4 ms·

A few ideas: 1) If someone is downvoted, don't allow them to post for a set period of time. It seems angry people post a lot in succession, especially if they

by jward 19y ago

A few ideas: 1) If someone is downvoted, don't allow them to post for a set period of time. It seems angry people post a lot in succession, especially if they get voted down. More time to think and cool down. 2) Have a short timer (five minutes) stopping you from replying directly to someone who replied to you. More time to think means logic gets to fight emotion for longer and hopefully win over. I like reading strong arguments until they degrade into emotional monkey flinging. 3) Check for votes for or against a person over a set time frame as well as testing for variety. This would stop people who get a real hate on for someone and downvoting all their comments to torpedo their karma. 4) Force people to enter a reason when they downvote. Just a simple one line reason that would only be read by the moderators. Having to stop and think about why you are making a decision and justify it to someone else would cull a lot of the punitive downvotes. It would also provide you a place to start a dialog with people who aren't adapting well to the site.

rms 19y ago
point 1: Yes, except that I've had comments downvoted to 0 and then upvoted to 2... you shouldn't be penalized for an unfair downvote. Point 4 will eliminate some unfair downvotes. No one (except me, maybe) will admit to downvoting someone because of an ideological disagreement. Point 2: OK, except it will sometimes be annoying. Point 3: Yes, but it will be tricky to optimize this algorithm. Point 4: This is the best suggestion to implement immediately.
- ralph 19y ago
  No one (except me, maybe) will admit to downvoting someone because of an ideological disagreement. I vote up a comment if I strongly agree with it. Conversely, I vote down a comment if I strongly disagree with it. Those in between, which I don't feel strongly about, I leave. Isn't that what the down vote is intended for?
whacked_new 19y ago
Good suggestions but let me play devil's advocate (a lame one). 1. I am participating in thread A and get downmodded in another thread, and I write a message and see "please wait x minutes." It is trivially easy to cripple my participation ability this way. Of course, 3 and 4 are remeedies for this. 2. some replies warrant quick replies. A. blah. B. source? C. source of blah. The other thing is, all I need to do is post everything I want to post in succession, and check back later. That's actually what I do here; it's more efficient. 3. I think this is a good idea and should be a priority consideration. But there are multitudes of ways of doing this. To KIS, consider allotting downmodding points by number of upmodding points. You would need to find a happy ratio first, though; pg might have enough data to do this. sum upmod vs sum downmod. Say it's 12:1. Then maybe give one downmod point for 10 upmod points. This stops random downmodding just by controlling scarcity. But this does not stop trolls from posting. Of course when you have a whole upmod/downmod economy set up, you can then implement tresholding... and then here and there, and you have slashdot/reddit/digg all over. 4. I am hesitant on this idea. A troll can enter jibberish and you have useless data. On the flipside it prevents mistakenly downmodding.
dfranke 19y ago
I think #4 would be counterproductive. Downmods are harmless, and serve as a relief valve of sorts. Flames are anything but harmless. When you raise the barrier to downmodding, you make the flaming alternative more attractive. In the same spirit: right now, no down-arrow is available for replies to your own posts. I think a better alternative would be to make the down-arrow available but have it only influence comment score and not karma.

by jward 19y ago

rms 19y ago

point 1: Yes, except that I've had comments downvoted to 0 and then upvoted to 2... you shouldn't be penalized for an unfair downvote. Point 4 will eliminate some unfair downvotes. No one (except me, maybe) will admit to downvoting someone because of an ideological disagreement. Point 2: OK, except it will sometimes be annoying. Point 3: Yes, but it will be tricky to optimize this algorithm. Point 4: This is the best suggestion to implement immediately.

ralph 19y ago
No one (except me, maybe) will admit to downvoting someone because of an ideological disagreement. I vote up a comment if I strongly agree with it. Conversely, I vote down a comment if I strongly disagree with it. Those in between, which I don't feel strongly about, I leave. Isn't that what the down vote is intended for?

whacked_new 19y ago

Good suggestions but let me play devil's advocate (a lame one). 1. I am participating in thread A and get downmodded in another thread, and I write a message and see "please wait x minutes." It is trivially easy to cripple my participation ability this way. Of course, 3 and 4 are remeedies for this. 2. some replies warrant quick replies. A. blah. B. source? C. source of blah. The other thing is, all I need to do is post everything I want to post in succession, and check back later. That's actually what I do here; it's more efficient. 3. I think this is a good idea and should be a priority consideration. But there are multitudes of ways of doing this. To KIS, consider allotting downmodding points by number of upmodding points. You would need to find a happy ratio first, though; pg might have enough data to do this. sum upmod vs sum downmod. Say it's 12:1. Then maybe give one downmod point for 10 upmod points. This stops random downmodding just by controlling scarcity. But this does not stop trolls from posting. Of course when you have a whole upmod/downmod economy set up, you can then implement tresholding... and then here and there, and you have slashdot/reddit/digg all over. 4. I am hesitant on this idea. A troll can enter jibberish and you have useless data. On the flipside it prevents mistakenly downmodding.

dfranke 19y ago

I think #4 would be counterproductive. Downmods are harmless, and serve as a relief valve of sorts. Flames are anything but harmless. When you raise the barrier to downmodding, you make the flaming alternative more attractive. In the same spirit: right now, no down-arrow is available for replies to your own posts. I think a better alternative would be to make the down-arrow available but have it only influence comment score and not karma.