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If nothing is done, there will be problems. If different things are experimented with, there will still be problems. There will always be problems -- no matter

by rewind 17y ago

If nothing is done, there will be problems. If different things are experimented with, there will still be problems. There will always be problems -- no matter what -- for this sort of site when voting is involved. Nothing wrong with not liking the changes, but unless you're going to recommend alternatives, the post doesn't help much. If he does nothing, there are just different problems that different people will be unhappy about. I think experimenting is better than doing nothing, even if it means learning the hard way along the way.

sfk 17y ago
I agree that ideally I should provide alternatives. However, I honestly thing that the kind of tweaking that is currently happening has no visible benefits but a lot of drawbacks. I simply do not /see/ any alternatives. Also, I'm of the opinion that voting generally should not be tampered with. Either count every vote or drop voting altogether.
- lsd5you 17y ago
  Apostasy! Anyway, the problem is not the policies as such, it is the lack of explanation/feedback. Depending on the nature of the heuristic employed, feedback could perhaps be given in a users profile or during the action of voting (or even merely a single, central explanation of the heuristics employed). (Personally I am neutral on the issue).
- rewind 17y ago
  I think (and I can only guess) that part of the process of testing is just doing things based on what Paul wants to see, then determining if the results meet his goals or not, but without having to ask permission from the user community or tell them everything that's going on. Just the fact that he's testing at all would indicate that he's keeping an eye on whether his tests are giving him the desired results. If not, I'm sure he'll keep iterating and trying new things. I can certainly appreciate your frustration, and I'm not just brushing that aside, but I think for anyone (yourself included) who has been here awhile, it's obvious that Paul is always trying new things, and ALWAYS to make the site better, so it's just a matter of dealing with the changes as he makes them with an understanding that everyone has the same ultimate goal. If he makes changes without announcing them, it's just a quirk that members of the community need to be aware of, and just learn to live with.
sfk 17y ago
I already replied, but I think this warrants a second reply: I would already be much happier if the voting policies were _known_, and I'll tell you why: For example, I've frequently seen the idea that voting power should be based on some kind of average score of some recent comments. In the current bandwagon voting climate, this would mean that the guy who "wants to put bullets into the bad guys" (recent thread, +40 points) has more voting power than most other people here (a lot of _very_ informative comments linger at 1 or 2 points). If the voting policies were known, I could make an educated decision whether I still want to be part of this site.
- nsrivast 17y ago
  On the other hand, if the voting policies were known, people could more efficiently game the system. If the voting policy is unknown (and PG is committed to keeping it unknown), perhaps fewer people will worry about it's functional form, fewer people will care about what their vote multiplier happens to be, and more people would get on with the incredibly simple business of submitting interesting links and voting up what they find interesting. Perhaps. You should leave if the quality of the content deteriorates, not based on some background metric for an arbitrary scrip!
- Perceval 17y ago
  As I recall from past discussions, pg has indicated that his algorithm discounts outliers. So someone who has one 40+ comment and a string of comments rated 1 or 0 will not see the benefit of the outlier. A solution to piling on, if it persists, may simply be placing a hard limit on the maximum score a comment can garner. Slashdot and Kuro5hin both max out comments (Slashdot at 5, Kuro5hin used to max out at 5 but that was later changed to 3).
  - pyre 17y ago
    > A solution to piling on, if it persists, may simply be placing a hard limit on the maximum score a comment can garner. Slashdot and Kuro5hin both max out comments (Slashdot at 5, Kuro5hin used to max out at 5 but that was later changed to 3). The problem being that sometimes there are posts that deserve well above the limit for their insight/knowledge. A logarithmic scale might be better. Up to 5 points there is a 1-vote-to-1-point correlation, after that it takes an increasing number of actual votes to increment the comment to the next point (i.e. 10 votes to get from 5 to 6 points, 15 more votes to get to 7 point, etc) That way a comment that is able to get a massive amount of votes gets 'rewarded' for it above a comment that is only able to get 5 votes.

by rewind 17y ago

sfk 17y ago

I agree that ideally I should provide alternatives. However, I honestly thing that the kind of tweaking that is currently happening has no visible benefits but a lot of drawbacks. I simply do not /see/ any alternatives. Also, I'm of the opinion that voting generally should not be tampered with. Either count every vote or drop voting altogether.

lsd5you 17y ago
Apostasy! Anyway, the problem is not the policies as such, it is the lack of explanation/feedback. Depending on the nature of the heuristic employed, feedback could perhaps be given in a users profile or during the action of voting (or even merely a single, central explanation of the heuristics employed). (Personally I am neutral on the issue).
rewind 17y ago
I think (and I can only guess) that part of the process of testing is just doing things based on what Paul wants to see, then determining if the results meet his goals or not, but without having to ask permission from the user community or tell them everything that's going on. Just the fact that he's testing at all would indicate that he's keeping an eye on whether his tests are giving him the desired results. If not, I'm sure he'll keep iterating and trying new things. I can certainly appreciate your frustration, and I'm not just brushing that aside, but I think for anyone (yourself included) who has been here awhile, it's obvious that Paul is always trying new things, and ALWAYS to make the site better, so it's just a matter of dealing with the changes as he makes them with an understanding that everyone has the same ultimate goal. If he makes changes without announcing them, it's just a quirk that members of the community need to be aware of, and just learn to live with.

sfk 17y ago

I already replied, but I think this warrants a second reply: I would already be much happier if the voting policies were _known_, and I'll tell you why: For example, I've frequently seen the idea that voting power should be based on some kind of average score of some recent comments. In the current bandwagon voting climate, this would mean that the guy who "wants to put bullets into the bad guys" (recent thread, +40 points) has more voting power than most other people here (a lot of _very_ informative comments linger at 1 or 2 points). If the voting policies were known, I could make an educated decision whether I still want to be part of this site.

nsrivast 17y ago
On the other hand, if the voting policies were known, people could more efficiently game the system. If the voting policy is unknown (and PG is committed to keeping it unknown), perhaps fewer people will worry about it's functional form, fewer people will care about what their vote multiplier happens to be, and more people would get on with the incredibly simple business of submitting interesting links and voting up what they find interesting. Perhaps. You should leave if the quality of the content deteriorates, not based on some background metric for an arbitrary scrip!
Perceval 17y ago
As I recall from past discussions, pg has indicated that his algorithm discounts outliers. So someone who has one 40+ comment and a string of comments rated 1 or 0 will not see the benefit of the outlier. A solution to piling on, if it persists, may simply be placing a hard limit on the maximum score a comment can garner. Slashdot and Kuro5hin both max out comments (Slashdot at 5, Kuro5hin used to max out at 5 but that was later changed to 3).
- pyre 17y ago
  > A solution to piling on, if it persists, may simply be placing a hard limit on the maximum score a comment can garner. Slashdot and Kuro5hin both max out comments (Slashdot at 5, Kuro5hin used to max out at 5 but that was later changed to 3). The problem being that sometimes there are posts that deserve well above the limit for their insight/knowledge. A logarithmic scale might be better. Up to 5 points there is a 1-vote-to-1-point correlation, after that it takes an increasing number of actual votes to increment the comment to the next point (i.e. 10 votes to get from 5 to 6 points, 15 more votes to get to 7 point, etc) That way a comment that is able to get a massive amount of votes gets 'rewarded' for it above a comment that is only able to get 5 votes.