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Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

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Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#51

Post by waleedka »

Xichekolas wrote: post #49
aston wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slashdot may not have the problem on a story/post level, but have you ever tried to read every comment on a story? A third are hate speech or spam, another third are repetitious or illogical, a sixth are insightful/funny, and the other sixth would be if they didn't happen to be against the wider political views of the people that had mod points that day. I think the only real solution is to have a small community who…

> I think the only real solution is to have a small community

I share the same point of view, and that's what I'm building right now with my new startup. There has to be a balance somewhere. Too small, and you get a dead community that rarely updates. Too big and it loses focus. The sweet spot is somewhere in between.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#52

Post by udfalkso »

Explicit rating & ranking will inevitably crumble under its own weight. You have to use implicit data that isn't easily subject to collusion. Look for trends among disjointed groups that are acting in their own self interest.

I wrote about this a while back: http://breasy.com/blog/2007/07/01/implicit-kicks-explicits-a...

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#53

Post by JulianMorrison »

alex_c wrote: post #40

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.…

I see Slashdot in a darker light. To me it illustrates two principles. First, that there is a level of "firehose" beyond which quality-maximizing editors don't scale. Second, that an abstract judgment (up/down) is less abused than a list of judgments, all of which are necessarily trite. Handing the right to judge out by lotto only broadens the standard deviation of voters - if anything, it worsens the groupthink. "Power users" have more invested in a vote.

Thinking about what makes a vote worthwhile, there has to be some high barrier to entry (or any troll will pile in) and it must not itself be subject to groupthink (or it will result in an automated clique). In the case of Hacker News, I propose the metric: anyone who has founded or co-founded their own startup (defined as: in at the start, and has partial ownership) may vote.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#54

Post by asmosoinio »

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.

And you want the site to respect you privacy, i.e. you don't want to give the evil site any private information -- for example about what you are interested in. Or?

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#55

Post by earthboundkid »

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.

I think one thing that might help is if the choice was a little less binary. A one to five star rating system might help sort out the difference between "a decent way to kill some time at work, so up vote" (3 stars) and "something that will actually change the way that I look at the world, so up vote" (5 stars). Something to think about.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#56

Post by almost »

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.

Please do! news.yc seems to be veering a little off track a bit lately and it'd be nice to see it come back.

After all, if people want the full wisdom of the crouds/mob rule thing then there's always Reddit.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#57

Post by angryearthling »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #53
alex_c wrote: post #40

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.…

I see Slashdot in a darker light. To me it illustrates two principles. First, that there is a level of "firehose" beyond which quality-maximizing editors don't scale. Second, that an abstract judgment (up/down) is less abused than a list of judgments, all of which are necessarily trite. Handing the right to judge out by lotto only broadens the standard deviation of voters - if anything, it worsens the groupthink. "Po…

i don't think it is a lotto as to who gets to vote. those who participate in moderation and those who make comments that are voted up get to vote.

i think one of the very good things in the slashdot model is the cap at 5 on votes. it lowers the number of people who go out of their way to karma whore. what's the point when all you will get is 5 points?

i've used slashdot for a long time (my user id is 5 digits). every year new sites come along.

i used digg for a year before it degenerated into the mess it is now. it went downhill fast once it expanded from a tech only site.

i used reddit for 6 months. it has gone the exact same way. as i type this it has been offline for a day.

after giving up on these i always drift back to slashdot. maybe the question is why do i leave slashdot in the first place? what is wrong with slashdot that i look for other sites?

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#58

Post by pg »

aston wrote: post #33
pg wrote: post #16

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. 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.

There's a difference between what people want to read and what they want other people to read. I know of no precise word for this. Altruism is too charitable, and hypocrisy too uncharitable.

Imagine yourself inside the head of, say, an abortion rights advocate. A story appears with a headline saying that abortion is just as common where it's illegal. You don't read it; you already know that; but you upvote it as a way of saying "hear hear." Now apply the same rule to articles about Bush, Ron Paul, the RIAA, police abuses, etc, and you've filled up most of the frontpage of a site.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#59

Post by fauigerzigerk »

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.

I have severe doubts about this kind of voting system, weighted by moderators or not. A post that was voted up by 100 people and down by 100 people (assuming equal weights) will look exactly the same as one that nobody ever touched. It ruins the effectiveness of voting as a ranking mechanism.

Re: Design: Voting up or Down is Dead

#60

Post by ijoshua »

earthboundkid wrote: post #55
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.

I think one thing that might help is if the choice was a little less binary. A one to five star rating system might help sort out the difference between "a decent way to kill some time at work, so up vote" (3 stars) and "something that will actually change the way that I look at the world, so up vote" (5 stars). Something to think about.

"Maybe" is one option too many

http://www.zeldman.com/2007/06/20/remove-maybe-from-invitati...

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