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Frankly I think what is missing is an understanding of statistics. Even having “1000 friends”, which sounds amazing, is statistically insignificant when we are

Frankly I think what is missing is an understanding of statistics. Even having “1000 friends”, which sounds amazing, is statistically insignificant when we are talking about populations of millions or billions. Think about the last “really long thread” you read on Reddit or something, and think about when you tuned out: was it a few dozen comments, maybe a few hundred? Still statistically insignificant, or at the very least severely biased. People are regularly exposed to, and worse respond to, statistically biased samples. This is a really, really bad thing. What we need is a way to almost forcibly blend samples from many different populations so that the number of comments you can “stand” is a more representative sample. That way, when you get up in arms about “what people think”, it might actually represent what “people” think instead of “my friends” or whatever other biased sample is out there.

incompatible 9y ago
I'd like to see better moderation systems. Moderation done by people who are actually good at it rather than just upvoting or downvoting comments depending on whether they agree with them or not (moderating the moderators). Ways to mark comments as duplicates so they are all grouped into one bundle. A way to avoid the "first posts" effect, where the earlier posts are likely to be the highest rated regardless of their merits. Aggregators like Hacker News are already part of a solution; putting interesting articles in one place so that we don't have to subscribe to 10^8 personal blogs and fringe tech sites.
- ben_jones 9y ago
  Begs the question: what are the best moderation systems in software? Are there any?
  - jalfresi 9y ago
    I always thought slashdot had a pretty good moderation system. Would in most cases separate the wheat from the chaff leading to excellent comment threads
    - givemefive 9y ago
      Yeah meta-moderation, limited mod points and a secret algorithm for earning mod points based on reputation works pretty well. Oh.. and a maximum score for comments.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
Mathnerd314 9y ago
The Twitter status sample (https://dev.twitter.com/streaming/reference/get/statuses/sample https://dev.twitter.com/streaming/reference/get/statuses/sam...) is a reasonably unbiased sample (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.5204.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.5204.pdf). You'd have to learn 6 or 7 languages to really follow it, but there are some ways to filter it to English-only. Also useful is https://www.reddit.com/r/all/top/?sort=top&t=day https://www.reddit.com/r/all/top/?sort=top&t=day, a bit US/tech-biased but definitely a few million.

incompatible 9y ago

I'd like to see better moderation systems. Moderation done by people who are actually good at it rather than just upvoting or downvoting comments depending on whether they agree with them or not (moderating the moderators). Ways to mark comments as duplicates so they are all grouped into one bundle. A way to avoid the "first posts" effect, where the earlier posts are likely to be the highest rated regardless of their merits. Aggregators like Hacker News are already part of a solution; putting interesting articles in one place so that we don't have to subscribe to 10^8 personal blogs and fringe tech sites.

ben_jones 9y ago
Begs the question: what are the best moderation systems in software? Are there any?
- jalfresi 9y ago
  I always thought slashdot had a pretty good moderation system. Would in most cases separate the wheat from the chaff leading to excellent comment threads
  - givemefive 9y ago
    Yeah meta-moderation, limited mod points and a secret algorithm for earning mod points based on reputation works pretty well. Oh.. and a maximum score for comments.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

Mathnerd314 9y ago

The Twitter status sample (https://dev.twitter.com/streaming/reference/get/statuses/sample https://dev.twitter.com/streaming/reference/get/statuses/sam...) is a reasonably unbiased sample (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.5204.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.5204.pdf). You'd have to learn 6 or 7 languages to really follow it, but there are some ways to filter it to English-only. Also useful is https://www.reddit.com/r/all/top/?sort=top&t=day https://www.reddit.com/r/all/top/?sort=top&t=day, a bit US/tech-biased but definitely a few million.