Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

I disagree with your overall point that reddit is diverse (and it is beyond the scope of this comment to mention why) but I'd like to chime in with my love of ChangeMyView.

I just love the idea that you can have a judgement free place to discuss things openly and get reasoned replies without being piled on.

Sometimes we hold views which are controversial, and it's great that we can had a non-adversarial discussion about those things.

The only downside is that the person asking to change their view might end up being right in the end, and that the view should not have been changed, but that's against the spirit of the subreddit.

It also has some minor problems of people asking to change their view but have no honest intention of doing so.

But regardless of that, I love that subreddit and I'm sure it wouldn't be possible without good moderation.

I know, but making it paid would mean that I'd never have more than O(1000) users (optimistically!), and I doubt twitter would care. My main question is whether users would.

Another alternative, which may be somewhat controversial, was introduced years ago in Menéame [0], a Spanish website which is somewhat of a cross between Slashdot and Reddit. In summary, they made the votes public. For every comment, you can see who gave it an upvote and who gave it a downvote.

In my opinion the change was worth it. The positive effects are that it strongly discourages organised vote brigading, cheap "I disagree" downvotes, and shy upvotes supporting actual nasty comments. Of course, even if this were possible to implement on Reddit's backend, the sheer scale of votes in the thousands would probably make it unfeasible. However, it would be a very good way to tackle cross-subreddit vote brigading, and would for instance make /r/SubredditDrama's "Do not vote in linked threads" rule much easier to enforce, rather than relying on the honour system.

[0] https://www.meneame.net

> I disagree with your overall point that reddit is diverse

To make it clear, I know that the whole Reddit demographic is not representative.

However, each channel subreddit has a different demographic. Too much of a male perspective? Go to r/TwoXChromosomes/. Too libertarian or heteronormative? You can find your channels too.

I once posted my praise (and interactive exploration) of NSFW content (https://observablehq.com/@stared/tree-of-reddit-sex-life, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19640562). In short - I don't know any other place with that much openness to different body types, styles of grooming, etc.

I've spent a lot of time on old-style (phpBB, SFML) forums of all sorts, and I feel that Reddit and HN are an improvement on them - but there are two factors to disentangle here: discussion shape, and discussion cadence.

In terms of shape, I very strongly believe that tree model - like on Reddit and HN - is superior to the linear model.

Every discussion naturally keeps trying to sprout new branches. People go off tangents, or mention multiple distinct points that others then try to elaborate on[0]. Tree-shaped discussions support this naturally - tangents end up branched off as subtrees[1]. In contrast, the linear model only supports one main thread. Any tangent is either short-lived or takes over the main thread. Attempts at carrying multiple tangents can easily destroy the whole thread[2]. And you have to read through all of them, in sequence, mentally keeping track of their evolution, even if you only care about the (current) main topic.

So, UX-wise, in my opinion, the ultimate discussion platform has to be non-linear[3].

In terms of cadence, I'd also like to see a platform that encourages longer discussions, conversations happening over weeks or months. Forums ain't it - of the ones I've been on, all considered replying to a week-old conversation as "necroposting"[4]. Yes, individual threads can last many months - but these are not really single discussions any more. The limitations of the linear form mean that people can't jump in and fully participate - they'd have too much material to work through. The tip of the thread becomes its own living thing, bearing little relation to its topic, or 90% of its content.

The kind of platform I'd like to see would allow the discussions to grow over time while remaining readable in entirety, so that a topical thread could accumulate knowledge. That necessitates a non-linear form, and possibly some meta-level UX for abridging long conversations. And, of course, a notification system (which HN, notably, doesn't have), so you could track the old threads as they're displaced from the front page by new ones.

Culture-wise, this would necessitate the reversal of traditional approach to necroposting. Where forums don't like reviving threads, and HN won't even let you (it won't pop back on the front page just because you commented on it), this new kind of platform would have to encourage people to find and continue previous discussions instead of starting new ones.

--

[0] - Case in point: this comment. My response covers two distinct topics: tree vs. linear model, and cadence.

[1] - Going back to [0], someone can reply to this comment and talk about just one of the two topics, someone else can reply to cover the other - and now you have two separate, focused subthreads, that can evolve independently and don't interfere with each other.

[2] - You've likely seen plenty of discussions where, at some point, replies start to consist mostly of quotes from previous replies, covering several different topics. This quickly gets impossible to trace and people just either drop most of the tangents, or stop replying altogether. It can sometimes stabilize to the main branch covering 2-3 topics simultaneously - through quotes, or alternating replies.

[3] - That doesn't necessarily mean trees. A question I've learned to always ask myself when modeling things as trees is, what if we used a directed graph instead? I haven't seen this tried, but I think DAG-based discussion would be better. A problem with tree-shaped threads is that you can't merge subthreads back when their discussion converges. You can see this frequently on HN: unrelated top-level comments end up each having the same discussion 2-3 levels down. Even this very thread. DAG-based UX could help reduce that duplication, and as a bonus, it could offer better experience for cross-references between comments.

[4] - See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27274439.