5 ms·

>a way of solving the problem of the frontpage getting filled up with crap add downvoting to submissions and the community will take care of it

mooism2 16y ago
When I used Reddit, some people said they downvoted submissions on niche topics they weren't personally interested in, e.g. a Rubyist downvoting Haskell articles. There are enough Haskell enthusiasts here that I don't think Haskell submissions would suffer, but who knows what niche topics would?
- edd 16y ago
  I used to be on Reddit in the Lisp days (before it had many users). The day that they introduced the `my.reddit` was when the quality of posts massively fell. The recommended behaviour at that point was to try and train your recommendation engine by voting for things you liked and down vote things you didn't. The `my.reddit` then showed your own personal homepage. From that point votes no longer became a quality control as people would vote without thinking based on a headline. I am all for some way of adding meta-data to links so a user can filter based on them. But you have to be really careful to not turn votes in to a meaningless action and keep them as a way of voting on quality rather than opinion. (ps. I stopped using Reddit shortly after that change and as such haven't seen/used it recently and don't know how the sub-reddits are doing to manage that situation. Also it was one of many changes that negatively effected signal-noise but one I always feel was the turning point)
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Nowadays your best bet is to find a smaller subreddit with a tight focus, essentially starting a new community. The main community has major issues with quality control, but the splintered subgroups are generally much better overall. Really, it does seem like small size is the best quality control, unfortunately.
- metamemetics 16y ago
  I don''t think HN would become another reddit. Downvoting would be only available above a certain karma threshold and its worked well for comments, which havent become reddit like. The alternative could be make flagged have a displayable number that acts as downvotes for position but doesnt effect karma. Display the number of people who have flagged an article. It's like downvoting but more explicitly clear only for things that are objectionable on some other ground than you disagree.
waterlesscloud 16y ago
I use flagging as downvoting on posts I see as off-topic. It's the tool I have...
- metamemetics 16y ago
  Add a displayable number of how many people have flagged something and have this negatively impact page ranking and I think thats a solution. Down-voting with a more explicit label discouraging down-voting for disagreeing with a topic.

mooism2 16y ago

When I used Reddit, some people said they downvoted submissions on niche topics they weren't personally interested in, e.g. a Rubyist downvoting Haskell articles. There are enough Haskell enthusiasts here that I don't think Haskell submissions would suffer, but who knows what niche topics would?

edd 16y ago
I used to be on Reddit in the Lisp days (before it had many users). The day that they introduced the `my.reddit` was when the quality of posts massively fell. The recommended behaviour at that point was to try and train your recommendation engine by voting for things you liked and down vote things you didn't. The `my.reddit` then showed your own personal homepage. From that point votes no longer became a quality control as people would vote without thinking based on a headline. I am all for some way of adding meta-data to links so a user can filter based on them. But you have to be really careful to not turn votes in to a meaningless action and keep them as a way of voting on quality rather than opinion. (ps. I stopped using Reddit shortly after that change and as such haven't seen/used it recently and don't know how the sub-reddits are doing to manage that situation. Also it was one of many changes that negatively effected signal-noise but one I always feel was the turning point)
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Nowadays your best bet is to find a smaller subreddit with a tight focus, essentially starting a new community. The main community has major issues with quality control, but the splintered subgroups are generally much better overall. Really, it does seem like small size is the best quality control, unfortunately.
metamemetics 16y ago
I don''t think HN would become another reddit. Downvoting would be only available above a certain karma threshold and its worked well for comments, which havent become reddit like. The alternative could be make flagged have a displayable number that acts as downvotes for position but doesnt effect karma. Display the number of people who have flagged an article. It's like downvoting but more explicitly clear only for things that are objectionable on some other ground than you disagree.

waterlesscloud 16y ago

I use flagging as downvoting on posts I see as off-topic. It's the tool I have...

metamemetics 16y ago
Add a displayable number of how many people have flagged something and have this negatively impact page ranking and I think thats a solution. Down-voting with a more explicit label discouraging down-voting for disagreeing with a topic.