
The importance of upvoting - julianshapiro
https://www.julian.com/blog/upvote
======
Buttons840
Consider two users: Bob browses HN and upvotes about 1000 articles a month.
Jill, on the other hand, upvotes only articles she considers to be exceptional
and upvotes about 1 article a month.

Should Bob have 1000 times more influence than Jill? Personally, I'd like to
see what was so special about that one article Jill voted for, but a naive
upvote mechanic considers it just a single vote, and is not noteworthy when
compared with Bob's thousands upon thousands of votes. It would be nice is
Jill's single vote was equal to 1000 votes from Bob.

Do any systems like this exist? It sounds good in theory, but I wonder how it
would stand up to abuse?

~~~
DanBC
If Bob is upvoting good articles his votes should count.

The problem on HN isn't that many people upvote, but that some people upvote
bad submissions.

It might be useful to look at people who regularly upvote bad submissions and
down-weight their votes.

~~~
amirouche
That's how digg worked, it did not work well for them.

------
barrkel
Most of the time I don't upvote because the link isn't good enough. It's very
rare that I see a link I think is really worth people's time - maybe once or
twice a week.

I could lower my bar, but the real problem is the binary nature of the vote.
There's content that I really want more of, and then there's content that's
better than average. If I vote both with my single vote, I'm not delivering
the right level of information. It's almost like I want a supervote that can
only be applied once a day, or once a week, that's worth more than one normal
vote.

~~~
julianshapiro
I just tried digging for examples of supervotes in the wild. The idea is
intriguing.

Couldn't find an aggregator that does it. Interestingly, however, it's a
common voting tactic on reality competition TV (e.g. The Voice, American Idol)
[1].

Does anyone have examples of supervotes in action for online communities?

[1] [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=supervote+network)

~~~
OJFord
There's a Discourse-type thing (it's not Discourse) that gives you upto 3
votes on any one topic, and I think a daily maximum, that perhaps increases
with user trust - but I don't remember the name.

I see it from time to time used as a forum or feature request tracker.

~~~
dorianm
It's called uservoice: [https://feedback.uservoice.com/forums/1-product-
management/s...](https://feedback.uservoice.com/forums/1-product-
management/suggestions/2300-per-user-vote-limits)

I would love to see this concept applied to news aggregators

------
zitterbewegung
I believe the author is unaware of the 1% rule on internet culture and argues
that people shouldn't follow it. Making an impassioned plea isn't going to do
much. The internet is full of people that don't want to interact and only
consume .
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_\(Internet_culture\))

~~~
imartin2k
Isn't the more significant question whether the 1% rule actually has to remain
valid forever? Is it a law of nature or is it more learned behaviour? Why is
there no 1% rule for elections? Because people have been taught that it is
important to vote. People on the Internet have not been taught the same thing.
The author suggests that this should change. One blog post of course won't do
that. But you gotta start somewhere.

~~~
tbirdz
I think there is something like a 1% rule for elections.

small group runs for office

larger group helps run the campaign (volunteers, etc)

larger group donates

larger group votes

even larger group doesn't vote at all

As the amount of effort to participate decreases, the amount of people
involved rises.

------
skybrian
I don't know, this seems a bit like taunting Goodhart's law? [1] I'm thankful
that voting on Hacker News works as well as it does; maybe we shouldn't mess
with it.

The Hacker News moderators are doing what they can to provide a quality
website. To the extent your voting helps them achieve their goals, it's
useful. On the other hand, encouraging more noise voters won't improve things;
it will mean that quality submissions need more votes to break through the
clutter, and the moderators will have to look for alternate ranking signals.

Still, it probably wouldn't hurt to look at the 'new' page more often.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law)

------
gilgoomesh
I think this is a misidentification of the true problem.

We're dependent on voting to determine "best" or "most important". Even if the
sampling were statistically valid, populism does not equate to quality.

We should have automated systems for scoring articles on vectors of likely
importance, relevance, accuracy and literacy so we can apply these to
aggregators in conjunction with basic populism.

Because populism is easily gamed and has many known degenerate cases that are
not fixed by throwing more populism at it.

~~~
zitterbewegung
I think you are presupposing that automated systems for articles can't be
gamed . Google has to constantly update their search API to combat this .

~~~
gilgoomesh
Absolutely, it can all be gamed and any approach will have cases where it
fails. That's why a balanced set of approaches using a handful of very
different metrics is important – and possibly offering users the ability to
browse by each metric separately.

------
btrask
It feels nice to spot something on the new list, give it its first upvote, and
then the next day see it on the front page.

I've also seen a lot of interesting stuff on /newest that never makes it to
the front page. Sometimes stuff that I personally find useful, even if it
isn't relevant to the community at large.

Also, pro tip: page 2 has new posts with a handful of upvotes where one or two
more votes can easily propel them to the front page. You can make a
difference!

~~~
tominous
True -- at the right threshold one upvote can mean the difference between a
post sinking without a trace or making it to the front page and gaining many
more votes and views. In that way one upvote can trigger much more than 100
views.

~~~
gwern
"The importance of a single vote is easy to illustrate: On Hacker News, a
popular post can receive 500 votes, which can generate ~50,000 visits
depending on how interesting the title is. (I’m pulling data from Algolia.)
Using simple math, this equates to"

Not even the half of it. I ran an experiment on /newest once, and just a
single random upvote (mine) had a substantial effect on the odds that a
submission would reach the front page, and since a front page appearance is
worth anywhere from 5-20,000 pageviews, my single upvote was driving thousands
of pageviews! And I've noticed when submitting my links and then browsing
/newest for other meritorious links, this phenomenon doesn't appear to have
gone away.

~~~
nickpsecurity
That's what I was talking about here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13677501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13677501)

Same thing seemed to happen to me whether coincidentally a bunch of
simultaneous votes or some algorithm based on karma. I know I was more careful
with upvotes on new stories afterward.

~~~
gwern
Yes, it's possible my high-karma makes my votes worth more. In retrospect, I
probably should've done it with a lightly-used account. On the other hand, the
implications for me are still the same - I know I take more time to do
upvoting on /newest than I did before!

------
dyukqu
I just sent 100 more visitors to your website. (And it took way more than half
a second - I had to read the entire post before doing so.)

Btw, tldr; "I know it's fun to dismiss social networks as frivolous, _but link
aggregators are a special type of social network that we should value higher._
"

------
esturk
I always felt "down-voting" should cost something. Maybe 1 karma/point/etc. so
that people who would down-vote should feel they are invested enough to do so.
As it is right now, down voting is too easy and detached to other's thoughts
even after reading it.

Fundamentally, this is to create some value towards the point system so that
people would put more thought into posting as well as down-voting. If someone
wants the ability to down-vote, then they should write meaningful comments to
gather the karma needed to do so.

~~~
jessaustin
I entirely disagree. Down-voting is a defense of the commons. The best way to
teach us not to post shit, is for our shit to be down-voted mercilessly, with
no explanation. I've got over 14k internet points, and I get down-voted every
week at least, usually without discussion. I appreciate that, because it helps
me learn to contribute better, without sucking me into a black hole of
personality conflict. Every down-vote represents someone who was annoyed by
what I posted, and we all benefit by reducing annoyance here. Truly unfair
down-votes are typically corrected (...and then some) by up-votes from other
users.

One probably doesn't understand why one is down-voted, the first time it
happens. One probably doesn't understand every down-vote one gets, even with
long experience. Over time, however, one gets a better and better idea about
what we need here, and what we don't. It's even better if it's unconscious,
and we edit our posts to be more "HN-style" without paying attention to why a
particular expression conforms to that or not. This process is only disrupted
by lengthy back-and-forth discussion of who said what and why and who
interpreted that how and why.

Try not to think of down-votes as a reflection of your character or worth as a
human. Rather, they are a snap judgment of a single verbal expression, made at
a single point in time.

------
oneeyedpigeon
I'm not sure I _totally_ buy the concept that 'good' up/down-voting saves
people time. I rarely come to hacker news thinking "I'll just check the top n
posts, filtering out posts below a certain score threshold"; typically, I'm
thinking "What are the posts I can spend X time reading instead of doing
something else?".

------
mxfh
It's very ok to abstain if you have no informed opinion or interest.

The flaws of the system won't be fixed by gaming it even more.

That this type of information retrieval is portrayed as mankind's last hope,
makes me miss _Google Reader_ even more than already.

For lack of an better alternative HN is more of a baseline I check my twitter
feed against.

------
shadowfacts
Amusingly, more people than normal who've read the blog post are going to
upvote this post.

~~~
cbanek
Same for your comment. :)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Original comment was it was oldest one 2nd from the bottom. HN voting couldn't
be that bad. Situation changed by time it refreshed lol. Maybe just cuz it's a
recent topic.

------
OJFord
I think I agree with the sentiment, but try to ignore the statistics.

I think the average user is more than 10x as likely to click a 1k link than
100pt.

Personally, if it's massively upvoted I'll click and skim even if it doesn't
sound like it will interest me - if it's that important to the community, I '
_should_ ', right?

~~~
dorianm
I agree, sometimes I think "how on hell this can have X invited?" then when I
read it it's usually more interesting than the title and domain make it sound
(and/or comments are where's it's interesting).

------
makecheck
I feel that ranks should be a combination of explicit and implicit activity.

If a story link is followed a certain number of times, if a certain amount of
time is spent on a page, etc. these indicators might contribute to an
“implicit upvote” for a story or contribute in some way to its rank regardless
of explicit up-votes. It’s also really important to have a good way to
recognize and consolidate duplicates and reward them equally.

Activity in a comment subtree should also implicitly increase the rank of a
comment. I have occasionally seen comments that were mysteriously not upvoted
even once, despite spawning multiple levels of subtree discussion; in such
case, isn’t the comment implicitly “more valuable” by creating a lengthy
discussion, even if no one ever explicitly upvoted it?

~~~
hueving
No, a lack of upvote on a comment usually means the comment was wrong
according to someone and it spawned an argument. I definitely don't want those
cases ranked higher than good discussions where all commenters are receiving
votes.

Similarly, an article that someone spends 10 minutes reading and then doesn't
upvote (or comments without upvote) means it was probably a massive waste of
time.

------
cbanek
Funny enough to shadowfacts comment, I think when you remind people that you
can share/upvote/promote, you generally get a higher return rate. At least,
that's what common wisdom seems to say. For example, if at the end of a blog
post you say "tell us your story about x" where it relates to the post, you're
more likely to get responses than if you didn't. This of course doesn't help
bad content that you don't reach the end of.

------
kstenerud
No. Don't even try to guilt me into action.

The current landscape may favor you more if I take certain actions, but that
does NOT obligate me at all.

------
Klathmon
Why haven't any link aggregator sites tried automating the voting system?

Take something like view time and commenting/opening the article as a vote and
perhaps still have a flag function to help remove off topic or illegal
content.

Manual voting seems like such a ham-fisted approach at finding what people
want, and it disproportionately rewards those who vote over more passive
observers.

------
wink
Maybe I am out of date, but to the best of my knowledge, with my usage pattern
I _can 't_ upvote in a meaningful way.

I am assuming it's still correct that upvoting on /newest is the most
effective (or only) way to do it.

Just looked this up, I joined this site 2061 days ago, before that I was a
logged out reader for a while. I don't think I visited /newest more than 10
times - I only read via RSS, and usually only once or twice per week -
skimming over a lot, reading the comments for many - usually 100 - 300 posts
at a time. If HN ever stops providing a RSS feed, I am probably gone anyway.

This is not a critique towards HN, but the OP maybe takes his own usage
pattern as the default (maybe it is, I wouldn't know).

------
xkxx
There's no evidence supporting the idea that every upvote brings additional
100 visitors to the upvoted link. Even if there's such evidence, it's not
immediately clear from the article. The author doesn't consider the fact that
some upvotes don't increase the point counter. There are other major flaws.
The article doesn't disclose methodology used to obtain the results. It just
makes the claim that an article with 500 points generates 50,000 visits, so
every point is 100 visits, and expects us to believe it and take it as a fact.
The author doesn't bother to prove that fact.

------
nickpsecurity
There also seems to be a mechanism where high-karma users boost a story more
than one point. It would support Julian's point even more. I was at one point
just boosting stuff in New that I thought people would be interested in across
various topics based on prior front page results.

~~~
pvg
_There also seems to be a mechanism where high-karma users boost a story more
than one point_

I've never heard of such a thing. What makes you think high karma influences
the value of a vote? Have the mods talked about it?

~~~
nickpsecurity
Ive noticed a link in new that stays at 1pt a while go up a ton after I upvote
it. This means either it stayed dead followed by a bunch of simultaneous
upvotes or the site gives extra weight to high karma users. I dont upvote
enough stories to be sure which it is. I just see points go up tens of votes
second I upvote most submissions.

~~~
pvg
Most things in new don't get any votes at all so you're going to see lots of
volatility there (nor does the ranking there matter much). The ranking
computation is also not necessarily instant although maybe it is, I don't
know. But I don't think this is any evidence of high karma users having some
kind of supervote. If you could move items on the front page with a single
vote (or with your mind), that would be another thing altogether.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Your last sentence happened a few times. It's what originally got me
wondering. Let's also remember they have routines looking for people gaming
the system. That could affect both timing and what effect a karma boost would
have in visible results after a vote refreshes.

------
bagacrap
Upvoting on Facebook definitely does impact distribution. More likes translate
to more people seeing it in their feed. This of course has a cumulative effect
and leads to more re-shares. Virality is highly dependent on initial likes.

------
donclark
why not get 1 upvote automatically just upon opening/viewing? (please forgive
me because i do not understand the entire process(and did not search to find
if there is one))

~~~
grzm
An upvote is a recommendation, which should be based on reading the
submission. The upvote should ideally come _after_ opening/viewing if the
submission is good enough. (Am I understanding your comment correctly?)

------
Dowwie
For _members_ , change HN to display new posts as the default page, replacing
the "new" navigation item with "top"

------
ouid
indifference _is_ voting.

------
EmiAsHimself
Link agregators have a free rider problem. Just like democracies without
mandatory voting.

~~~
jacquesm
Those two are not even remotely connected and to claim a lack mandatory voting
implies a free rider problem is ridiculous.

