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Interesting, what if in downvoting a comment you had to pick a reason? What are all the reasons one would downvote something? "I do not agree" "I do not belie

Interesting, what if in downvoting a comment you had to pick a reason? What are all the reasons one would downvote something? "I do not agree" "I do not believe this adds value" "Inappropriate conduct" "I think you are being mean / rude" "Bad attempt at funny" "Off topic to parent" "Off topic to post" "Difficult to understand/Noise"

noir_lord 12y ago
Slashdot does this. What generally happens is that instead of one argument about been downvoted/upvoted you end up with even more arguments about whether something is +5 funny or whatever. I've no idea how you solve this in the general case tbh.
- bengali3 12y ago
  thanks i'll check it out. I wasn't thinking to show the stats to others, possibly to provide feedback to the poster that they're 'above average' on the 'mean' or 'not relevant', etc scale.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  So far, while it may not be ideal, I think HN actually hits pretty close to the sweet spot.
- r00fus 12y ago
  Part of that though is that +1 Funny doesn't add to your slashdot karma. So people sometimes "upvote to denigrate" because you can only get +5 anyway, a silly comment can get +5 Funny without actually rewarding the commenter (mocks the comment) - you can see this when replies get +5 Insightful or +5 Informative and are very contrary to the original comment. Personally, I like the idea of having qualifiers on the downvote without one on the upvote - makes you think a little bit before downvoting... plus the vote buttons are ridiculously small on an mobile Safari - so having to click twice would prevent accidental downvotes.
dman 12y ago
I havent put a lot of thought into an ideal solution to this problem. But heres the best I have so far. Change the definition of karma to capture notability which would be a monotonically increasing number. So when a person mark a comment as notable, it increases your karma score by 1. Seperately have a agree / disagree score per comment whose lifetime is limited to a particular thread. Within a thread a reader can use the agree / disagree scores of comment to selectively read both sides of the debate.
ZenoArrow 12y ago
I don't have a strong opinion on whether that'd work, but it sounds a lot like the Slashdot comment moderation system. Perhaps someone with a good level of experience of posting on Slashdot can help shed some light on how it works out in practice.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  I think it works well (been reading and posting to /. for about 15 years), and if I designed a forum then it'd work the same way. The trick is it forces you to justify your opinion in some way. There isn't a "-1 Disagree" or "+1 Right On" so to mod a comment you have to find some actual flaw with it, or justify why you think it should be raised above the rest. If you pick a dumb reason that clearly can't be justified based on the text, meta-moderators will wash things out later. That said, it's not perfect. There are -1 Overrated and +1 Underrated mods. I would not have these if I was king for a day, because: • They apparently somehow bypass meta-moderation, or have done in the past (!) so not surprisingly they get abused a lot • They are vague and don't force you to justify what's good or bad about a post, in many cases I have seen abuse of these mod types devolve into reddit style agree/disagree modding • They don't adjust the adjective that goes with the post, so for a long time and maybe still now you can get posts like +5 Troll or -1 Insightful, which is just confusing and generally bogus Stripping out Underrated and Overrated would improve things a lot. I'd maybe make +1 Funny count for karma too because funny posts deliver a lot of value to the slashdot reading experience, IMO, and I see no problem with encouraging them. I think the balance of adjectives is important though. There is no -1 Wrong or -1 Misinformed mod and that's important. If someone posts something polite, earnest and completely wrong there's no justifiable word to mod them down with. Instead you have to wait for a reply to correct them and then mod that up as Informative, Insightful etc.
weinzierl 12y ago
Another idea is to make down voting cost karma. Stackoverflow does this.

noir_lord 12y ago

Slashdot does this. What generally happens is that instead of one argument about been downvoted/upvoted you end up with even more arguments about whether something is +5 funny or whatever. I've no idea how you solve this in the general case tbh.

bengali3 12y ago
thanks i'll check it out. I wasn't thinking to show the stats to others, possibly to provide feedback to the poster that they're 'above average' on the 'mean' or 'not relevant', etc scale.
dragonwriter 12y ago
So far, while it may not be ideal, I think HN actually hits pretty close to the sweet spot.
r00fus 12y ago
Part of that though is that +1 Funny doesn't add to your slashdot karma. So people sometimes "upvote to denigrate" because you can only get +5 anyway, a silly comment can get +5 Funny without actually rewarding the commenter (mocks the comment) - you can see this when replies get +5 Insightful or +5 Informative and are very contrary to the original comment. Personally, I like the idea of having qualifiers on the downvote without one on the upvote - makes you think a little bit before downvoting... plus the vote buttons are ridiculously small on an mobile Safari - so having to click twice would prevent accidental downvotes.

dman 12y ago

I havent put a lot of thought into an ideal solution to this problem. But heres the best I have so far. Change the definition of karma to capture notability which would be a monotonically increasing number. So when a person mark a comment as notable, it increases your karma score by 1. Seperately have a agree / disagree score per comment whose lifetime is limited to a particular thread. Within a thread a reader can use the agree / disagree scores of comment to selectively read both sides of the debate.

ZenoArrow 12y ago

I don't have a strong opinion on whether that'd work, but it sounds a lot like the Slashdot comment moderation system. Perhaps someone with a good level of experience of posting on Slashdot can help shed some light on how it works out in practice.

mike_hearn 12y ago
I think it works well (been reading and posting to /. for about 15 years), and if I designed a forum then it'd work the same way. The trick is it forces you to justify your opinion in some way. There isn't a "-1 Disagree" or "+1 Right On" so to mod a comment you have to find some actual flaw with it, or justify why you think it should be raised above the rest. If you pick a dumb reason that clearly can't be justified based on the text, meta-moderators will wash things out later. That said, it's not perfect. There are -1 Overrated and +1 Underrated mods. I would not have these if I was king for a day, because: • They apparently somehow bypass meta-moderation, or have done in the past (!) so not surprisingly they get abused a lot • They are vague and don't force you to justify what's good or bad about a post, in many cases I have seen abuse of these mod types devolve into reddit style agree/disagree modding • They don't adjust the adjective that goes with the post, so for a long time and maybe still now you can get posts like +5 Troll or -1 Insightful, which is just confusing and generally bogus Stripping out Underrated and Overrated would improve things a lot. I'd maybe make +1 Funny count for karma too because funny posts deliver a lot of value to the slashdot reading experience, IMO, and I see no problem with encouraging them. I think the balance of adjectives is important though. There is no -1 Wrong or -1 Misinformed mod and that's important. If someone posts something polite, earnest and completely wrong there's no justifiable word to mod them down with. Instead you have to wait for a reply to correct them and then mod that up as Informative, Insightful etc.

weinzierl 12y ago

Another idea is to make down voting cost karma. Stackoverflow does this.