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I'd say that for HN, absolutely not. One of the problems that I have with most moderation systems (reddit, digg, HN, etc.) is that everybody has got unlimited

by blhack 17y ago

I'd say that for HN, absolutely not. One of the problems that I have with most moderation systems (reddit, digg, HN, etc.) is that everybody has got unlimited mod-power. I can only speak for myself, but when I get slashdot moderator points, I make sure that I use them correctly; it feels like a privilege to get them. Now, I don't think that that is the best way of doing things, but I think it is good. The way I did it on my website (which is small, so I haven't really gotten to see if it works or not) is that you have to earn your mod points by submitting things and then having others upvote them. Points also expire after 24 hours. To me, encouraging your friends to upvote your stories is okay with my mod system because if they upvote on thing, it means that they can't upvote another. I guess what I'm saying is yes, it is bad...but only because you don't lose anything by upvoting something. If mod points were limited, I don't see a problem with it, at least not as much of a problem...it would be a bit like encouraging your friends to use a product that you make, but still charging them for it. (my website is: http://www.gibsonandlily.com http://www.gibsonandlily.com if you want to see the mod-system I'm talking about).

jacquesm 17y ago
That sounds really clever what you have built there.
- blhack 17y ago
  Thanks :). Now if only I can figure out how to get people to actually use it, haha.
Perceval 17y ago
I think that you've identified an important problem, but I disagree with your approach to solving it. I think you're right that scarcity is a good way to make voting (especially approval-style voting) into something more meaningful. One of the problems with Digg is not just the unlimited amount of voting that one can do, but also the unlimited amount of submitting one can do. As a result, you have people running scripts to submit tons and tons of articles scraped from RSS feeds. Literally one article every few seconds. What your system would do (making people earn mod points through submissions) is simply encourage users to submit as much as possible in order to gain more points. Crapflooding the queue then destroys the signal to noise ration irretrievably. I think the better way to implement scarcity, apart from your method and Slashdot's method, is to weight users' votes according to the number of votes they've distributed in a given period (say 24 hours). So a person who votes for under 10 things might have each vote count as a full 1 point. But a person who votes for 20 things might have their vote count as only 1/2 a point. You might put a lower bound on it, so that a vote will never be worth less than 1/10th of a point, but you get the idea. It's not scarcity by number, so much as scarcity by dilution. The best part of this is that it's invisible to the user. When you have a system that's visible ("You've got 5 Modpoints, Use 'em or Lose 'em!"), you encourage gaming the system. When you have a system that's invisible, users can behave normally or badly and the system can compensate without giving them clues as to how to game it.

by blhack 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

That sounds really clever what you have built there.

blhack 17y ago
Thanks :). Now if only I can figure out how to get people to actually use it, haha.

Perceval 17y ago

I think that you've identified an important problem, but I disagree with your approach to solving it. I think you're right that scarcity is a good way to make voting (especially approval-style voting) into something more meaningful. One of the problems with Digg is not just the unlimited amount of voting that one can do, but also the unlimited amount of submitting one can do. As a result, you have people running scripts to submit tons and tons of articles scraped from RSS feeds. Literally one article every few seconds. What your system would do (making people earn mod points through submissions) is simply encourage users to submit as much as possible in order to gain more points. Crapflooding the queue then destroys the signal to noise ration irretrievably. I think the better way to implement scarcity, apart from your method and Slashdot's method, is to weight users' votes according to the number of votes they've distributed in a given period (say 24 hours). So a person who votes for under 10 things might have each vote count as a full 1 point. But a person who votes for 20 things might have their vote count as only 1/2 a point. You might put a lower bound on it, so that a vote will never be worth less than 1/10th of a point, but you get the idea. It's not scarcity by number, so much as scarcity by dilution. The best part of this is that it's invisible to the user. When you have a system that's visible ("You've got 5 Modpoints, Use 'em or Lose 'em!"), you encourage gaming the system. When you have a system that's invisible, users can behave normally or badly and the system can compensate without giving them clues as to how to game it.