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First of all. I feel like this author only recently found out about Reddit through TheFappening. >Leskovec and his colleagues don’t look at Reddit, but instead

First of all. I feel like this author only recently found out about Reddit through TheFappening. >Leskovec and his colleagues don’t look at Reddit, but instead at four other prominent information-sharing Web sites with roughly similar mechanics (these sites, like Reddit, allow users to “upvote,” or “downvote” posts and comments). The paper compares CNN.com (general news), Breitbart.com (political news), IGN.com(computer gaming), and Allkpop.com which are all completely different from Reddit. >(1) People who write low quality posts are more likely to write again when they get negative attention. Furthermore, the quality of their posts deteriorates. Simply not true. Posts that are downvoted dissappear (getting downvoted 'into oblivion'). This discourages shitposting. >(2) People who write high quality posts are encouraged by positive attention to write more. Not entirely true either. Posts that are 'popular' get upvoted. Posts that get upvoted get upvoted. Often these are made up anecdotes, or quick witty jokes, wordplays, quick digestible fluff. The whole gilding thing makes it worse (sometimes). >This may help explain why so many of Reddit’s subreddits are dominated by bigots, misogynists and other people who appear to thrive on public abhorrence. Ooh so that's what this article was all about ...

dubfan 12y ago
Yeah, it does seem like it misses the point. The biggest problem I have with Reddit is that most sub-Reddits don't promote high-quality comments, and instead reward jokes and pop-culture references. Fun drinking game: Go on the Men's Fashion Advice sub-Reddit, search for "Bonobos" and take a shot every time the top-rated comment in a post is a joke along the lines of "y u buy clothes from an ape lol"
stanziak 12y ago
It's like everybody who have been saying bad things about reddit are people who just heard about it after the iCloud breach, even the guy who wrote the verge article. Not that I think reddit is a flawless site (because it isn't, I agree it's gotten downhill within the past year because of the frontpage changes for putting good subreddits which actually leads to bad content among the masses because of the way content is catered through the voting system) but the way these authors are shaming on it are mostly invalid claims by identifying reddit as a whole.
freshhawk 12y ago
So, on what information are you basing your "simply not true" and "not entirely true either"? You are backing up your statements of fact with arguments about how it's naively supposed to work, assuming rational actors. Do you have any actual evidence other than "this is how I want people to behave"? Because the findings of the study seem very plausible to me. And your idea that trolls get discouraged because of downvotes and hiding seems to completely ignore reality.
DanBC 12y ago
> Simply not true. Posts that are downvoted dissappear (getting downvoted 'into oblivion'). This discourages shitposting. You do get a few people who feel validated by the downvotes. This sometimes happens on HN.

dubfan 12y ago

Yeah, it does seem like it misses the point. The biggest problem I have with Reddit is that most sub-Reddits don't promote high-quality comments, and instead reward jokes and pop-culture references. Fun drinking game: Go on the Men's Fashion Advice sub-Reddit, search for "Bonobos" and take a shot every time the top-rated comment in a post is a joke along the lines of "y u buy clothes from an ape lol"

stanziak 12y ago

It's like everybody who have been saying bad things about reddit are people who just heard about it after the iCloud breach, even the guy who wrote the verge article. Not that I think reddit is a flawless site (because it isn't, I agree it's gotten downhill within the past year because of the frontpage changes for putting good subreddits which actually leads to bad content among the masses because of the way content is catered through the voting system) but the way these authors are shaming on it are mostly invalid claims by identifying reddit as a whole.

freshhawk 12y ago

So, on what information are you basing your "simply not true" and "not entirely true either"? You are backing up your statements of fact with arguments about how it's naively supposed to work, assuming rational actors. Do you have any actual evidence other than "this is how I want people to behave"? Because the findings of the study seem very plausible to me. And your idea that trolls get discouraged because of downvotes and hiding seems to completely ignore reality.

DanBC 12y ago

> Simply not true. Posts that are downvoted dissappear (getting downvoted 'into oblivion'). This discourages shitposting. You do get a few people who feel validated by the downvotes. This sometimes happens on HN.