3 ms·

Not the best comparison. I don't see why a person would vote something up that they have no interest in personally. Altruism isn't all that common.

• pg 19y ago
  There's a difference between what people want to read and what they want other people to read. I know of no precise word for this. Altruism is too charitable, and hypocrisy too uncharitable. Imagine yourself inside the head of, say, an abortion rights advocate. A story appears with a headline saying that abortion is just as common where it's illegal. You don't read it; you already know that; but you upvote it as a way of saying "hear hear." Now apply the same rule to articles about Bush, Ron Paul, the RIAA, police abuses, etc, and you've filled up most of the frontpage of a site.
  • DanielBMarkham 19y ago
    Seems to me like we're confusing the users and the system. The users want to read the best material for them. The system only has two states: yes/no. If people are voting _knowing that their vote will influence what others read_, then they aren't working for the best interests of the users, only their own best interests. As you indicate, I don't think there's a word for that, but if there is a recommendation-consumption impedance mismatch (a gap between recommender interests and reader interests) then the system will always swing out of whack. That's true no matter how much it is weighted, because all you're doing is switching the impedance mismatch from a user-to-user scenario to a user-to-editor one.