5 ms·

The highest-quality discussion that I've found on the Internet generally came from "phpBB"-based website forums, built around specific interests or communities.

The highest-quality discussion that I've found on the Internet generally came from "phpBB"-based website forums, built around specific interests or communities. Part of the reason for that is the common interest in a shared niche. However, I believe that most important factor by far is the lack of up or down "voting" buttons. On any platform with voting, the "imaginary Internet points" tend to drive the user experience. Upvotes trigger reward behavior, just like the social aspect of Farmville-style mindless freemium games. Downvotes trigger social anxiety and drive behavior also. Trolls relish it, while normal users are often insecure about it. Even on an "elite" platform like Hacker News, how many comments basically boil down to, "Hey guys, why did some of you downvote my last comment???". Basically, voting turns a discussion platform into an MMO video game for a large portion of the userbase. It leads to groupthink, "brigades" and manipulation, low-quality memes and running jokes, etc. I think its negative impact on high-quality discussion easily matches or exceeds its positive impact on self-moderation. Ultimately, I think the ideal model of discussion platform governance is a "benevolent dictatorship" of active mods, without user voting. It doesn't scale very well, but it's the common denominator among the highest-quality communities I've ever seen. The problem is since a micro-generation of Internet users is now accustomed to the MMO model, online discussion without voting is just... well... boring. Going back to that is like trading processed corn syrup for organic vegetables. Most aren't going to do it. Downvote if you disagree. :)

rustynails 11y ago
This is a great comment. I'll expand it with a few other points that are along similar lines to what you mention. Most (if not all) platforms suffer from 2 extremes, open discussion involves conflict which is seen as bad but can end up with insightful discussion and robust conclusion. Secondly, forums suffer from prejudice of the moderators. There was a good example recently of this in a HN posting on moderators. I'll illustrate with a topical example for modern times. Why do people use the term misogynist instead of sexist? It's to reinforce a belief that sexism is a male behaviour, which, in itself is sexist. If you read the recent article on moderation, sexism didn't rate a mention but misogyny did. In other words, certain types of thinking are forbidden and some forms of prejudice are encouraged. When I read about this new spinoff, my first two thoughts were on avoidance of robust discussion and the prejudice and politics of the founders and moderators. Here's hoping they don't make the same politically correct but prejudiced mistakes that most sites make.
CM30 11y ago
Well, I have to say I disagree that a voting system always harms discussion. I mean, Invision Power Board, XenForo and Burning Board forums all have a built in likes system (and commonly used plugins to extend it). I haven't noticed forums running those scripts being less civil or having worse quality. Or the various vBulletin forums switching to XenForo losing their existing community feel and atmosphere. Of course, there is a difference here when compared to platforms like Reddit and Hacker News though. Namely, the likes don't affect how comments or discussions are shown. There's a number of likes and dislikes under the post, and maybe a small icon on the topic list, but a heavily disliked post doesn't get hidden or removed for it. It's also been a thing long before that, with various add ons. For example, vBulletin had a post thanks system mod which worked like likes/upvotes: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=122944 http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=122944 And phpBB had 'karma' mods back in the early 00s. Did quality get hit on sites with those mods? I didn't really notice it. On another note, it does make me want to see a study in regards to what sort of like/reputation system keeps a forum or social network a more civil place. Does only upvotes/likes work better than having downvotes/dislikes? How about the inverse, where you can only dislike content rather than like it? How about a private reputation system, where only the user giving the reputation and receiving it knows they've done so? That's how vBulletin's version used to work. Does having more possibilities for votes help more than just like/dislike? How does Facebook Reactions or XenForo Post Ratings compare to Reddit up/downvotes?
escape_goat 11y ago
> Part of the reason for that is the common interest in a shared niche. However, I believe that most important factor by far is the lack of up or down "voting" buttons. You may be underestimating the positive impact of "niche" context and overestimating the negative impact of karmic systems. If it were the case that the more significant factor was the karmic system, then comment threads on specialized blogs and newspapers would have historically been about equally weighted in terms of a metric of quality content density. My expectation based on anecdotal memory is that we would find a much more significant ratio of high-quality comments on specialized blogs than on newspaper websites. In this case, it would be the context of the opportunity to comment that makes the difference. I wonder even if the technical stodginess of phpBB systems contributes to the quality of discussion by presenting a higher inconvenience of usage. My thought is that a newspaper or aggregate site tends to attract users who are seeking an opportunity to comment that is separable from any particular topic or community of interest, and that specialized discussion sites tend to attract users who are seeking detailed information and who (due to the relative obscurity of the site) can find the act of commentary rewarding only insofar as they imagine it to improve their social status within an imagined community with which they feel affiliation. If they admire recurring & recognizable users who produce good commentary, and imagine the other users to be like themselves, they will be motivated to seek reward and recognition by contributing substantively. I want to recognize anonymous message boards, briefly, just to say that I have very little experience with them, and can't speak about them usefully. Useful commentary can occur in that context and my thesis as it stands does not account for that, but the topic isn't mine to develop.. I am not sure that aggregate commentary sites are inherently doomed, but there may be a threshold to the message volume where the comments become more akin to the roar of a wind. I can present as a relatively positive example the /r/spacex subreddit on reddit, which has had some reasonable success in terms of maintaining the quality of commentary. There are, of course, other such subreddits. In /r/spacex, the important factors seem to be (a) that people visit the subreddit for the sake of linked external information, (b) the recognizability and frequent participation of a key moderator, (c) the recognizability and occasional participation of identified individuals from SpaceX, (d) the pseudonymous participation of current and former SpaceX employees, and (e) the strength of the user contingent which has topically relevant work experience or education all seem like significant factors. It was in /r/spacex that I first heard the phrase "low effort comment" used to describe the type of commentary that is discouraged. It struck me as especially pertinent in that it summarizes what I generally feel about making comments on yc news. One can of course put a lot of effort into comments that are not seen as very useful, and I have the bad habit of wanting to opine about things of which I have no deep topical knowledge. Such comments are inherently less valuable than they might be if I had such knowledge. However, if the imagination of a community can induce a degree of inhibition in the commentator, it allows a much greater opportunity to reflect upon the value the comment in a "listener perspective" mode, probably altering and informing both the structure and content of what is written, and it lessens the chance that replies will be posted simply so that the respondent can enjoy the experience of (imagining) having said something significant. Significant meta irony is available to my readers across a wide spectrum of impressions and responses. My apologies and you are welcome, depending.
kwgardner 11y ago
I think this is all great stuff. On Imzy, we've removed karma, removed downvotes, and turned upvotes just into more generic likes kind of like they are on FB, Twitter, or IG, that do not roll up or affect your account in any way, because everywhere we saw that had that, it tended to turn into purely something to game and didn't actually contribute to higher quality discussions. I think there is some value though to being able to sort by which comments might have more merit in a post, or which posts have more merit in a community, which is why we left likes in, just disconnected from anything besides that post/comment, and it's more just as a way of giving users positive reinforcement for posting good stuff than doing any kind of real moderating. We also have then have leaders who create their communities who hopefully are benevolent in their dictatorships, and we've also given them lots of tools to be able to manage their communities well and also be really transparent about what's happening so that all users can learn and be a part of that process. The other thing you mentioned is that it tends to be better in forums that are built around specific interests or communities. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what we're doing on Imzy, relative to that. We've noticed the same thing, and also that anywhere where there tends to be a "default" community or "front page" or something like that, is where there tends to be the lowest quality discussion, because you get too many people all dumped into the same place who didn't actually actively choose to be there, and lowest common denominator stuff tends to appeal. So what we've tried to do is preserve the quality of individual forums but the convenience of something like Facebook or Reddit where you get everything from all different sources in one place. When you join, we ask you what you're interested in, and then based on that, we show you a bunch of communities you might want to join. Then you specifically opt into those communities, so that hopefully only people who really care about those topics end up there, and they stay a little bit smaller but much higher quality for everyone across all interests. Curious to hear your thoughts on this model and how well you think it'll work!

rustynails 11y ago

This is a great comment. I'll expand it with a few other points that are along similar lines to what you mention. Most (if not all) platforms suffer from 2 extremes, open discussion involves conflict which is seen as bad but can end up with insightful discussion and robust conclusion. Secondly, forums suffer from prejudice of the moderators. There was a good example recently of this in a HN posting on moderators. I'll illustrate with a topical example for modern times. Why do people use the term misogynist instead of sexist? It's to reinforce a belief that sexism is a male behaviour, which, in itself is sexist. If you read the recent article on moderation, sexism didn't rate a mention but misogyny did. In other words, certain types of thinking are forbidden and some forms of prejudice are encouraged. When I read about this new spinoff, my first two thoughts were on avoidance of robust discussion and the prejudice and politics of the founders and moderators. Here's hoping they don't make the same politically correct but prejudiced mistakes that most sites make.

CM30 11y ago

Well, I have to say I disagree that a voting system always harms discussion. I mean, Invision Power Board, XenForo and Burning Board forums all have a built in likes system (and commonly used plugins to extend it). I haven't noticed forums running those scripts being less civil or having worse quality. Or the various vBulletin forums switching to XenForo losing their existing community feel and atmosphere. Of course, there is a difference here when compared to platforms like Reddit and Hacker News though. Namely, the likes don't affect how comments or discussions are shown. There's a number of likes and dislikes under the post, and maybe a small icon on the topic list, but a heavily disliked post doesn't get hidden or removed for it. It's also been a thing long before that, with various add ons. For example, vBulletin had a post thanks system mod which worked like likes/upvotes: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=122944 http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=122944 And phpBB had 'karma' mods back in the early 00s. Did quality get hit on sites with those mods? I didn't really notice it. On another note, it does make me want to see a study in regards to what sort of like/reputation system keeps a forum or social network a more civil place. Does only upvotes/likes work better than having downvotes/dislikes? How about the inverse, where you can only dislike content rather than like it? How about a private reputation system, where only the user giving the reputation and receiving it knows they've done so? That's how vBulletin's version used to work. Does having more possibilities for votes help more than just like/dislike? How does Facebook Reactions or XenForo Post Ratings compare to Reddit up/downvotes?

escape_goat 11y ago

> Part of the reason for that is the common interest in a shared niche. However, I believe that most important factor by far is the lack of up or down "voting" buttons. You may be underestimating the positive impact of "niche" context and overestimating the negative impact of karmic systems. If it were the case that the more significant factor was the karmic system, then comment threads on specialized blogs and newspapers would have historically been about equally weighted in terms of a metric of quality content density. My expectation based on anecdotal memory is that we would find a much more significant ratio of high-quality comments on specialized blogs than on newspaper websites. In this case, it would be the context of the opportunity to comment that makes the difference. I wonder even if the technical stodginess of phpBB systems contributes to the quality of discussion by presenting a higher inconvenience of usage. My thought is that a newspaper or aggregate site tends to attract users who are seeking an opportunity to comment that is separable from any particular topic or community of interest, and that specialized discussion sites tend to attract users who are seeking detailed information and who (due to the relative obscurity of the site) can find the act of commentary rewarding only insofar as they imagine it to improve their social status within an imagined community with which they feel affiliation. If they admire recurring & recognizable users who produce good commentary, and imagine the other users to be like themselves, they will be motivated to seek reward and recognition by contributing substantively. I want to recognize anonymous message boards, briefly, just to say that I have very little experience with them, and can't speak about them usefully. Useful commentary can occur in that context and my thesis as it stands does not account for that, but the topic isn't mine to develop.. I am not sure that aggregate commentary sites are inherently doomed, but there may be a threshold to the message volume where the comments become more akin to the roar of a wind. I can present as a relatively positive example the /r/spacex subreddit on reddit, which has had some reasonable success in terms of maintaining the quality of commentary. There are, of course, other such subreddits. In /r/spacex, the important factors seem to be (a) that people visit the subreddit for the sake of linked external information, (b) the recognizability and frequent participation of a key moderator, (c) the recognizability and occasional participation of identified individuals from SpaceX, (d) the pseudonymous participation of current and former SpaceX employees, and (e) the strength of the user contingent which has topically relevant work experience or education all seem like significant factors. It was in /r/spacex that I first heard the phrase "low effort comment" used to describe the type of commentary that is discouraged. It struck me as especially pertinent in that it summarizes what I generally feel about making comments on yc news. One can of course put a lot of effort into comments that are not seen as very useful, and I have the bad habit of wanting to opine about things of which I have no deep topical knowledge. Such comments are inherently less valuable than they might be if I had such knowledge. However, if the imagination of a community can induce a degree of inhibition in the commentator, it allows a much greater opportunity to reflect upon the value the comment in a "listener perspective" mode, probably altering and informing both the structure and content of what is written, and it lessens the chance that replies will be posted simply so that the respondent can enjoy the experience of (imagining) having said something significant. Significant meta irony is available to my readers across a wide spectrum of impressions and responses. My apologies and you are welcome, depending.

kwgardner 11y ago

I think this is all great stuff. On Imzy, we've removed karma, removed downvotes, and turned upvotes just into more generic likes kind of like they are on FB, Twitter, or IG, that do not roll up or affect your account in any way, because everywhere we saw that had that, it tended to turn into purely something to game and didn't actually contribute to higher quality discussions. I think there is some value though to being able to sort by which comments might have more merit in a post, or which posts have more merit in a community, which is why we left likes in, just disconnected from anything besides that post/comment, and it's more just as a way of giving users positive reinforcement for posting good stuff than doing any kind of real moderating. We also have then have leaders who create their communities who hopefully are benevolent in their dictatorships, and we've also given them lots of tools to be able to manage their communities well and also be really transparent about what's happening so that all users can learn and be a part of that process. The other thing you mentioned is that it tends to be better in forums that are built around specific interests or communities. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what we're doing on Imzy, relative to that. We've noticed the same thing, and also that anywhere where there tends to be a "default" community or "front page" or something like that, is where there tends to be the lowest quality discussion, because you get too many people all dumped into the same place who didn't actually actively choose to be there, and lowest common denominator stuff tends to appeal. So what we've tried to do is preserve the quality of individual forums but the convenience of something like Facebook or Reddit where you get everything from all different sources in one place. When you join, we ask you what you're interested in, and then based on that, we show you a bunch of communities you might want to join. Then you specifically opt into those communities, so that hopefully only people who really care about those topics end up there, and they stay a little bit smaller but much higher quality for everyone across all interests. Curious to hear your thoughts on this model and how well you think it'll work!