

Rigging any vote-based social website to keep the “early spirit” - giuliettamasina
http://alimony.github.io/ideas/rigging-early-spirit.html

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giuliettamasina
Readers will hopefully notice the semi-sarcastic sub-tone of the text :)

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alexforster
> For example, any user could ask for content weighted towards an arbitrary
> date, like “Show me content to the taste of people who registered in
> December 2008” or “What do the 1,000 newest users like?”

That sounds like an incredibly interesting way to navigate a social news site.

Why do we have to be afraid to simply admit that, in a social news setting,
the majority community gears content toward their own likes and interests? I
actually wholly agree with the premise you dismiss as "semi-sarcastic".

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danmaz74
>> For example, any user could ask for content weighted towards an arbitrary
date, like “Show me content to the taste of people who registered in December
2008” or “What do the 1,000 newest users like?”

> That sounds like an incredibly interesting way to navigate a social news
> site.

Except that votes aren't stochastically independent events - on the contrary,
exposure to the first page, which is determined by any vote (not just your
chosen cohort), determines most of the votes of a story.

I guess that with that kind of weighting you could perhaps have a different
order of the stories that went to the home page, but the stories would still
be the same - ie, you wouldn't find all the stories that would have come to
the home page in the old days, and were instead pushed out by some kitten-
stories.

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lubujackson
Better yet would be to rig the vote based on usage. So if you have 500
comments your vote is worth more than someone with 10, you could even scale it
precisely on a curve. This way, rather than having a static seniority-based
system the site can still develop based on who uses the site the most. You'd
still have herd mentality, but there would be more insulation from it.

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eli
Not sure I buy that people who make lots of comments are better qualified to
pick good content.

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yeonhoyoon
This idea would naturally develop into personally curated site based on your
voting preferences, i.e. Amazon for news.

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noblethrasher
HN has something like what the article proposes:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/classic](https://news.ycombinator.com/classic)

Although I think it just filters by account that are older than a couple of
years, obviously becoming less useful over time.

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giuliettamasina
Didn't know about that, cool feature. For more discussion on this, also see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271)

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lingben
unfortunately this wouldn't work very well because generally speaking there is
attrition involved and the original "early users" base will slowly deteriorate
as people die, retire or change interest, etc. and are replaced by newer users

so like it or not, under a weighted voting scheme, the site will still migrate
away from its "early spirit" because the exact same people won't be around but
replaced by newer people

with the inevitable march of time, the complete userbase will be replaced
several times over and the site can completely change its tone and "early
spirit" in spite of such measures

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noerps
Try an additional weight or graph based on your elections.

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SandersAK
I think this is a fantastic idea. It's worked out really well in America with
the way we've treated each new wave of immigrants...

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rschmitty
Don't forget about congress too! I always look forward to what old man such
and such has to say about modern law

