Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

whattofix.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#11

Post by pg »

utnick wrote: post #8

the problem is that even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them obviously, and you need to accomadate them too anyone ever used pandora.com? you give it an artist, it plays you a song by the artist or in the same genre, you vote the song up or down, eventually pandora learns enough about your tastes to only play songs that you enjoy what if a social ne…

even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them

Not quite, unfortunately. The problem with voting, as the reddits realized from the very beginning, is that people will vote something up not just because they liked it, but because they want other people to read it. And a site full of what the majority want everyone else to read could be significantly less interesting than one full of what people like themselves.

And with polls there's not even a pretense that they reflect anyone's interest. The voting mechanism is being hacked for another use.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#12

Post by aston »

waleedka wrote: post #9

It's not a voting problem, it's a scaling problem; I believe. Simply put: social news sites don't scale very well. As communities grow: 1. You and I can't get things on the home page any more. It becomes only for the well connected. 2. Subjects lose focus. 3. It becomes a gold mine for spammers. They'd do anything to game the system if they can get 234,000 visitors from one post [1]. The solution, I believe: Keep com…

At the same time, monetizing eyeballs requires lots of numbers. I guess the solution then is to make a site that feels like a ton of people are there, but still operates quality-wise as if there's a small community actually controlling the content.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#13

Post by aston »

pg wrote: post #11
utnick wrote: post #8

the problem is that even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them obviously, and you need to accomadate them too anyone ever used pandora.com? you give it an artist, it plays you a song by the artist or in the same genre, you vote the song up or down, eventually pandora learns enough about your tastes to only play songs that you enjoy what if a social ne…

even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them Not quite, unfortunately. The problem with voting, as the reddits realized from the very beginning, is that people will vote something up not just because they liked it, but because they want other people to read it. And a site full of what the majority want everyone else to read could be significantly less i…

People voting for whatever they want other people to read is basically the same as voting for what they want themselves. I know surveyors occasionally ask questions like "How do you think most people would answer the following question: ___" in order to get an honest answer in cases where people might not want to fess up to some position personally.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#14

Post by reidman »

Since my YC app deals with this directly, I've been thinking about it a lot. My idea has to do with voting quotes up/down (kinda like Jyte, http://jyte.com ).

In allowing people to vote up/down, I realized that there needed to be a separation between 'Yes this quote is accurate' and 'Yes I think this quote is important', since the two can be exclusive.

In the end I decided to implement a two-step process. The first step is to Agree/Disagree with the quote at hand. Once a user has voted in this way, they have an optional second step to vote for how 'Important' the quote is (important or unimportant).

I have yet to see how it will work out, but I'd love any comments you guys could provide.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#15

Post by DanielBMarkham »

reidman wrote: post #10
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you vote up for a link to a story that you violently disagreed with? Be honest now. And if you would (I _think_ I would) do you really think that's the way others are voting?

I just experienced this dilemma with the 'Facebook Sucks' post by Dave Winer (heh) that went up on YC news earlier today or last night. I thought the linked story was pretty lame, but at the same time, I thought it was an interesting conversation. In the end, I didn't vote up the link, but I did participate pretty heavily in the comments. I would like a way to distinguish between liking the story and thinking that ot…

I have a hard time voting anything up, mainly because I have no idea what I'm signifying.

I literally have to remind myself go through the news list and comments and vote up every so often -- after I've consumed the material. It's not part of the consumption process for me at all.

There have been a lot of stories on YC that I agreed with, but I thought the linked article was poor. And what about good AskYC questions that have no-so-good conversations? Would you vote up the question because it's good, or ignore it because there's nothing of value there for anybody else?

This is kind of one of those seemingly pointless philosophical conversations that have a great deal of meaning once they turn into solid solutions.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#16

Post by pg »

aston wrote: post #13
pg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them Not quite, unfortunately. The problem with voting, as the reddits realized from the very beginning, is that people will vote something up not just because they liked it, but because they want other people to read it. And a site full of what the majority want everyone else to read could be significantly less i…

People voting for whatever they want other people to read is basically the same as voting for what they want themselves. I know surveyors occasionally ask questions like "How do you think most people would answer the following question: ___" in order to get an honest answer in cases where people might not want to fess up to some position personally.

People voting for whatever they want other people to read is basically the same as voting for what they want themselves.

Only if the Bible is basically the same as porn.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#17

Post by yters »

aston wrote: post #13
pg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them Not quite, unfortunately. The problem with voting, as the reddits realized from the very beginning, is that people will vote something up not just because they liked it, but because they want other people to read it. And a site full of what the majority want everyone else to read could be significantly less i…

People voting for whatever they want other people to read is basically the same as voting for what they want themselves. I know surveyors occasionally ask questions like "How do you think most people would answer the following question: ___" in order to get an honest answer in cases where people might not want to fess up to some position personally.

I think we all would like it if everyone else were better behaved than we want to be.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#18

Post by greendestiny »

utnick wrote: post #8

the problem is that even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them obviously, and you need to accomadate them too anyone ever used pandora.com? you give it an artist, it plays you a song by the artist or in the same genre, you vote the song up or down, eventually pandora learns enough about your tastes to only play songs that you enjoy what if a social ne…

Individual recommendations don't fine tune social news, they destroy it. You no longer have a shared resource and the communication becomes very indirect.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#20

Post by aston »

reidman wrote: post #14

Since my YC app deals with this directly, I've been thinking about it a lot. My idea has to do with voting quotes up/down (kinda like Jyte, http://jyte.com ). In allowing people to vote up/down, I realized that there needed to be a separation between 'Yes this quote is accurate' and 'Yes I think this quote is important', since the two can be exclusive. In the end I decided to implement a two-step process. The first s…

I'm not sure if I agree with the idea that importance is completely independent of agreement. It seems to me that agreement is one of the many variables that play into what's important (along with timeliness, 'interestingness,' widespread appeal, and tons of other things).

I think the quality not scaling is the main issue. Adding another step to the process is just going to make people less interested in contributing their opinion at all.

Post reply on HN