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Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

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Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#21

Post by waleedka »

aston wrote: post #12
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.

True; monetization requires big numbers. But why not split them into smaller communities? Rather than one huge home page, have a lot of smaller ones. And, then, allow the user to select the 5 or so that they like to participate in.

Restrictions are sometimes good. Compare Facebook to MySpace. With MySpace it's one huge community; everyone can see everyone. With Facebook, you can only join a small set of networks. You cannot even join San Francisco and Silicon Valley at the same time. True, people hate it, but it keeps the system manageable as it scales.

This is a subject I'm interested in and trying to build a startup to address it.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#22

Post by utnick »

pg wrote: post #16
aston wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For a blind person, they basically are.

Why people vote the way they do is an interesting topic, but it won't really affect how the reddits of the world deal with it. A vote is a vote.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#23

Post by utnick »

greendestiny wrote: post #18
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.

If you make the magic good enough, the filtering system will only filter out stories that the reader wouldn't read or comment on anyways. So it won't really affect the community.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#24

Post by DanielBMarkham »

waleedka wrote: post #21
aston wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True; monetization requires big numbers. But why not split them into smaller communities? Rather than one huge home page, have a lot of smaller ones. And, then, allow the user to select the 5 or so that they like to participate in. Restrictions are sometimes good. Compare Facebook to MySpace. With MySpace it's one huge community; everyone can see everyone. With Facebook, you can only join a small set of networks. You…

Do people really know which topics they are interested in? I mean, there's stuff I like, such as astronomy, philosophy, or politics, but would I want to choose a group to limit my discourse there? I like philosophy but I'd hate reading a thesis in the subject. But a little light rationalist vs. subjectivist or philosophy of science reading would be great. Except for those times I'd just like to see pictures of naked famous people. How would these sub-groups come into existence? I just can't see it being topic-based.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#25

Post by adsyoung »

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 also very interested to see how something like that would play out. I'm kinda skeptical of any solution that adds complexity to what the user sees though. I'm guessing the more you ask on their part, less people will make proper use of it and click on all the required things appropriately. Then again perhaps thats what you want, only the serious users doing the clicking... We need experiments...

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#26

Post by waleedka »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24
waleedka wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True; monetization requires big numbers. But why not split them into smaller communities? Rather than one huge home page, have a lot of smaller ones. And, then, allow the user to select the 5 or so that they like to participate in. Restrictions are sometimes good. Compare Facebook to MySpace. With MySpace it's one huge community; everyone can see everyone. With Facebook, you can only join a small set of networks. You…

Do people really know which topics they are interested in? I mean, there's stuff I like, such as astronomy, philosophy, or politics, but would I want to choose a group to limit my discourse there? I like philosophy but I'd hate reading a thesis in the subject. But a little light rationalist vs. subjectivist or philosophy of science reading would be great. Except for those times I'd just like to see pictures of naked…

Edited: A web site doesn't have to cover ALL types of stories. This one doesn't cover politics or astronomy, for example. And, in fact, your point is more of an argument for a multi-community approach. Don't you think? For example, if you have multiple communities to choose from, you can read about marketing in the morning and about programming in the evening. Whatever you like.

Google News is organized this way, and it seems to work.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#27

Post by waleedka »

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…

By doing so, you make the UI complex. Only a small percentage of people vote in social news sites as it is, even with the simple one-click up/down.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#28

Post by aston »

waleedka wrote: post #21
aston wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True; monetization requires big numbers. But why not split them into smaller communities? Rather than one huge home page, have a lot of smaller ones. And, then, allow the user to select the 5 or so that they like to participate in. Restrictions are sometimes good. Compare Facebook to MySpace. With MySpace it's one huge community; everyone can see everyone. With Facebook, you can only join a small set of networks. You…

I'd rather not have to pick my communities. Also, if it's strictly topical, how do you keep communities with heavy interest from getting too big?

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#29

Post by DanielBMarkham »

waleedka wrote: post #26
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people really know which topics they are interested in? I mean, there's stuff I like, such as astronomy, philosophy, or politics, but would I want to choose a group to limit my discourse there? I like philosophy but I'd hate reading a thesis in the subject. But a little light rationalist vs. subjectivist or philosophy of science reading would be great. Except for those times I'd just like to see pictures of naked…

Edited: A web site doesn't have to cover ALL types of stories. This one doesn't cover politics or astronomy, for example. And, in fact, your point is more of an argument for a multi-community approach. Don't you think? For example, if you have multiple communities to choose from, you can read about marketing in the morning and about programming in the evening. Whatever you like. Google News is organized this way, and…

Edited:

I think my point was more that people have "favorite" topics, but it's a loose and free-flowing thing, not a rigid structure. Computers are really good at rigid definitions, while people may be amenable to all kinds of fuzziness. Perhaps my group is better defined as "people who like science, astronomy, politics, and startups" -- but that wouldn't be the topics of the articles! The topics of the articles I like could be anything. And over time, I might add or subtract the stuff I like, even without being consciously aware of it. Heck, I'm not even sure I'm able to give you a precise list of topics I'm interested in, much less self-select against a preconceived ontology.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#30

Post by aston »

yters wrote: post #19

In my opinion, this is as strong AI problem, and only people have strong AI. Therefore, large social sites are always going to need human moderators to have a good signal to noise ratio.

That's a bit generous, I think. Most people aren't smart at all. And even the ones that are don't act objectively and without bias. Ever.

Although I will admit that moderated solutions almost always come out better. See slashdot's complete lack of this problem.

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