Would a multiplexed default comment sort help with some problems?
I hadn't seen this one suggested, apologies if missed: if comments were sorted alternately by popularity, controversy and recency, could that perhaps solve some issues with effects of downvoting, not on people's widdle feelings, but on the quality of debates? Like:
- Upvotes minus downvotes, top ranked
- Upvotes PLUS downvotes, top ranked (of the remainder after removing comment-1.)
- Most recent
- Upvotes minus downvotes, second ranked
- Upvotes PLUS downvotes, second ranked
- Secondmost recent etc
That would mean downvote brigades would be helping a comment become visible, and via recency new ideas would be accessible, all interspersed with a consistent series of "established" high quality ones.
Buried or net-low score comments could well be especially interesting in relation to the topic (if many people agree, and many people disagree, something going on), if only to see how wrong an idea is - which would, however, require people to provide actual arguments instead of clicking it away.
Posted Mar 2, 2013, 7:27 AM UTC
This would encourage trolls, since their efforts would become so much more visible with the upvotes+downvotes being interleaved.
Also realize how difficult sorting algorithms can be, since they decide visibility of a comment, which then goes on to decide how much votes something gets (indirectly).
Ideally people would just ignore trolls and not give them any vote, which would effectively be the bury-it option. Optimistic that people might ever learn to do that, but people just might learn because as you say downvoting wouldn't give you the result you want. Downvote becomes the "I disagree" button it already is; ignoring becomes what downvotes are supposed to be for.
It's an interesting point, how it would interact with visibility and subsequent sorting! I actually liked the idea of the complexity, though; I guess it also depends what effect is wanted from the sorting algorithm.
No. Not voting makes it difficult to distinguish between comments that haven't been seen a lot, comments that are just 'meh', and trolls. If I didn't miss any other categories.
Trolls should be downvoted, and ideally be detected quickly enough by the sorting algorithm to be lowered to the bottom a.s.a.p. Do it too quickly though, and people will be dropped to the bottom just for not having a subscription to Hivemind Weekly.
Information is necessary to determine what the nature of a comment is. Downvoting trolls adds this information, whereas not voting on them creates an identification problem as mentioned.
I am not of the opinion that the 'best' sort is the perfect algorithm, but I believe it's the best algorithm by far that we're going to see in the near future.
To end on a more optimistic note, Reddit stores the chosen sorting algorithm. Your algorithm could be implemented, while I would keep seeing comments sorting by best, and would continue to benefit from all the people using your sort, and downvoting trolls that have then suddenly become more visible.
Late reply, sorry, but I wanted to bounce one last thought off you - in a way, don't you really want to map a certain set of comment-categories onto a "low rating" score, without really needing to differentiate within that set? I mean: whether a comment is meh or trolling doesn't matter: in either case, I don't need to read it. They both effectively collapse onto "bury" or "make less prominent".
Then comments that have simply not been given much of a chance, time-wise, will also be dumped into this category. This would still promote low effort content like jokes and memes and disadvantage content that requires solid thinking to determine its value.
I also expect it would still encourage trolls as only some people would catch on to downvoting possibly being counterproductive.
Ideally, what I want is the 'best' sorting algorithm that would boost comments with insufficient votes slightly more than is the case now. It would almost certainly lower the quality of the first X comments, but the diamonds in the rough would have a better chance of surviving before being dropped down so far that no one will ever see them and give them the upvote they deserve.
Differentiating is something I only consider necessary between upvote percentages - which is precisely what most ranking algorithms do in a sense.