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A technical solution to a social problem. I am not confident that this will solve the root cause of the problem. Not that I understand the root cause. Coming
by pkaler 16y ago
A technical solution to a social problem. I am not confident that this will solve the root cause of the problem. Not that I understand the root cause.
Coming from a game development background ("real" games not "social" games), there are feedback issues with the voting system. Frankly, I don't vote a lot because I don't understand the system. I usually only up-vote one story a day.
Sometimes, if there is a "crap" story in the top 5 I will up-vote the other 4.
Look up the term "meaningful choice" in the book Rules of Play.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=9802 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Play http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Play
http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp/0262240459 http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp...
The problem is that I don't have to choose between story A and B. I can up vote them both because there is no scarcity built into the system.
I don't even think there is a scarcity model with voting. How many up votes do I get in a day? If there is a model then I don't understand it. That implies the second issue with the system is that there is a lack of feedback.
This isn't only an HN problem. I see the same problems with other social sites that try to implement voting or other game mechanics.
Focus on improving the system for good players. Don't focus on squashing behaviour by bad players trying to game the system. The good players will police the bad players if the system is fairly balanced. No one reads the instruction manual, therefore the good behaviour has to be designed into the system. And feedback, feedback, feedback. There needs to be better feedback when there is good behaviour.
- NathanKP 16y agoI wonder if providing the ability to downvote submissions would fix the problem of voting rings. Surely there will always be more legitimate voters than ring voters, and if legitimate voters can downvote submissions that were artificially inflated by ring voters it would balance things out. Of course there is a reason why we don't have downvoting of submissions. The negative side-effects would probably outweigh the positive.
- awa 16y agoI am not sure I support downvoting of links. Though I am intrigued whether allowing downvoting for a set of users with some higher criteria than upvoting (say account date > 1 year + 500/1000 karma) will have some positive results.
- pkaler 16y agoAdding down votes would add another input to the system. In general, elegant systems aren't improved by adding more inputs. My plan of attack would be to think about the internals of the system and decide which inputs need to be simplified and require better feedback for the user.
- duck 16y agoSometimes, if there is a "crap" story in the top 5 I will up-vote the other 4. Maybe the better idea there is just flag the crap one. I wouldn't ever up-vote anything unless I actually opened it and read it.
- pkaler 16y agoI flag stories that are spam or flamebait. I'm not going to flag a story where the authors conclusion does not follow from their premises. But clearly these stories shouldn't hit the top 5.
- duck 16y agostory where the authors conclusion does not follow from their premises If something like this is in the top five, it won't be there long from what I have seen. I would flag spam, but also anything that you don't think is fit for HN, which is what I would call crap. From the guidelines: If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it
- spot 16y agohow do you know there is no scarcity built in? maybe it ignores all but your first vote each day.
- pkaler 16y agoI don't. That's part of my point. The system needs better feedback.