5 ms·
This is a cool idea. I would install a Chrome extension that shows a score by every username on this site grading how well their expressed opinions match what s
by modeless 10mo ago
This is a cool idea. I would install a Chrome extension that shows a score by every username on this site grading how well their expressed opinions match what subsequently happened in reality, or the accuracy of any specific predictions they've made. Some people's opinions are closer to reality than others and it's not always correlated with upvotes.
An extension of this would be to grade people on the accuracy of the comments they upvote, and use that to weight their upvotes more in ranking. I would love to read a version of HN where the only upvotes that matter are from people who agree with opinions that turn out to be correct. Of course, only HN could implement this since upvotes are private.
- cootsnuck 10mo agoThe RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite) browser extension indirectly does this for me since it tracks the lifetime number of upvotes I give other users. So when I stumble upon a thread with a user with like +40 I know "This is someone whom I've repeatedly found to have good takes" (depending on the context). It's subjective of course but at least it's transparently so. I just think it's neat that it's kinda sorta a loose proxy for what you're talking about but done in arguably the simplest way possible.
- nickff 10mo agoI am not a Redditor, but RES sounds like it would increase the ‘echo-chamber’ effect, rather than improving one’s understanding of contributors’ calibration.
- mistercheph 10mo agoit depends on if you vote based on the quality of contribution to the discussion or based on how much you agree/disagree.
- miki123211 10mo agoI don't think you can change user behavior like this. You can give them a "venting sink" though. Instead of having a downvote button that just downvotes, have it pop up a little menu asking for a downvote reason, with "spam" and "disagree" as options. You could then weigh downvotes by which option was selected, along with an algorithm to discover "user honesty" based on whether their downvotes correlate with others or just with the people on their end of the political spectrum, a la Birdwatch.
- morshu9001 10mo agoYou can't change it for other users, only for yourself, which is what the original comment about the extension said.
- modeless 10mo agoReddit's current structure very much produces an echo chamber with only one main prevailing view. If everyone used an extension like this I would expect it to increase overall diversity of opinion on the site, as things that conflict with the main echo chamber view could still thrive in their own communities rather than getting downvoted with the actual spam.
- XorNot 10mo agoHacker News structure is identical though. Topics invite different demographics and downvotes suppress unpopular opinions. The front page shows most up voted stories. It's the same system.
- modeless 10mo agoHN's moderation and ranking is better. But there's definitely an echo chamber effect here too.
- morshu9001 10mo agoHN has some built-in ways to reduce this, like not allowing everyone to downvote everything.
- PunchyHamster 10mo agoMore than having exact same system but with any random reader voting ? I'd say as long as you don't do "I disagree therefore I downvote" it would probably be more accurate than having essentially same voting system driven by randoms like reddit/HN already does
- intended 10mo agoEcho chambers will always result on social media. I don't think you can come up with a format that will not result in consolidated blocs.
- baq 10mo agoEcho chamber of rational, thoughtful and truthful speakers is what I’m looking for in Internet forums.
- jrmg 10mo agoThat’s what everyone living in an echo chamber (and especially one of their own creation) thinks they’re in.
- baq 10mo agoI don't think I'm in any is my problem (HN is better than most, doesn't mean it's good in absolute terms...)
- XorNot 10mo ago"you're in an echo chamber" is one of the most frightfully overused opinions.
- ssl-3 10mo agoThe expression is an echo chamber in and of itself; it is self-fulfilling prophecy.
- red-iron-pine 10mo agoflat earth creationists would describe their colleagues the same way. a group of them certainly is an echo chamber; why isn't your view?
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 10mo agoHe doesn't deny that his point of view forms an echo chamber.
- xmprt 10mo agoAn echo chamber is a product of your own creation. If you're willing to upvote people who disagree with your and actively seek out opposite takes to be genuinely curious about, then you're probably not in an echo chamber. The tools for controlling your feed are reducing on social media like Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, etc., but simply saying that you follow and respect the opinions of a select group doesn't necessarily mean you're forming an echo chamber. This is different from something like flat earth/other conspiracy theories where when confronted with opposite evidence, they aren't likely to engage with it in good faith.
- janalsncm 10mo agoThat assumes your upvotes in the past were a good proxy for being correct today. You could have both been wrong.
- TrainedMonkey 10mo agoI long had a similar idea for stocks. Analyze posts of people giving stock tips on WSB, Twitter, etc and rank by accuracy. I would be very surprised if this had not been done a thousand times by various trading firms and enterprising individuals. Of course in the above example of stocks there are clear predictions (HNWS will go up) and an oracle who resolves it (stock market). This seems to be a way harder problem for generic free form comments. Who resolves what prediction a particular comment has made and whether it actually happened?
- Karrot_Kream 10mo agoI ran across Sybil [1] the other day which tries to offer a reputation score based on correct predictions in prediction markets. [1]: https://sybilpredicttrust.info/ https://sybilpredicttrust.info/
- miki123211 10mo ago> Analyze posts of people giving stock tips on WSB, Twitter, etc and rank by accuracy. Didn't somebody make an ETF once that went against the prediction of some famous CNBC stock picker, showing that it would have given you alpha in the past. > seems to be a way harder problem for generic free form comments. That's what prediction markets are for. People for whom truth and accuracy matters (often concentrated around the rationalist community) will often very explicitly make annual lists of concrete and quantifiable predictions, and then self-grade on them later.
- Natsu 10mo agoYou probably mean Inverse Cramer: https://finbold.com/inverse-cramer-leaves-sp-nasdaq-and-dow-in-the-dust/ https://finbold.com/inverse-cramer-leaves-sp-nasdaq-and-dow-...
- red-iron-pine 10mo agoCramer is the stock picker guy. There is a well known "Cramer Effect" or "Cramer Bounce" where the stock peaks then drops hard. Makes for great pump n dump if you're day trading and willing to ride https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cramerbounce.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cramerbounce.asp long-term his choices don't do well, so the Inverse Cramer basically says "do the opposite of this goober" and has solid returns (sorta; depends a lot on methodology, and the sole hedgefund playing that strategy shutdown)
- 8organicbits 10mo agoThe problem seems underspecified; what does it mean for a comment to be accurate? It would seem that comments like "the sun will rise tomorrow" would rank highest, but they aren't surprising.
- smeeger 10mo agojust because an idea is qualitative doesn't mean its invalid
- leobg 10mo agoThat’s what Elon’s vision was before he ended up buying Twitter. Keep a digital track record for journalists. He wanted to call it Pravda. (And we do have that in real life. Just as, among friends, we do keep track of who is in whose debt, we also keep a mental map of whose voice we listen to. Old school journalism still had that, where people would be reading someone’s column over the course of decades. On the internet, we don’t have that, or we have it rarely.)
- potato3732842 10mo ago>This is a cool idea. I would install a Chrome extension that shows a score by every username on this site grading how well their expressed opinions match what subsequently happened in reality, or the accuracy of any specific predictions they've made. Why stop there? If you can do that you can score them on all sorts of things. You could make a "this person has no moral convictions and says whatever makes the number go up" score. Or some other kind of score. Stuff like this makes the community "smaller" in a way. Like back in the old days on forums and IRC you knew who the jerks were.
- prawn 10mo agoDidn't Slashdot have something like the second point with their meta-moderation, many many years ago?
- ssl-3 10mo agoSorta. IIRC, when comment moderation and scoring came to Slashdot, only a random (and changing) selection of users were able to moderate. Meta-moderation came a bit later. It allowed people to review prior moderation actions and evaluate the worth of those actions. Those users who made good moderations were more likely to become a mod again in the future than those who made bad moderations. The meta-mods had no idea whose actions they were evaluating, and previous/potential mods had no idea what their score was. That anonymity helped keep it honest and harder to game.
- handoflixue 10mo agoIt's still that way today: if you're active, you'll be randomly given 5 moderation points occasionally, and they expire after a few days. So you have to decide which threads and comments are worth spending a "moderation point" on
- ssl-3 10mo agoHow does meta-moderation work these days? I remember it being called Chips and Dip instead of /., but it's been many years since I've hung out there.
- emaro 10mo agoI like the idea and certainly would try it. Although I feel in a way this would be an anti-thesis to HN. HN tries to foster curiosity, but if you're (only) ranked by the accuracy of your predictions, this could give the incentive to always fall back to a save and boring position.
- handoflixue 10mo agoI think the most interesting predictions are the ones that sound bold and even a little bit insane at the time. I think a lot more of the people who were willing to say saying "ASI will kill us all" 20+ years ago, because they were taking a risk (and routinely ridiculed for it). Even today, "ASI will kill us all" can be a pretty divisive declaration - hardly safe and boring. From the couple of threads I clicked, it seemed like this LLM-driven analysis was picking up on that, too: the top comments were usually bold, and some of the worst-rated comments was the "safe and boring" declaration that nothing interesting ever really happens.