provide the exact same information. > however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If there is a cost then…

> It is great as a poor man's analytics system, providing knowledge that at least someone read your comment, allowing you to evaluate if it is worth posting more or if your efforts are disappearing into the void. However, having both up and down seems redundant. The both provide the exact same information.

I disagree. If a comment has 100 likes and 100 dislikes that clearly is different than a comment that has 200 likes or 200 dislikes. A new metric, controversiality is created when you look at both the total amount of likes and dislikes and the ratio between them given a comment. Depending on your inclination a comment with a high, equal number of likes and dislikes is perhaps more engaging than the same number of solely likes or dislikes.

> If there is a cost then there will be reduced incentive to let you know that your comment was read, which reduces future engagement, which is not ideal for the platform.

Depending on how it's implemented, this may or may not matter. For example you could allow people to like or dislike without limit, but after a certain amount (them exhausting their own karma) its effect changes, but regardless they can continue to do it.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#18

Post by bikezen »

paxys wrote: post #7
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #3

I personally don't like this. Hackernews and slashdot do good jobs of moderation by making you have to be a participant that's contributed with well thought out comments. Reddit fails because the "upvotes/downvote machine" is just an opinion meter. Also the gaming of it is not good either so it's a matter of time before Twitter publicly displays your stats as you tweet. It's another slippery slope for them to show ig…

Every single upvote/downvote mechanism on the internet (including on HN) is an opinion meter, regardless of what rules/etiquette the site tries to push. And I'm pretty sure that's what Twitter wants, because it means that all the safe, popular replies to a Tweet will automatically bubble up on top and they won't have to deal with the controversial ones because the community will take care of them.

Kind of but not really. reddit has a lot of minority communities that just get mass downvoted too since downvoting costs nothing and other people organize to just mass nuke everything for things like women/trans/whatever focused subreddits that they dont like.

HN is kind of different in that downvoting as at least gated behind _something_, you cant just spin up an account and immediately downvote everything.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#19

Post by chimpansteve »

This seems prone to trouble to me.

Twitter is already very groupthink heavy, and I can only see this amplifying that problem. You see it in Reddit all the time - people don't actually read the comments, just upvote the upvoted ones and vice versa.

I worry this will just make an already very narrow set of acceptable opinions even narrower.

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