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Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

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Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#71

Post by rndn »

thekingofspain wrote: post #58
belenos46 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, says everyone except every reputable psychologist ever, and any parent who hasn't raised an out of control little monster of a child. Negative reinforcement works better than any other form of reinforcement, except when paired with positive reinforcement for desired behaviors, just like innumerable studies and common goddamned sense tell you.

A quick google informs me that punishment != negative reinforcement.

The terminology is a bit weird: Positive vs. negative means presenting a stimulus vs. removing it. Reinforcement means increasing the frequency of a reaction and punishment means decreasing it. You have to logically conclude, whether the presented or removed stimulus is nice or unpleasant. Here is an overview:

    positive reinforcement:  presenting nice stimulus to increase frequency of behavior
    negative reinforcement:  removing unpleasant stimulus to increase frequency of behavior
    positive punishment:  presenting unpleasant stimulus to decrease frequency of behavior
    negative punishment:  removing nice stimulus to decrease frequency of behavior
The great confusion stems from the fact that in common English language, with punishment we mean both increasing good behavior and reducing bad behavior, whilst in classical conditioning terms, punishment always refers to reducing the frequency of a certain behavior.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#72

Post by saurik »

fulafel wrote: post #10
rndn wrote: post #3

Reddit is pretty much a case study of upbringing without effective punishment. In real life kids behave because they have skin in the game—if they misbehave, they are not allowed ice cream. On the contrary, if you are banned from reddit, you can simply reset your browser and create a new account. I doubt you can fix reddit with a smarter design, because that won’t change the troublemakers. To fix reddit, you would po…

Upbrining without punishment definitely is definitely possible and practiced semi widely (google around). Punishment is a pretty bad way to address misbehaviour.

You are confusing explicit and implicit punishment: the world "punishes" me for doing risky physical things in a way a video game doesn't; I can jump off a building and "die" in a video game, and potentially lose nothing. There are effectively no ramifications of any form on reddit for being an asshole or a bully or a troll: except in some isolated corner cases, for actual users (as opposed to people using reddit as a brand outlet, such as a developer of a popular video game) the value of a reddit account is effectively zero... people are unlikely to recognize it, if thy do people are unlikely to have read many of your comments, and you can always make a new one that is nearly impossible to ban. This effectively destroys the normal mechanisms we have as humans to keep people from being horrible, and reddit fails to replace with mechanisms that matter in the same way.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#73

Post by magic_beans »

fulafel wrote: post #10
rndn wrote: post #3

Reddit is pretty much a case study of upbringing without effective punishment. In real life kids behave because they have skin in the game—if they misbehave, they are not allowed ice cream. On the contrary, if you are banned from reddit, you can simply reset your browser and create a new account. I doubt you can fix reddit with a smarter design, because that won’t change the troublemakers. To fix reddit, you would po…

Upbrining without punishment definitely is definitely possible and practiced semi widely (google around). Punishment is a pretty bad way to address misbehaviour.

According to vet and animal behaviorist Ian Dunbar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Dunbar), the best way to train dogs is not by punishing them when they do something "wrong", but to reward them when they do something right.

He also tried this method on his own children and it worked quite well for his family :D

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#74

Post by TrevorJ »

crusso wrote: post #45
fulafel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upbrining without punishment definitely is definitely possible and practiced semi widely (google around). Punishment is a pretty bad way to address misbehaviour.

My first thought was that your comment was a little out there, but then I realized that I'm not that big on punishment with my own kids. I just let life punish them and stand by to assist them if they're in over their heads as well as to advise them on how to avoid future pitfalls. Punishment that I would inflict would be fairly orthogonal to the real hazards that they'll face in life, so I haven't seen much point in…

My parents called them consequences - the result I would experience was always tied to my actions in a manner that reflected what I would face in the real world as much as possible. I think this is a pretty good approach generally as it helped teach me the cause and effect of my actions at an early age.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#75

Post by toomuchtodo »

seiji wrote: post #50
xienze wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit has this strange power inversion dynamic where the users think they are entitled to run the site. To be fair, Reddit isn't what it is without the users. So there is some legitimate amount of power that the users have.

HN is a user driven site and the users have zero power.

HM users are highly in demand tech professionals. They hold all of the power.

An online community without the users has no value. Users have no barrier to move elsewhere.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#76

Post by arprocter »

moron4hire wrote: post #60
arprocter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess the lurk percentage (I assume you mean lurkers are people looking at the site who don't have accounts) may be lower than usual, because you can't subscribe to subreddits without an account

Lurker is usually defined by the fact that they don't participate. Whether or not they have an account isn't usually a factor, though obviously being non-participants they usually have little incentive to create an account. Up-vote buttons usually drag in a few percentage points more of lurkers into creating accounts. Generally speaking, the more of a continuum of ability to participate in a site that you have, and t…

Is there a time period for 90-9-1? Does signing up to reddit, posting a single meme I made and never posting again put me the 1?

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#77

Post by moron4hire »

arprocter wrote: post #76
moron4hire wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lurker is usually defined by the fact that they don't participate. Whether or not they have an account isn't usually a factor, though obviously being non-participants they usually have little incentive to create an account. Up-vote buttons usually drag in a few percentage points more of lurkers into creating accounts. Generally speaking, the more of a continuum of ability to participate in a site that you have, and t…

Is there a time period for 90-9-1? Does signing up to reddit, posting a single meme I made and never posting again put me the 1?

I think it makes you an outlier.
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