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The problem with mobs is they gang up on individuals and the problem with that is the mob can easily over power an individual. If you take away the mob's power

by fjabre 17y ago

The problem with mobs is they gang up on individuals and the problem with that is the mob can easily over power an individual. If you take away the mob's power by only allowing points to go down to 0 or 1 for example instead of -4 it might feel less mob-ish.. EDIT: The end result of mob encouraged commenting is someone ends up with negative points for their comment(s).. Maybe only users who've reached certain karma level should have the ability to down vote below 1. Reduce the size of the mob?

sailormoon 17y ago
But then you lose the power to distinguish between the genuinely wrong/inappropriate and the merely banal. There is a case to punish the former but the latter should probably just be ignored.
- fjabre 17y ago
  That is a bit a of a trade-off, agreed.. How about anything below a certain threshold of down votes just gets deleted and not just grayed-out? That would eliminate the 'wrong/inappropriate' all together and the mob would disband? Human behaviour is complicated indeed.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    That would be open to terrible abuse! You can't undo a delete; there's no chance for the larger crowd to undo unfair downvoting. I have my own favoured scheme, which is basically votes counting less the further they go above/below neutral. The first eight votes will get you up to 8. But then you need another 8 to get up to twelve, 16 to get to 16, 32 to get to 20, etc. Downvoting would be similar but without the positive bias, ie 4 to -4, then another 8 to get to -8, etc. By removing the possibility of "windfall" results, that system might be reducing the incentive to appeal to the mob in the first place. And people will be less likely to add yet another vote if it's already +12, say - they know their vote's mostly impotent by then. Could settle things down. I thought it wrong before, when unlimited downvotes were possible - there'd always be some sorry cur saying something the crowd didn't like and down he went, by 20, 30, 50. That was terrible, and has now been thankfully stopped. But ridiculously high upvotes continue and create undesirable incentives, IMO. Wow, that was an essay, sorry, hehe

by fjabre 17y ago

sailormoon 17y ago

But then you lose the power to distinguish between the genuinely wrong/inappropriate and the merely banal. There is a case to punish the former but the latter should probably just be ignored.

fjabre 17y ago
That is a bit a of a trade-off, agreed.. How about anything below a certain threshold of down votes just gets deleted and not just grayed-out? That would eliminate the 'wrong/inappropriate' all together and the mob would disband? Human behaviour is complicated indeed.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  That would be open to terrible abuse! You can't undo a delete; there's no chance for the larger crowd to undo unfair downvoting. I have my own favoured scheme, which is basically votes counting less the further they go above/below neutral. The first eight votes will get you up to 8. But then you need another 8 to get up to twelve, 16 to get to 16, 32 to get to 20, etc. Downvoting would be similar but without the positive bias, ie 4 to -4, then another 8 to get to -8, etc. By removing the possibility of "windfall" results, that system might be reducing the incentive to appeal to the mob in the first place. And people will be less likely to add yet another vote if it's already +12, say - they know their vote's mostly impotent by then. Could settle things down. I thought it wrong before, when unlimited downvotes were possible - there'd always be some sorry cur saying something the crowd didn't like and down he went, by 20, 30, 50. That was terrible, and has now been thankfully stopped. But ridiculously high upvotes continue and create undesirable incentives, IMO. Wow, that was an essay, sorry, hehe