Live data from Hacker News

Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 400 posts

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#21
post #13
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which community/platform has tried this?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 li…

This is basically what people did on their own when they say a tweet gets "ratioed" by having more quote retweets than likes - the downvote button is probably just turning that into a first-party feature.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 li…

> 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.

There is no information provided by the button click other than that the button was clicked. Which button the user decides to choose may as well be considered arbitrary because onlookers have no way of ever determining the true intent unless the button presser also comments with their intent.

I find it curious that what was up/down has changed to like/dislike in your comment. Being able to see that someone read your comment is the reward provided by these 'karma' systems. Nobody wants to spend a slice of their life writing something that nobody will ever read. Finding readership is the goal and creating content with enough quality that someone wants to go out of their way to tell you that they read it is how you validate that you are accomplishing your goal. Either button can convey that information. With that, isn't 'dislike' logically no button press? If you truly dislike something, why do you want to reward the author?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#24

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…

> Hackernews and slashdot do good jobs of moderation by making you have to be a participant that's contributed with well thought out comments.

You should see how much karma some people have when they finally get banned and reconsider your evaluation of that method's effectiveness. It's not difficult to grind 500 karma here, it's not a signal of anything but time spent.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#25

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 really do think innovative in social media spaces in lacking, probably because the established players have no real reason to change things up aside from stealing newcomers's ideas

but it would to cool to see if any research could be done on stuff like seeing how different features (or lack of) lead to different communities and cultures on a site

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#26
post #25

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 really do think innovative in social media spaces in lacking, probably because the established players have no real reason to change things up aside from stealing newcomers's ideas but it would to cool to see if any research could be done on stuff like seeing how different features (or lack of) lead to different communities and cultures on a site

How do you define success for these experiments? Social media already is optimizing for engagement, probably the average hn commenter doesn't like those results though.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#27
post #25

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 really do think innovative in social media spaces in lacking, probably because the established players have no real reason to change things up aside from stealing newcomers's ideas but it would to cool to see if any research could be done on stuff like seeing how different features (or lack of) lead to different communities and cultures on a site

Matrix and the power of decentralized federated social networks will allow this soon.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#28

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 use voting to keep track of whether I’ve watched something before or not. There’s not really a good way to tell most sites you don’t want to see the same thing twice.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#29
post #6

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…

Reddit is alive and well. If Reddit is a failure, I want such failures.

It's alive and well as far as numbers and users and time spent. I think it can be considered a failure in other ways. Is it creating healthy online communities, things like that. Are good things coming out of it, or is it effecting the real world in a negative way.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#30
It's an experiment. There is no widespread visible commitment to change. Personally, I suspect they won't do this "live" at scale, without a huge PR campaign. Because smarter people than me (ie most of HN) can workshop half a hundred potential problems with it, in less time than it takes me to read the article online. (which I did btw. They're testing at least two forms of up/down)
Post reply on HN