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Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

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Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#31

Post by samson »

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…

I agree, systems like digg and alot of other voting sites, don't seem to create alot of invested time for the users.

What I mean is, the data they have the opportunity to collect and use to benefit the individual would make users infinitly more loyal, and reduce the chance of them being overly liberal in their voting habits. The reason being is that they'd CARE. My argument then if I had one to begin with is that users don't care about the system because there's nothing invested in it for them. Yes..Yes..the community..I know, but whats in it for them to make them care.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#32

Post by waleedka »

aston wrote: post #28
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…

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?

> I'd rather not have to pick my communities.

That's a true challenge due to how we make decisions. We, generally, don't want to feel that we're missing out on something. We want to get ALL the news. Although, in reality, we don't. By reading this site we're missing out on what's being said on many other interesting web sites, and we're okay with that. However, faced with the question: Do you want ALL the news or SOME news, we tend to choose the first.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#33

Post by aston »

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.

Not the best comparison. I don't see why a person would vote something up that they have no interest in personally. Altruism isn't all that common.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#34

Post by waleedka »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29
waleedka wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

I see your point. So how about this: a community for people who like science, and another one for those who like politics, and so on. And, then, you choose to be a member of the science, astronomy, and politics clubs, and I choose to join the science and startups clubs. At least this is what I want to build.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#35

Post by aston »

waleedka wrote: post #32
aston wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> I'd rather not have to pick my communities. That's a true challenge due to how we make decisions. We, generally, don't want to feel that we're missing out on something. We want to get ALL the news. Although, in reality, we don't. By reading this site we're missing out on what's being said on many other interesting web sites, and we're okay with that. However, faced with the question: Do you want ALL the news or SOM…

So then you've articulated exactly the type of site I'd love to see. I don't want to be asked what to see, I want to know I'm seeing everything I'm interested in seeing. And I don't want to see things I don't want to see. And, as an added bonus, I'd like the appearance of my input meaning something, too.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#36

Post by yters »

aston wrote: post #30
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.

I didn't say it's a complete solution, otherwise we'd never have disagreements, wars, etc. But, it's the closest we'll get to a solution.

That being said, I think algorithms can be very effective as intelligence amplifiers, allowing us to make higher level decisions and micro manage less.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#37

Post by waleedka »

aston wrote: post #35
waleedka wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather not have to pick my communities. That's a true challenge due to how we make decisions. We, generally, don't want to feel that we're missing out on something. We want to get ALL the news. Although, in reality, we don't. By reading this site we're missing out on what's being said on many other interesting web sites, and we're okay with that. However, faced with the question: Do you want ALL the news or SOM…

So then you've articulated exactly the type of site I'd love to see. I don't want to be asked what to see, I want to know I'm seeing everything I'm interested in seeing. And I don't want to see things I don't want to see. And, as an added bonus, I'd like the appearance of my input meaning something, too.

Well said. I need to think about this hard and deep. Obviously, this is a perfect-world scenario. Let's see how close we can get to it.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#38

Post by yters »

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.

As an aside, this is actually true, though the filter we read the Bible through makes it quite boring. There's a reason the Bible is the most important book for understanding Western civilization.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#39

Post by Alex3917 »

pg wrote: post #4

I think you must have arrived since the explanation of how we're going to avoid drift. http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html Vote weighting isn't turned on yet, but for the last couple weeks I've been thinking it was time to. Incidentally, the poll problem can easily be fixed by changing the frontpage ranking algorithm to treat poll votes as worth e.g. a third as much.

Before you change the ranking, are there any specific things you like or dislike thus far? I've noticed a lot of new user accounts lately, so maybe now would be good for a state of the union.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#40

Post by alex_c »

Seems to me like Slashdot's comment system does two things that might address many of the problems you mention:

- instead of "Up" or "Down", the voting is a bit more granular - "+1 Informative", "-1 Flamebait" etc. The UI isn't MUCH more complicated - instead of a "vote up / vote down" link you have a dropdown.

- Voting points are a limited resource - assigned to "reliable users" randomly and expire after a few days. This makes it a bit harder to get a core of power users who are practically guaranteed to be voted up. As a bonus, the scarcity probably means that people are more likely to use their votes "wisely".

I wonder if something like this has been tried for selecting the front-page stories on a social news site, and how well it would work. As far as I know everyone's following Digg's model.

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