17
votes
Should comments show votes?
I feel like showing the number of votes a comment has gotten will lead to people voting something simply because it's gotten many votes and that must mean it's right. You see it happen all the time on Reddit. Someone will say something that sounds correct, and before someone else can come correct them they'll get a bunch of upvotes. Partly because they sounded correct, and partly because "all these upvotes must mean this is true".
I don't really see any benefit to showing votes on comments.
I don’t think there’s a problem here. Yes, upvoted comments gain momentum, but that’s a natural part of social interactions. We tend to feel more enthusiastic by ideas that were previously aproved by our peers. This is not necessarily bad and can be actually quite healthy, especially because on Tildes unpopular opinions will never be buried in downvotes.
I agree. It incentivizes people to post for some kind of fake social capital, instead of to talk about what they think without trying to play some game about pleasing everyone else. I don't think that there should be any voting system.
EDIT:
To anyone who voted for my post: I would appreciate it if you removed your votes. If you really do agree with me, then you should abstain from using the voting system.
How would content be sorted, then?
just in the order that it's posted.
Wouldn’t that be, like, just a chronological list of links? How would that be interesting? Why would anyone trust such a list to provide great content? Cause I don’t think it would :/
I was only really talking about the comments, because we already can choose how links are ordered without the voting system- the "newest" sorting and the "activity" sorting and the "most comments" sorting.
Even then I don't think the sorting of the links matters. How interesting a link is to you isn't just an extension of what other people think about it.
You can sort comments independent of votes, too. The current options I see are:
Both comments and posts (cc @ika, @TinyBabyOwl). It's quite easy to just ignore votes, I don't get why their presence bothers those who dislike them. They can exist for those who care (I do, sort of), and those who don't can just choose another sorthing algorithm and ignore the vote count.
(to: @Deimos) Maybe we should have an option to hide votes on comments and/or posts and set a default comment/post sorting option, what do you think? This has came up many times in different variations.
It wouldn't be difficult to add a setting that does something like hide votes and always sort chronologically, but I think the people that bring this up generally aren't just looking to have it hidden for them personally. They're usually asking for the votes to be hidden for everyone (or the system removed entirely) because they think voting has detrimental effects on the site's overall culture and how people post.
Agreed. I know Livejournal's dead and Dreamwidth's limping along, but the thing I love about them is chronological, threaded discussions. The modern internet seems so averse to what feels to me like the most natural form of conversation.
I mean, that is available to you if you want it. You can sort both your feed and the comments chronologically. Does it bother you that others can vote and sort based on votes, or do you just want the ability to default to chronological sorting?
I would love the ability to default to chronological sorting in comments. It's already available for the front page.
Maybe that's something we can look into, if it's not already a thing! And if you've got some coding skills, maybe you can try to implement it yourself - Tildes is open source, after all. ;)
I am very much not a coder -- I've considered learning, but all my favorite open-source websites use different languages so I'm just like, where would I even start? Thanks for letting me know, though!
It's not meaningful for one person to opt-out of the voting system, because everyone else is still being influenced by it.
It affects how you interact with the community, though - I think that's meaningful enough. You might even form subgroups who do the same thing, only using the voting system as a feed-in to the trust system. The site could make accommodations for subgroups who want this functionality.
If you are the only person not influenced by the voting system. It isn't meaningful because it doesn't stop the voting system from changing the behavior of the community. The problem with the voting system happens in everyone's interactions with the voting system, not just your own.
But I just implied that you may not be the only one not interacting with the voting system. Others in this thread have agreed with you and want this functionality, too.
You were talking about only using the voting system as a feed-in to the trust system, but I don't know what that means. I am talking about not using the voting system at all.
If you're not familiar with the trust system, you should read into it. The plan here isn't to appoint official moderators the way Reddit does. The voting and tagging systems play into what we call a "trust" system, which evaluates how trustworthy a user's contributions (posts, comments, votes, tags) are. The higher a user's level of trust, the more weight their actions take and the more moderation privileges their granted.
But if you don't vote at all, you don't have any say in the community's moderation. So even if you don't want voting to affect the flow of conversation, you should still vote if only to influence the community's moderation.
Discussing it here any more than I already have would take this conversation off topic, so I'll leave it there. Take some time to read into previous and ongoing discussions. It's not an implemented system yet, but we're regularly discussing the details and what we want out of it. I'll warn you now, though, that Deimos isn't likely changing his mind on using this system. It's a central idea to Tildes as a platform.
I disagree. I think a voting system is key to maintaining a healthy discussion-based community like Tildes. It helps evaluate the quality of posts and comments and encourages people to maintain that quality in their contributions. The dopamine from getting a positive response to a comment or post you put effort into helps to encourage you to do it again - I know it does for me.
We can debate the mechanics of that voting system - maybe comments should be sorted chronologically by default, or maybe comment vote counts shouldn't be visible to anyone other than the comment author - but the system needs to be there.
If you are just writing comments to maximize the amount of praise you get for them, then you are not really using this place as a way to express yourself. The quality of a post is not an extension of what other people think of it. When you let other people decide your behavior like that, you stop being an individual.
I don't think @Lynndolynn is suggesting that she writes comments just to maximise the amount of praise she gets for them. She's pointing out that positive feedback works: if you reward someone for doing something good, they are more likely to do that good thing again. In this case, if someone writes a useful, contributory, or insightful comment, the reward they get is called a "vote". As @Lynndolynn points out, this "vote" can trigger our brain's reward system, releasing a tiny dose of dopamine. We connect the reward to the behaviour, and want to write more useful, contributory, or insightful comments, to get more rewards.
Remember that we absolutely want to encourage certain types of behaviour on Tildes and discourage certain other types of behaviour. This is not, and is not intended to be, a free-for-all. People can be individuals, but they should express themselves only within the limits of behaviour permitted here. For example, I can't start expressing my individuality by abusing you, or by denigrating all women, or writing derogatory things about transgender people. I also can't start posting memes and threads of puns. There are limits. That's where votes and comment tags come in: a vote encourages certain behaviour, while a comment tag discourages certain behaviour.
I'm expressing myself here and now. I'm telling you my opinion, honest and direct. This is my own individual take on this topic. (You'll never get anything other than my own individual opinion, no matter where I'm commenting!) However, I'm also aware that I need to express myself in a way that complies with the rules, standards, and expectations of this website. I am hoping to get a few votes for this comment, as validation for complying with those expectations, and I'm therefore putting in the effort to make that happen - rather than writing a comment that simply says "That's a stupid idea." or "I disagree."
This was a much more pragmatic way of expressing what I just said adjacent to you, haha. I think I may have been too flowery and philosophical. I guess we'll just have to wait for the results of the voting system to see which the community prefers. ;)
Flowery and philosophical has its place! I just tend towards blunt, direct, and practical commentary. It's part of my so-called charm. :)
The only rules about behavior in the code of conduct say that you can't incite violence against other individuals here, and that you can't post anything illegal, or pretend to be someone else. Anything else is OK behavior. If you don't like that, nothing stops you from replying to comments you don't like and explaining why. Anything more than that is censorship.
You're new here, so I'll say this gently: this isn't the place you think it is, or hope it will be. I recommend you take some time to observe how things are conducted here.
I'll be more blunt than @Algernon_Asimov: If your opinion of voting systems is that they're a form of censorship, you're going to be very unhappy here. You've wildly misinterpreted what type of site this is, and if you're looking for something that's unmoderated you shouldn't waste any more time here, and should go to a site like Voat, notabug, or 8chan instead.
:O Go, Deimos!
On another point: this sort of misunderstanding is a good reason to make Tildes publicly readable while it's invitation-only.
Agreed, and I think publicly-visible but still invite-only is the next major "phase" we need to get to fairly soon.
However, I probably also just need to be more explicit somewhere prominent about a few things like this. It seems fairly common for people to get the wrong impression somehow, and it would save some trouble if people weren't coming in with incorrect expectations about Tildes's approach to things like free speech, censorship, memes, and a few other things.
In my opinion this should be done by allowing people to register read-only accounts. Once they've visited enough threads and had an account for 1-2 weeks then their accounts can submit comments/links and vote.
Edit:
Perhaps that's how it should always work. Might help stave off Eternal September for a long time.
A week would be too long, I think. If someone comes to a website that puts "discussion" at the centre but cannot actually discuss anything for such a long time, that's quite a bit discouraging. But maybe a system of rate limiting for the beginners could work. For example, they may be limited to lurking for the first couple of days, they they have votes, an additional two days later they have say 5 comments a day, then at the end of a week they are allowed to participate freely in the website.
You might be on to something there. That's worth a try, I like it. We could make open-registration always behave like that. Keep invites as they are now, immediate access to posting, so they are still different/valuable (and also a honeypot for the impatient spammer/troll variety).
As I've said before, the empty login page of https://tildes.net acts as a blank slate onto which people can project their own desires and dreams - like the ink blots in Rorschach tests. Everyone sees what they want to see in that page, and imagines their own personal internet utopia behind the page.
Then they step through the portal and come face to face with the reality of Tildes. Many adapt, but some don't.
(@Lynndolynn: See? I can be flowery!)
I think the docs are quite clear about this. I've read all that was available when I got the invitation, they are concise and clear. Maybe the login page at
/can have a "zen/maxims of Tildes" like:You should act towards others as you'd like them to act towards you.
Nobody (except trolls) hopes to get abuse in response to their posts, so there's no reason to allow that kind of behavior.
We trust people, but punish abusers.
In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important.
I collected these from the Overall Goals page, to illustrate what I thought of. We can have a thread at ~tildes to brainstorm on the exact maxims to put there if this seems to be a viable idea.
(Edit: BTW the inspiration for this was the sibling comment of @Algernon_Asimov).
That doesn't quite convey the impression that this is a moderated site. We need to include a statement like "Tildes is an actively moderated discussion forum", to prevent people thinking it's an unmoderated censorship-free zone.
The point is that we need to let people know about Tildes' philosophy before they sign up, when they can't see what's happening inside this private locked room.
Or maybe a certain amount of time (thinking days here) after you make an account where you can't comment, just observe how things are to prevent people from coming in day one thinking this is going to be something it's not.
I don't know how anyone makes the jump from "rank by votes" to "censorship". There isn't even an autohide for comments <4 votes.
Peer approval and self expression aren't mutually exclusive. I contribute to express myself, but I tailor my contribution to better fit the community. I don't talk the same way here that I do in other communities, online or offline, but I'm still expressing myself wherever I contribute. If I can't express myself, I don't contribute.
Catering to appeal to others doesn't have to make my contributions any less expressive or any less mine. We do this every day in face-to-face interactions. It's how we connect emotionally and intellectually. I change the way I say things so that the person I talk to can approach what I'm saying from where they are, because we're not emotionless robots who can evaluate things at face value from every angle. Sometimes we need a lead in.
This isn't a game of maximization, either - the votes aren't the end goal, and that's part of why we don't have overall "account karma" like Reddit does. The votes are just a way to signal to others that you appreciated what they said, and to encourage them to continue contributing. It's that little ping that says "yes, someone read, understood, and appreciated what you said - you didn't just shout into the void." It's like a virtual head nod or a smile or a "Yeah".
And finally, it's not about controlling or deciding other people's behavior, or letting others decide yours, or forcing a hive mind onto people. It's about community building and communication. It's about gauging how others feel and communicating nonverbally how you feel. It's about figuring out the landscape of a community and adapting to it. Sometimes that means communicating differently. Other times it just means picking your battles because the overwhelming majority of the community disagrees with you; but that's the same as in any community.
This is why a voting system is so important to me. It's about individuals and communities communicating with each other to better understand each other and to emotionally connect in ways that can otherwise be difficult in purely verbal environments. It's about helping a community figure out its values and its opinions and to help newer members understand them, too. It's not about stifling self expression or control; it's just plain social politicking. And that's why the debates here are so frequently about the details of the voting system rather than its existence.
The voting system is designed as a form of "soft-censorship" by hiding posts that aren't voted on at the bottom of the page. The idea about picking battles or socializing new members by ignoring them is the mindset that voting systems and online handles create. It formalizes a hive-mind control over what is and isn't posted and makes it worse by turning it into a first-class feature of the website. You said earlier in your post that it's not about enforcing a hive mind, and then proceeded to talk about how people have to "pick their battles" and "helping new members understand the opinions of the community"; which is exactly how the voting system teaches users to adopt the opinions of the community and only express those opinions if they want other people to see their posts.
Can you expand on this? Someone's comment has to end up at the bottom of a page no matter what sorting system is implemented. How is it censorship in any way?
A very nice little feature of this website is the fact that the new response form for toplevel comments is at the bottom of the page, suggesting that at least scrolling and skimming through the page before saying anything is expected. I really like that and it does help with the visibility of comments that end up at the bottom of the page.
One of my favourite things about this site is having the comment box at the bottom of a thread.
I'm pretty sure it reduces the number of comments all saying the same thing, or slight variations of it.
Living in society is pretty much a game of influence. Denying this would create an sterile environment. I don’t think Tildes should be about creating an entirely cold, logical, rhetoric free platform, but a place with sane rules that make the game fair and enjoyable for everyone. We’re all trying to make our point here, aren’t we? There should be moods and swings. That’s how groups work. Persuasion is part of the game, and it’s not a dirty word.
If people want to express themselves, they can do it with words. There is more to participation than just clicking on a like button. You shouldn't see forums as a game about influencing people but as a place to talk to other people.
What you're missing is that voting is a way of talking to people - it's just nonverbal and, in our community, strictly reserved for affirmation or approval. It's far better than dozens of replies all effectively saying "yes / that was a good comment / thanks for posting / I understand." In the same way that we don't always need to follow up with words in a face-to-face conversation, we don't always need to follow up with words in an online conversation. A vote is sufficient and effective communication.
It is a form of communication, sure, but it can't communicate anything more than how many people agreed with a post. That doesn't add any value to the conversation, it just adds a social cue for everyone else to feel pressured to agree with the more popular comment, rather than reading all of them and making their own decision.
I abstained from upvoting your post both to support your initiative and because I don't agree with it and without the votes it won't be as visible :)
For me comment votes actually help to stop some noise and redundancy. I vote for comments I agree with but don't have anything to add. So this prevents a bit of "I agree" comments that don't add to the discussion, while still allowing participation.
At the risk of making an "I agree" comment, this is exactly how I use my votes as well.
I am a habitual lurker and vote numbers is how I participate while remaining in my lazy lurker persona.
By sorting by any of the voting-influenced orders, you get a sense of the voting pattern anyway. Showing the vote distinguishes between 'has many votes, order is representative of the community' and 'hasn't seen much activity at all, order may not be representative of the community' - which is an important distinction to make.
I rather look at the vote count as the equivalent of a town-hall's 'aye' 'hear-hear' 'agreed' verbal assent you see in large meetings. It's just the crowd mumbling agreement.
The value I can see in that is when there's a lively discussion going you can clearly see where the group's opinions fall. You're taking the audience's temperature on the content of a comment. It also gives people something to click on that makes them happy. Sorting only by-votes does bias the 'winners' of the sort towards the oldest and most voted comments, but we don't have to sort just by votes.
I wouldn't mind as many alternative sorting comment methods as we can invent. The votes are basic, and lazy. I'm sure we can come up with better. A chronological view sounds useful.
This will come across as pretty vain, but I will sometimes look through my post history to see what ended up getting votes, then I kind of evaluate why. Was it funny, well written, on topic etc.
Votes help to get a sense of the community, and work in much the same way as the normal social ques you get from conversation.
That said I kind of think maybe votes should just be hidden from view at least for a period of time. Sorting etc, should not change just the display. But very iffy about this, maybe have it only applicable with certain appropriate tags, like controversial or sensitive, something along those lines.
I've come around on this and I actually agree now for a few reasons:
Regarding your corollary, I wager that showing vote counts makes a great deal of difference, even when they're already ordered by vote total. The magnitude of the difference between adjacent comments is important - Comments A and B having vote totals 12 and 11 implies that, even though A is strictly more popular, the two have pretty similar approval ratings by the community. Consider when you hear the results of a political election: Candidate A winning at 80% over Candidate B at 15% means something very different than A winning at 50% over B's 48%.
Whether that's good or not is another question, but I didn't want to just leave that point uncontested. :)
Reddit never actually did that. They provided the individual votes with the API, which RES made visible.
They only ever actually displayed the combined vote, never the individual ups and downs. RES did that, which they acknowledge here:
There were also a lot of comments discussing this, including one by @deimos that makes it clear in context:
See also: The RES announcement on r/Enhancement
It looks like I was remembering wrong that it was included in the DOM though, so I've edited that out. It was probably a part of the API.
For the people arguing in favor of not showing vote counts, if you'd be interested, I hacked together some CSS to make that happen client-side. It won't affect anyone other than those who might choose to install this code, but if you'd like, then here:
(You may or may not need the !important. It's not really good practice to use it as much as I do, but my browser has decided recently that I have to add it to basically everything or my scripts won't work.)
(...okay, I guess I am a coder, kind of.)