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After reading the article, I realized that if a site like HN or Reddit wanted to mitigate groupthink, they would want to limit how much an item can be upvoted o

by diego 7y ago

After reading the article, I realized that if a site like HN or Reddit wanted to mitigate groupthink, they would want to limit how much an item can be upvoted or downvoted (e.g. max 5 like Slashdot did). Apparently people really like groupthink, it increases engagement.

ryandrake 7y ago
I don’t think you can get rid of groupthink while still letting everyone vote on everyone else’s opinion. People are going to inevitably use the up and downvotes as agree/disagree buttons and boom, you have crowd-enforced “correct” opinions. If your goal is to curate quality discussion, don’t crowdsource that curation. All voting systems I’ve seen confuse popularity with quality.
- hiccuphippo 7y ago
  What about adding separate "I agree/disagree with this" buttons? With minimal or no influence on the position/color of comments. Would people be able to say "I disagree with this comment but it makes a good point"?
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    I liked good ol Slashdot’s system, where if you vote, you need to select a reason with a drop down menu. This tiny bit of extra friction might be helpful to discourage quick “drive-by” downvoting and brigading. Additionally, their meta-moderation system helped to make sure people were really voting in good faith. I think they were really ahead of their time in some respects. Also, give people a vote budget so they think about whether they really need to vote. Maybe 5 votes per day. For whatever reason I can only write 5 posts per day here, so I try to use them wisely. Same should go for votes.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  > If your goal is to curate quality discussion, don’t crowdsource that curation. But what other resource than the crowd is readily available to curate? Non curated public discussions are absolute garbage, so I'll take a flawed curation over none every time.
msheng 7y ago
There's still the trouble of having many maximally upvoted comments all sharing similar sentiments
greenpresident 7y ago
In my opinion, groupthink on social media is to be understood as a Keynesian beauty contest. [0] Suppose you‘d want to determine who among a group of entrants in a beauty is the most beautiful according to standards shared by the group. Such determinations are hard to make, as every judge would usually vote according to their private norms of beauty, not the groups. One way to overcome this, would be to give a price to the two judges who are closest to the final result. In this setup, you‘d be incentivized to vote according to the norms you believe to be the overall group norm, not your individual norm. The result would be „the groups belief about what the group sees as beautiful“. Social media such reddit and Facebook incorporates this concepts on two levels: - At the user level, users aiming to gather likes/karma/... are incentivized to submit content they believe the group finds most useful. Of course this is why we instate voting systems in the first place, so that great content (according to the communities standard for such) is submitted. On the other hand, this incentive scheme drives unpopular opinions to the margins. Hence, fringe content is more likely to be found on sites without a like system such as image boards. There, a different incentive exists: survival of your post directly depends on engagement, so it‘s more likely to stay afloat if it’s provocative. - Then, at the platform level, sites faced with the decision of what to show their users, also face a beauty contest: they select what is most likely to be liked. The perverse result is an eternal perpetuation of groupthink, as contributors facing a „likability selection“ are unfree in what they submit. If it’s deemed not controversial enough/not likable enough, they will wither away. So they keep perpetuating the ever same content and jokes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
- whatshisface 7y ago
  There's no reward for up-voting a post that goes on to receive a lot more up-votes, and there's no penalty for up-voting a post that goes on to receive a lot of down-votes. Therefore the judging mechanism itself (the votes) is not subject to the Keynesian beauty contest problem.
  - greenpresident 7y ago
    That‘s true, it‘s not present at the voting level. But I believe it’s present at the level of submitting and feed selection.
u801e 7y ago
HN won't show a value below a -4 point score on a particular post regardless of how many times it's downvoted (though one could infer based on how low the contrast of the text is within that range). In any case, the number of points for a particular post is only visible to the author of that post, so even if a post has a large number of upvotes, it won't really stand out other than being close to the top of the main thread (or subthread).

by diego 7y ago

ryandrake 7y ago

I don’t think you can get rid of groupthink while still letting everyone vote on everyone else’s opinion. People are going to inevitably use the up and downvotes as agree/disagree buttons and boom, you have crowd-enforced “correct” opinions. If your goal is to curate quality discussion, don’t crowdsource that curation. All voting systems I’ve seen confuse popularity with quality.

hiccuphippo 7y ago
What about adding separate "I agree/disagree with this" buttons? With minimal or no influence on the position/color of comments. Would people be able to say "I disagree with this comment but it makes a good point"?
- ryandrake 7y ago
  I liked good ol Slashdot’s system, where if you vote, you need to select a reason with a drop down menu. This tiny bit of extra friction might be helpful to discourage quick “drive-by” downvoting and brigading. Additionally, their meta-moderation system helped to make sure people were really voting in good faith. I think they were really ahead of their time in some respects. Also, give people a vote budget so they think about whether they really need to vote. Maybe 5 votes per day. For whatever reason I can only write 5 posts per day here, so I try to use them wisely. Same should go for votes.
BurningFrog 7y ago
> If your goal is to curate quality discussion, don’t crowdsource that curation. But what other resource than the crowd is readily available to curate? Non curated public discussions are absolute garbage, so I'll take a flawed curation over none every time.

msheng 7y ago

There's still the trouble of having many maximally upvoted comments all sharing similar sentiments

greenpresident 7y ago

In my opinion, groupthink on social media is to be understood as a Keynesian beauty contest. [0] Suppose you‘d want to determine who among a group of entrants in a beauty is the most beautiful according to standards shared by the group. Such determinations are hard to make, as every judge would usually vote according to their private norms of beauty, not the groups. One way to overcome this, would be to give a price to the two judges who are closest to the final result. In this setup, you‘d be incentivized to vote according to the norms you believe to be the overall group norm, not your individual norm. The result would be „the groups belief about what the group sees as beautiful“. Social media such reddit and Facebook incorporates this concepts on two levels: - At the user level, users aiming to gather likes/karma/... are incentivized to submit content they believe the group finds most useful. Of course this is why we instate voting systems in the first place, so that great content (according to the communities standard for such) is submitted. On the other hand, this incentive scheme drives unpopular opinions to the margins. Hence, fringe content is more likely to be found on sites without a like system such as image boards. There, a different incentive exists: survival of your post directly depends on engagement, so it‘s more likely to stay afloat if it’s provocative. - Then, at the platform level, sites faced with the decision of what to show their users, also face a beauty contest: they select what is most likely to be liked. The perverse result is an eternal perpetuation of groupthink, as contributors facing a „likability selection“ are unfree in what they submit. If it’s deemed not controversial enough/not likable enough, they will wither away. So they keep perpetuating the ever same content and jokes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

whatshisface 7y ago
There's no reward for up-voting a post that goes on to receive a lot more up-votes, and there's no penalty for up-voting a post that goes on to receive a lot of down-votes. Therefore the judging mechanism itself (the votes) is not subject to the Keynesian beauty contest problem.
- greenpresident 7y ago
  That‘s true, it‘s not present at the voting level. But I believe it’s present at the level of submitting and feed selection.

u801e 7y ago

HN won't show a value below a -4 point score on a particular post regardless of how many times it's downvoted (though one could infer based on how low the contrast of the text is within that range). In any case, the number of points for a particular post is only visible to the author of that post, so even if a post has a large number of upvotes, it won't really stand out other than being close to the top of the main thread (or subthread).