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Also I don't think Reddit's design incentivises thoughtful or interesting discourse. The upvote/downvote system turns every thread into a popularity contest. Y

by alickz 6y ago

Also I don't think Reddit's design incentivises thoughtful or interesting discourse. The upvote/downvote system turns every thread into a popularity contest. You don't get upvotes for asking interesting questions, or providing a niche/novel viewpoint. You get upvotes for answering leading questions with utter conviction, (whether you are correct or not) and generating emotional responses, usually outrage (whether deserved or not). I am very disillusioned with Reddit at this stage.

mschuster91 6y ago
The same mechanisms apply here though, with the tiny difference of HN being small and niche enough to keep most of the general population lunacy out so that the mod(s) don't get overwhelmed.
- alickz 6y ago
  Oh yeah agreed, but I think that tiny difference leads to a noticeably different outcome. The Signal-to-Noise ratio here is more than Reddit, particularly Reddit's popular subreddits. As a result I find myself changing my mind while reading comments here a lot more than I would on Reddit. Also I think dang (and whoever else) is a good mod, which makes a lot of difference. There's also a recency bias, I've been on Reddit for 8 years and HN for ~3. Maybe my disillusionment has yet to come.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    I've been on HN for over eight years (just noticed it, how time flies by...), no need to worry for recency bias ;)
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
    I've had some disillusionment with HN, having been on it for 6-7 years. The dialog is mostly cordial and respectful but precisely because of that I'd come to put a lot of faith into the knowledge of the commenters. But I realized a lot of people here talk about things they have only superficial knowledge about (me included, though I've been trying to curb this behaviour) and as a result there is a lot of quackery about, well formulated, respectful quackery but quackery nonetheless. So I try to check the credentials of people when they include them in their profiles before putting too much faith into what they say. Now I'm not trying to disavow HN, it's a really cool place and there are a lot of knowledgable people here with lifetimes of experience in complex subjects but there are also a lot of technical topics where the discourse is clearly inferior to reddit, twitter or even discord.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Small enough that HN does not attract attention of PACs who have basically co opted many of the political related subs on reddit. simple email blasts each morning and alerts through the day to get people to vote on stories and boost specific posters. Can also target people to report or poison a sub people don't understand how much of what they read on reddit is actively managed by people who want the message controlled. This is the same for any popular social media site with twitter being the top of the heap just be glad that HN isn't that important to where the issue becomes observable (we get enough indirect political tripe as it is with submissions)
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    HN also isn't a space that's dedicated to politics, and when topics do come up the crowd seems mostly "free-market, free speech libertarian"-leaning (although you have a small number of Trumpists as well as socialists like me for some balance). Even if HN were bigger, it wouldn't be worth the attention of PACs and other activists IMO, the HN crowd is not their voter base. For Republicans the tech crowd is too diverse and immigration-friendly, for Democrats... I'd bet a case of beer that many/most of the US people here vote Democrat anyway since the actions of most Republicans run completely against the needs of tech people.
bananaface 6y ago
This is also a problem with Hacker News imo, it's just a lot less obvious. Most HN comments are not worth their weight because the system rewards power posters who know how to post over people who are concise, successful and busy. I'd argue upvote systems in general dominate the world of tech discussion to the degree that some of these reddit mechanisms end up driving aspects of the industry.
- alickz 6y ago
  I agree, while I think HN is better I also think it's a difference in scale, not a night and day difference. Your point about people who "know how to post" is very interesting, as on Reddit I've noticed there's a certain style, or phrasing, of comment that tends to get upvoted more, which leads to a lot of comments having similar style and rhetoric in my experience. >I'd argue upvote systems in general dominate the world of tech discussion to the degree that some of these reddit mechanisms end up driving aspects of the industry. Oh yeah definitely, at this point there's no social media giant without an upvote system. Would a strictly chronological forum, like the forums of old, be better though? I don't know.
  - bananaface 6y ago
    I've noticed that Reddit thing too. It's super weird, and it's a really grating style. I think one corollary on HN is overwriting. Comments do better when they're fluffed. I think a reputation-based system (in the sense of real reputations, not virtual points) could work. I think it's happening in some places. People like Jon Blow, George Hotz & Handmade Hero smoke the competition when they stream on Twitch, and their currency is respect. The best part of respect-based attention is people who know their shit are able to speak against the zeitgeist, without putting in much effort. That's the biiiig problem I have with upvote systems. It's not so much that they encourage groupthink, it's that they don't present reputation. Every post has to stand on its own merits, which is nice in theory, but in practice it means very experienced (and thus busy) people can't just state their opinion, they have to make an argument, so they end up not interacting full stop.
Mordisquitos 6y ago
> The upvote/downvote system turns every thread into a popularity contest. Agreed. I've been experimenting lately with ordering all threads by "old" by default and using CSS rules to hide comment points. It can make things much more interesting, as all you see are people talking in chronological order, and screw the fake point popularity contest. My next step might be hiding the age of each comment (or obfuscating it when <1 day), so I stop overfocusing on recent comments and stop thinking "I would like to reply to this, but the comment is 17 hours old so nevermind..."
- alickz 6y ago
  That's a cool idea. I've also been put off from replying to older comments. The chronological thing is also interesting as it's a lot more like the forums of old, which I grew up on. Definitely a different experience from the algorithm heavy forums of today. Better of worse I can't say. Some subreddits hide the vote count for X amount of minutes, which I also like. It doesn't stop the algorithm but it helps prevent dogpiling on popular comments.
- fluidcruft 6y ago
  I find controversial often works better than old. Also, reddit has a comment sort preference, you can just set it. But reddit has like three preference interfaces on different domains so I can't remember where it is. ;)
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Every voting system on the Internet, from discussion forums to product reviews seems to confuse popularity with quality, rewarding one as if it were the other. You can crowdsource popularity but not quality.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fluidcruft 6y ago
The problem is thinking that upvotes mean anything. If your goal is to have interesting conversations, then getting replies are maybe what you should value. But focus on conversations starts with how you approach the convo. Generally that means focusing on the OP. If the OP is some short burp of a statement, the OP isn't there for conversation so the entire thread is a waste of time. Then secondly you can wait a day or so for the up/down locusts to have passed on. OPs who were genuinely interested in discussion will reply a few days later.
technofiend 6y ago
>You get upvotes for answering leading questions with utter conviction, (whether you are correct or not) and generating emotional responses, usually outrage (whether deserved or not). I miss slashdot's moderation system that was more nuanced: you could classify comments into a few buckets. Unfortunately reddit is so heavily gamed by people who want karma for profit that moderation and meta-moderation would be gamed as well. Not to mention people who troll simply to troll or advance a viewpoint or political agenda. I generally stay out of the main subreddits because there's just no point in interacting with people there any more. There is some value in niche subreddits (which I won't mention here) but once they become "too" popular it draws the wrong sort of attention and they too lose utility. Edit: Oh yeah, if someone would like to invite me to lobste.rs, please e-mail me at my username @ yahoo.

by alickz 6y ago

mschuster91 6y ago

The same mechanisms apply here though, with the tiny difference of HN being small and niche enough to keep most of the general population lunacy out so that the mod(s) don't get overwhelmed.

alickz 6y ago
Oh yeah agreed, but I think that tiny difference leads to a noticeably different outcome. The Signal-to-Noise ratio here is more than Reddit, particularly Reddit's popular subreddits. As a result I find myself changing my mind while reading comments here a lot more than I would on Reddit. Also I think dang (and whoever else) is a good mod, which makes a lot of difference. There's also a recency bias, I've been on Reddit for 8 years and HN for ~3. Maybe my disillusionment has yet to come.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  I've been on HN for over eight years (just noticed it, how time flies by...), no need to worry for recency bias ;)
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
  I've had some disillusionment with HN, having been on it for 6-7 years. The dialog is mostly cordial and respectful but precisely because of that I'd come to put a lot of faith into the knowledge of the commenters. But I realized a lot of people here talk about things they have only superficial knowledge about (me included, though I've been trying to curb this behaviour) and as a result there is a lot of quackery about, well formulated, respectful quackery but quackery nonetheless. So I try to check the credentials of people when they include them in their profiles before putting too much faith into what they say. Now I'm not trying to disavow HN, it's a really cool place and there are a lot of knowledgable people here with lifetimes of experience in complex subjects but there are also a lot of technical topics where the discourse is clearly inferior to reddit, twitter or even discord.
Shivetya 6y ago
Small enough that HN does not attract attention of PACs who have basically co opted many of the political related subs on reddit. simple email blasts each morning and alerts through the day to get people to vote on stories and boost specific posters. Can also target people to report or poison a sub people don't understand how much of what they read on reddit is actively managed by people who want the message controlled. This is the same for any popular social media site with twitter being the top of the heap just be glad that HN isn't that important to where the issue becomes observable (we get enough indirect political tripe as it is with submissions)
- mschuster91 6y ago
  HN also isn't a space that's dedicated to politics, and when topics do come up the crowd seems mostly "free-market, free speech libertarian"-leaning (although you have a small number of Trumpists as well as socialists like me for some balance). Even if HN were bigger, it wouldn't be worth the attention of PACs and other activists IMO, the HN crowd is not their voter base. For Republicans the tech crowd is too diverse and immigration-friendly, for Democrats... I'd bet a case of beer that many/most of the US people here vote Democrat anyway since the actions of most Republicans run completely against the needs of tech people.

bananaface 6y ago

This is also a problem with Hacker News imo, it's just a lot less obvious. Most HN comments are not worth their weight because the system rewards power posters who know how to post over people who are concise, successful and busy. I'd argue upvote systems in general dominate the world of tech discussion to the degree that some of these reddit mechanisms end up driving aspects of the industry.

alickz 6y ago
I agree, while I think HN is better I also think it's a difference in scale, not a night and day difference. Your point about people who "know how to post" is very interesting, as on Reddit I've noticed there's a certain style, or phrasing, of comment that tends to get upvoted more, which leads to a lot of comments having similar style and rhetoric in my experience. >I'd argue upvote systems in general dominate the world of tech discussion to the degree that some of these reddit mechanisms end up driving aspects of the industry. Oh yeah definitely, at this point there's no social media giant without an upvote system. Would a strictly chronological forum, like the forums of old, be better though? I don't know.
- bananaface 6y ago
  I've noticed that Reddit thing too. It's super weird, and it's a really grating style. I think one corollary on HN is overwriting. Comments do better when they're fluffed. I think a reputation-based system (in the sense of real reputations, not virtual points) could work. I think it's happening in some places. People like Jon Blow, George Hotz & Handmade Hero smoke the competition when they stream on Twitch, and their currency is respect. The best part of respect-based attention is people who know their shit are able to speak against the zeitgeist, without putting in much effort. That's the biiiig problem I have with upvote systems. It's not so much that they encourage groupthink, it's that they don't present reputation. Every post has to stand on its own merits, which is nice in theory, but in practice it means very experienced (and thus busy) people can't just state their opinion, they have to make an argument, so they end up not interacting full stop.

Mordisquitos 6y ago

> The upvote/downvote system turns every thread into a popularity contest. Agreed. I've been experimenting lately with ordering all threads by "old" by default and using CSS rules to hide comment points. It can make things much more interesting, as all you see are people talking in chronological order, and screw the fake point popularity contest. My next step might be hiding the age of each comment (or obfuscating it when <1 day), so I stop overfocusing on recent comments and stop thinking "I would like to reply to this, but the comment is 17 hours old so nevermind..."

alickz 6y ago
That's a cool idea. I've also been put off from replying to older comments. The chronological thing is also interesting as it's a lot more like the forums of old, which I grew up on. Definitely a different experience from the algorithm heavy forums of today. Better of worse I can't say. Some subreddits hide the vote count for X amount of minutes, which I also like. It doesn't stop the algorithm but it helps prevent dogpiling on popular comments.
fluidcruft 6y ago
I find controversial often works better than old. Also, reddit has a comment sort preference, you can just set it. But reddit has like three preference interfaces on different domains so I can't remember where it is. ;)
ryandrake 6y ago
Every voting system on the Internet, from discussion forums to product reviews seems to confuse popularity with quality, rewarding one as if it were the other. You can crowdsource popularity but not quality.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fluidcruft 6y ago

The problem is thinking that upvotes mean anything. If your goal is to have interesting conversations, then getting replies are maybe what you should value. But focus on conversations starts with how you approach the convo. Generally that means focusing on the OP. If the OP is some short burp of a statement, the OP isn't there for conversation so the entire thread is a waste of time. Then secondly you can wait a day or so for the up/down locusts to have passed on. OPs who were genuinely interested in discussion will reply a few days later.

technofiend 6y ago

>You get upvotes for answering leading questions with utter conviction, (whether you are correct or not) and generating emotional responses, usually outrage (whether deserved or not). I miss slashdot's moderation system that was more nuanced: you could classify comments into a few buckets. Unfortunately reddit is so heavily gamed by people who want karma for profit that moderation and meta-moderation would be gamed as well. Not to mention people who troll simply to troll or advance a viewpoint or political agenda. I generally stay out of the main subreddits because there's just no point in interacting with people there any more. There is some value in niche subreddits (which I won't mention here) but once they become "too" popular it draws the wrong sort of attention and they too lose utility. Edit: Oh yeah, if someone would like to invite me to lobste.rs, please e-mail me at my username @ yahoo.