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Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

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Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#531

Post by telxos »

musicale wrote: post #480
Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

> In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion I wish I saw more consensus - things that are agreed upon by multiple sides - but in practice I tend to see a tyranny of the majority - whoever can win the upvote vs. downvote contest. The winning side rises to the top, while dissenting voices are silenced. One sensible thing that I thought HN did but I don'…

IMO there should be 3 voting options

I agree, I disagree, Noise/bullshit

The problem to me is I want to read things I don't agree with but I don't want to read bullshit.

I would especially love to read ideas with an even amount of agree / disagree but a low bullshit amount. Not just sum all this to zero and hide it. That is terrible.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#532

Post by spiralx »

klyrs wrote: post #455
smellf wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still do, and the quality of discourse on Slashdot is about as bad as it has ever been.

No, it was pretty good in the late 90s, very early 00s. Then it got competition from digg and reddit, and lost readership. Only the trolls perservered, and here's the key, without quality conversation, dedicated readers couldn't earn enough meta-karma to moderate. The 'never delete a comment' policy remained for about a decade wherein every story was quickly brigaded by racist, sexist and homophobic slurs, but mostly…

After stopping reading /. every day sometime around 2010 or so I've started browsing it again about once a week or so. There's less discussion than there used to be but it's no better or worse than it used to be - there's certainly far, far less of the pointless noise that took after before I left.

Considering the amount of fuckery people engaged on during the site's heyday its moderation system handled things amazingly well. If you read at a threshold of +1 you'd barely see all the garbage posted there.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#533

Post by spiralx »

nemo44x wrote: post #434
professoretc wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of how Slashdot used to work: you couldn't just up/down vote, you had to pick a reason why, from a list. "Insightful", "Funny", "Informative", etc. for upvotes, "Incorrect", "Trolling", "Off topic", etc. for downvotes. Of course, Slashdot also had meta moderation, where you could occasionally be given the job of up/downvoting other peoples' votes , which in turn influenced how often they would be allowed…

I think it was the best system. Importantly - not having the power to moderate all the time. You were given a certain amount of moderation points at random times so you felt like you had to use them wisely. This prevents a site from being consumed by the same active up/down voters which creates an echo chamber. And yes, moderating the moderators was a decent idea too. I'd also support a system of moderation where you…

The top 10% of active users were actually prevented from getting moderation points at all, which helped prevent those users dominating the site. If you browsed /. a couple of times a week and read a few articles each time you'd likely get mod points each week, whereas I never once got them in a decade of reading the site because I was on there all the time.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#535

Post by tincholio »

telxos wrote: post #531
musicale wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion I wish I saw more consensus - things that are agreed upon by multiple sides - but in practice I tend to see a tyranny of the majority - whoever can win the upvote vs. downvote contest. The winning side rises to the top, while dissenting voices are silenced. One sensible thing that I thought HN did but I don'…

IMO there should be 3 voting options I agree, I disagree, Noise/bullshit The problem to me is I want to read things I don't agree with but I don't want to read bullshit. I would especially love to read ideas with an even amount of agree / disagree but a low bullshit amount. Not just sum all this to zero and hide it. That is terrible.

Actually, Slashdot's system was the best, with Flamebait/Troll/Funny/Informative/Insightful options, with only a limited number of votes (they called it "moderation points") available on a given day (this was more complex, you didn't get mod points every day), and a meta-moderation system allowing to rate the way people voted on any given comment.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#536

Post by lobocinza »

telxos wrote: post #531
musicale wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion I wish I saw more consensus - things that are agreed upon by multiple sides - but in practice I tend to see a tyranny of the majority - whoever can win the upvote vs. downvote contest. The winning side rises to the top, while dissenting voices are silenced. One sensible thing that I thought HN did but I don'…

IMO there should be 3 voting options I agree, I disagree, Noise/bullshit The problem to me is I want to read things I don't agree with but I don't want to read bullshit. I would especially love to read ideas with an even amount of agree / disagree but a low bullshit amount. Not just sum all this to zero and hide it. That is terrible.

I agree. Many times well written and relevant comments are down voted because many people have a different strong opinion on that while noise/meme comments climb to the top because they are funny and don't trigger people.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#537

Post by dTal »

telxos wrote: post #531
musicale wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion I wish I saw more consensus - things that are agreed upon by multiple sides - but in practice I tend to see a tyranny of the majority - whoever can win the upvote vs. downvote contest. The winning side rises to the top, while dissenting voices are silenced. One sensible thing that I thought HN did but I don'…

IMO there should be 3 voting options I agree, I disagree, Noise/bullshit The problem to me is I want to read things I don't agree with but I don't want to read bullshit. I would especially love to read ideas with an even amount of agree / disagree but a low bullshit amount. Not just sum all this to zero and hide it. That is terrible.

Since upvoting presumably promotes a post, and "noise/bullshit" presumably penalizes it, what would "I disagree" actually do?

You might say that HN already has this system, distinguishing between downvoting and "flagging".

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#538

Post by GoblinSlayer »

chii wrote: post #505
wraptile wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to tyranny of the majority is NOT to hide down-voted comments and provide sorting options. Big problem with reddit is that it hides comments below certain threshold essentially silencing minority opinions.

> below certain threshold essentially silencing minority opinions These are not minority opinions, but unpopular opinions. Just because something is downvoted to hell and hidden, doesn't mean it's a minority. A minority opinion is one which few people have, not one which is downvoted by the majority.

A minority opinion is downvoted by the majority because the majority disagrees with the minority opinion.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#539

Post by aeturnum »

romwell wrote: post #528
aeturnum wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is exactly what reddit told its users to do I'm not on reddit much these days but when I opened it just now I was able to downvote without choosing a reason? So I do not think it is using the system I described. The ability of each user to chose what downvote categories they want to respect would be an important part of making the system harder to "game" (to the degree that one is "gaming" a voting system by v…

Reddit says to only downvote if a comment does not contribute to the discussion, not if you disagree. So downvoting is an implicit choice of only "good" reasons. Putting a drop-down list with "good" reasons is as good as displaying a pop-up: "Are you sure you are downvoting for ?" - which will be promptly ignored. Users will just be frustrated for a bit until they train themselves to pick the category that maximizes…

> Users will just be frustrated for a bit until they train themselves to pick the category that maximizes the effect of their downvote.

If each other user can choose what downvote categories they want reflected on their site, this dynamic doesn't work the way you are describing.

> examine why people downvote. Because categories won't change that.

It seems to me like forcing people to label why they are downvoting would be very helpful to examining why people downvote.

> It would be like the emoji committee not including an emoji for penis. That worked well, didn't it?

I think it worked really well? Like, I wouldn't mind a penis emoji, but it turns out we've got an informal penis emoji and it works great? What do you feel did not work well about it?

It seems like you are thinking that I am thinking that this system would...prevent bad downvotes or make people think twice or...I dunno, be better? I was not thinking that.

The idea is more about forcing people to contextualize their downvotes in a way that can be observed and reacted to by the community at large. It would be a way of talking about why people downvote without making a particular person defend themselves. It would, hopefully, add another layer to the communal sense of why people are engaging in the way they are.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#540

Post by Talanes »

atoav wrote: post #519
chii wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> below certain threshold essentially silencing minority opinions These are not minority opinions, but unpopular opinions. Just because something is downvoted to hell and hidden, doesn't mean it's a minority. A minority opinion is one which few people have, not one which is downvoted by the majority.

If you have a forum with 100 people and your opinion is downvoted by 50 your opinion is (within that forum) the minority opinion. That doesn't necessarily mean this opinion is a minority opinion in the real world. In fact it doesn't even have to mean those who downvoted don't share your opinion, they might have downvoted you for a heap of reasons (maybe you were rude, or they saw your comment as pointless, maybe they…

Your second paragraph invalidates the first. What if all 50 of those people agree with you, but are downvoting you for another reason?
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