3 ms·

> One more potential problem with the idea of superflaggers. If 'social media experts', or spammers, or whatever the people are who game sites like Digg and Red

by tansey 15y ago

> One more potential problem with the idea of superflaggers. If 'social media experts', or spammers, or whatever the people are who game sites like Digg and Reddit got wind of the fact that flagging honeypots could increase the weight of their flags and/or votes, mightn't they also figure out how to abuse that? A professional, as some of them seem to be (eg, able to spend all day every day doing this), might be able to achieve a denominator very close to 1, and a numerator close to the total actual honeypots. Super flaggers receive no special powers other than the ability to contribute to the honeypot score of a given article. Their votes and flags are counted the same as a normal user. I addressed this in more detail in another comment below, but basically the ability to and utility of gaming this system is minuscule.

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
>Super flaggers receive no special powers other than the ability to contribute to the honeypot score of a given article. // No special powers other than helping to ensure their submissions are not 'honeypotted' and submissions contrary to their view are 'honeypotted'? Wouldn't that also downgrade those who hold contrary views to them - as the contrarians would be more likely to upvote the stories that the gamers are helping to get marked as honeypots - thus ensuring that the gamers keep those with opposing views from gaining a position in the quality control caucus? I notice you're in AI, have you run some formalised tests on how such a voting system would play out? My personal (untested) preference is towards making voting plain and all scores open and then letting users somehow create their own metric for filtering. Perhaps that won't work on the scale of a successful site though. Are there actually upvoting and flagging cabals in operation on this site now?
- tansey 15y ago
  > No special powers other than helping to ensure their submissions are not 'honeypotted' and submissions contrary to their view are 'honeypotted'? Please see my detailed explaination of why this is not a problem [1]. > I notice you're in AI, have you run some formalised tests on how such a voting system would play out? No. If there is a top-tier conference publication in it, I would be happy to do some MC runs. That being said, this is not really a publishable idea unless I can actually implement it and measure the results somehow on a real site. :) > Are there actually upvoting and flagging cabals in operation on this site now? Probably not. There definitely are such rings on Digg and reddit (I know for a fact). This is a general system, so it could be useful on any social news site. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166548 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166548

by tansey 15y ago

pbhjpbhj 15y ago

>Super flaggers receive no special powers other than the ability to contribute to the honeypot score of a given article. // No special powers other than helping to ensure their submissions are not 'honeypotted' and submissions contrary to their view are 'honeypotted'? Wouldn't that also downgrade those who hold contrary views to them - as the contrarians would be more likely to upvote the stories that the gamers are helping to get marked as honeypots - thus ensuring that the gamers keep those with opposing views from gaining a position in the quality control caucus? I notice you're in AI, have you run some formalised tests on how such a voting system would play out? My personal (untested) preference is towards making voting plain and all scores open and then letting users somehow create their own metric for filtering. Perhaps that won't work on the scale of a successful site though. Are there actually upvoting and flagging cabals in operation on this site now?

tansey 15y ago
> No special powers other than helping to ensure their submissions are not 'honeypotted' and submissions contrary to their view are 'honeypotted'? Please see my detailed explaination of why this is not a problem [1]. > I notice you're in AI, have you run some formalised tests on how such a voting system would play out? No. If there is a top-tier conference publication in it, I would be happy to do some MC runs. That being said, this is not really a publishable idea unless I can actually implement it and measure the results somehow on a real site. :) > Are there actually upvoting and flagging cabals in operation on this site now? Probably not. There definitely are such rings on Digg and reddit (I know for a fact). This is a general system, so it could be useful on any social news site. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166548 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166548