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With no down-voting, you'll inevitably end up with a different metric: engagement/popularity, where controversial opinions are featured as prominently as agreea

With no down-voting, you'll inevitably end up with a different metric: engagement/popularity, where controversial opinions are featured as prominently as agreeable ones.

mihaitodor 5y ago
I'm not sure that having the ability to downvote prevents this issue. Do you have any explanation on how it works in practice? I'd be curious to see some study with real data.
- nousermane 5y ago
  I'd love to see a study with real data on this topic too, but at the the most basic level, with up/down voting you can figure out several metrics: - quality (or rather, agreeableness): up - down; - engagement: up + down; - controversy: min(up, down). First one is the most common (HN, reddit, ...). Second famously is (was?) one of the core metrics for youtube recommendation algorithm, and also something pretty close to the only metric upvote-only forums end up with (twitter); same goes for forums where "reactions" are intentionally orthogonal/ambivalent/confusing (facebook). Third feels a bit dangerous for direct use, but might be a good signal to flag for a human moderator to review.
  - mihaitodor 5y ago
    Interesting, thanks for that! I'd guess the one which Facebook added is quite skewed, because the default action is thumbs up and the rest are hidden, especially on mobile, where you can't just hover to see them and people are lazy.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
>where controversial opinions are featured as prominently as agreeable ones. This is a feature if meaningful discussion is your goal. I've felt for a long time voting of any sort is poison to quality discussion, and downvoting is downright deadly for it.
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
Downvoting this! Just kidding. Seriously, while I don't think downvoting is intrinsically bad -- I think it can be a good signal -- I definitely get the impression it's occasionally used less as a signal of quality (e.g., this comment is off-topic, incoherent, or just trolling) than as a signal of identity (e.g., this comment seems to align with ideologies I oppose). The latter tends to happen more on political topics, of course, but not exclusively so. And, "controversial vs. agreeable" is kind of at the heart of that, right? I'm pretty sure there are a small handful of people who just aggressively downvote anything that sounds too [ socialist | capitalist | libertarian | communist | ... ] because they don't find it "agreeable."

With no down-voting, you'll inevitably end up with a different metric: engagement/popularity, where controversial opinions are featured as prominently as agreeable ones.

mihaitodor 5y ago

I'm not sure that having the ability to downvote prevents this issue. Do you have any explanation on how it works in practice? I'd be curious to see some study with real data.

nousermane 5y ago
I'd love to see a study with real data on this topic too, but at the the most basic level, with up/down voting you can figure out several metrics: - quality (or rather, agreeableness): up - down; - engagement: up + down; - controversy: min(up, down). First one is the most common (HN, reddit, ...). Second famously is (was?) one of the core metrics for youtube recommendation algorithm, and also something pretty close to the only metric upvote-only forums end up with (twitter); same goes for forums where "reactions" are intentionally orthogonal/ambivalent/confusing (facebook). Third feels a bit dangerous for direct use, but might be a good signal to flag for a human moderator to review.
- mihaitodor 5y ago
  Interesting, thanks for that! I'd guess the one which Facebook added is quite skewed, because the default action is thumbs up and the rest are hidden, especially on mobile, where you can't just hover to see them and people are lazy.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

>where controversial opinions are featured as prominently as agreeable ones. This is a feature if meaningful discussion is your goal. I've felt for a long time voting of any sort is poison to quality discussion, and downvoting is downright deadly for it.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

Downvoting this! Just kidding. Seriously, while I don't think downvoting is intrinsically bad -- I think it can be a good signal -- I definitely get the impression it's occasionally used less as a signal of quality (e.g., this comment is off-topic, incoherent, or just trolling) than as a signal of identity (e.g., this comment seems to align with ideologies I oppose). The latter tends to happen more on political topics, of course, but not exclusively so. And, "controversial vs. agreeable" is kind of at the heart of that, right? I'm pretty sure there are a small handful of people who just aggressively downvote anything that sounds too [ socialist | capitalist | libertarian | communist | ... ] because they don't find it "agreeable."