Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#21

Post by dood » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 12:04 AM UTC

auferstehung wrote: post #11

I think a method of ranking news based on the number and quality of comments would be better than voting up and down. This method would be somewhat analogous to page rank in that the rank of a story (webpage) is indirectly determined by the comments (links) and quality of the comments. Writing a comment is arguable less reflexive than clicking an arrow. Also interesting news that was generating a good discussion coul…

The problem with this is firstly that it creates a feedback loop, where the more commented something is, the higher it climbs, the more commented it is...

Secondly, it'd be hard to extract a quality measure from comments alone - there are a number of metrics (number of unique users commenting, rate of commenting, amount of voting...) but how do you get from that to a quality measure? How do you distinguish controversy from quality? Or comment threads full or jokes and snark?

Also, commenting on anything you disagree with or dislike would result in that link getting a boost, which can't be right.

All that said, I think comments could be used, but modestly, as part of a bigger algorithm.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#22

Post by bct » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 12:06 AM UTC

thomasptacek wrote: post #15

auferstehung wrote: post #11

I think a method of ranking news based on the number and quality of comments would be better than voting up and down. This method would be somewhat analogous to page rank in that the rank of a story (webpage) is indirectly determined by the comments (links) and quality of the comments. Writing a comment is arguable less reflexive than clicking an arrow. Also interesting news that was generating a good discussion coul…

Clearly neither system works reliably, but just to put that suggestion in context: http://reddit.com/info/2r8d8/comments vs. http://programming.reddit.com/info/2qbye/comments "Quality" sounds like a good metric until you realize that upvotes mean "I agree!", not "Good comment".

Another alternative is a two-axis system. Up-down for agree-disagree, left-right for quality.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#23

Post by aswanson » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 12:10 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

You could make down votes more expensive by forcing someone to type a rationale of why, or, if the dot product of their down vote to the community vote on a post is way off, discard. Finally, maybe have an up vote/down vote bank that can be exhausted for a given time period. Since you have so much free time, anyway.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#24

Post by dood » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 12:10 AM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #9

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

The entire up vote/down vote thing needs to go away. Voting on a story should be related to an action that the user is taking which implies an up/down vote. For example, in my Facebook application Wildfire stories are up voted only if you pass then on to your friends. As you mentioned to me yesterday, delicious/popular is interesting because it's based on pages people bookmarked for themselves. John.

In a small, smart community like this, an explicit upvote is a hard quality metric to beat.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#25

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 1:18 AM UTC

axod wrote: post #7

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

Could always have a downvote, but weight it as far less than an upvote. Personally I miss having the option of a downvote. Yes I agree downvotes can be an uninformed reflex, but removing any voice of disagreement seems overly harsh. I'd say have upvotes that count as 10 points, and downvotes that count as 1 point or something like that.

[deleted]

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#26

Post by whacked_new » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 2:19 AM UTC

I think the up/down voting system is intrinsically flawed. A better system would be something like a monetary system.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#27

Post by german » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 2:45 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

I rarely downvote on something but I think that having that option does no harm. Maybe on reddit downvoters are more likely to be thoughtless, I don't think that is a problem with news.ycombinator readers. It would help a lot to have the same statistics for downvoters on Y combinator.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#28

Post by Jd » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 4:20 AM UTC

bct wrote: post #22

thomasptacek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly neither system works reliably, but just to put that suggestion in context: http://reddit.com/info/2r8d8/comments vs. http://programming.reddit.com/info/2qbye/comments "Quality" sounds like a good metric until you realize that upvotes mean "I agree!", not "Good comment".

Another alternative is a two-axis system. Up-down for agree-disagree, left-right for quality.

Does anything like this exist that you are aware of?

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#29

Post by oditogre » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 7:34 AM UTC

imsteve wrote: post #17

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

The best reason is because downvotes piss people off. They have been the cause of more flamewars on reddit than anything else. When you know you are right but everyone is downvoting you and upvoting the "wrong" guy, I know very few people who won't react aggressively.

+1 (Insightful)

This is why democracy + free speech (in theory, at least) works. No matter how unpopular, a voice cannot be silenced. If you don't like a person's viewpoints, you can't shut them down by downvoting them; you can only upvote the viewpoint you do like, and / or present your own position yourself, if no one else has done it.

Re: Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down

#30

Post by oditogre » Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 7:41 AM UTC

axod wrote: post #7

pg wrote: post #3

I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into the system than the uparrow. Shorter version: dow…

Could always have a downvote, but weight it as far less than an upvote. Personally I miss having the option of a downvote. Yes I agree downvotes can be an uninformed reflex, but removing any voice of disagreement seems overly harsh. I'd say have upvotes that count as 10 points, and downvotes that count as 1 point or something like that.

I disagree, as noted further up the thread. Preventing downvotes doesn't remove the dissenting opinion. In fact, it allows and encourages it. Downvotes allow groupthink to silence disagreement. If you disagree with something, instead of downvoting, post a comment explaining your position.