

Ask YC News: Voting up vs. up and down - lucindo

What's the main difference on the quality of itens classification using a voting system that allow only up votes versus up and down votes (digg vs. reddit)? YC.news changed from up and down to only up. Why?
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pg
I noticed that on reddit the voting on my essays always had a higher
proportion of downvotes after 10 minutes than 10 hours. I know there are
reflexive upvoters as well as reflexive downvoters, but from the way the ratio
changed over time it seemed that a higher percentage of downvoters were
reflexive than upvoters. If so then the downarrow injects more stupidity into
the system than the uparrow.

Shorter version: downvotes are more likely to be thoughtless.

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axod
Could always have a downvote, but weight it as far less than an upvote.

Personally I miss having the option of a downvote. Yes I agree downvotes can
be an uninformed reflex, but removing any voice of disagreement seems overly
harsh.

I'd say have upvotes that count as 10 points, and downvotes that count as 1
point or something like that.

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oditogre
I disagree, as noted further up the thread. Preventing downvotes doesn't
remove the dissenting opinion. In fact, it allows and encourages it. Downvotes
allow groupthink to silence disagreement. If you disagree with something,
instead of downvoting, post a comment explaining your position.

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derefr
Likewise if you agree with something--then posts can just be sorted by comment
count. Of course, it could be said that the upvote button is just a collapsed
and made-convenient form of replying "Me too!"

Wouldn't it be interesting, then, if instead of editing a metadatum, clicking
the arrow made a duplicate of the post (or, rather, a Post object with the
votee as its prototype), which then stacked under the original...

"'A stacked comment' posted by bob, joe, fred"

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fauigerzigerk
I don't like downvoting because downvotes are so ambiguous in meaning. An
upvote clearly means "read this!". A downvote could mean disagreement on the
subject, dislike of the author or just disinterest. I might want to read a
story with wich many people disagree, but I might not want to read one that
everybody finds completely irrelevant or shallow.

The trouble is that the meanings of up and downvotes are different for news
stories and comments respectively. For a comment, the votes almost exclusively
mean agreement/disagreement. Only in rare cases do I disagree with a comment
but still find it so important that I vote it up. This is different from, say,
a scientific paper where this happens frequently.

Overall I think downvotes are unnecessary and cause a lot of bad blood.

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Goladus
I don't use downvotes to mean "I disagree." If I disagree and am too lazy to
say why, I don't give a downvote.

Downvotes mean: "I find this especially uninteresting"

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cyggie
I believe the problem with the down voting button is it often reflect more on
the opinion of the voter rather than how well the article was written or its
usefulness.

Good article that agree with the user = comment/up vote

Bad article that agree with the user = ignore

Good article that disagree with user = comment/down vote

Bad article that disagree with the user = down vote

Unless everyone actually vote up/down purely base on how good the article is
and not their opinion, removing the down vote button is not a bad idea...

The voting button is a good idea if it's a poll, but the "hotness" of
something is probably better tracked by the comments and other actions a user
take...

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Alex3917
One thing I noticed from K5 is that having both options leads to lobbying and
information cascades. That is, if one or two early voters post comments saying
the article is really good or really bad then that hugely affects whether
later voters hit +1 or -1. With only the option to vote up, people might point
out flaws in the article or praise it, but the comments are more intellectual
and less designed to influence the voting of others. Of course K5 is much
worse because the design strongly encourages people to vote one way or
another, whereas on this site the bad articles will quickly disappear if
people just ignore them.

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auferstehung
I think a method of ranking news based on the number and quality of comments
would be better than voting up and down. This method would be somewhat
analogous to page rank in that the rank of a story (webpage) is indirectly
determined by the comments (links) and quality of the comments. Writing a
comment is arguable less reflexive than clicking an arrow.

Also interesting news that was generating a good discussion could tend to
persist and stay near the top. This would encourge thoughtful comments as you
are not penalized for taking some time to think about the matter rather than
hastily shooting from the hip.

~~~
thomasptacek
Clearly neither system works reliably, but just to put that suggestion in
context:

<http://reddit.com/info/2r8d8/comments>

vs.

<http://programming.reddit.com/info/2qbye/comments>

"Quality" sounds like a good metric until you realize that upvotes mean "I
agree!", not "Good comment".

~~~
bct
Another alternative is a two-axis system. Up-down for agree-disagree, left-
right for quality.

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Jd
Does anything like this exist that you are aware of?

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oditogre
I've never heard of anything like this, though I've thought of it quite a long
while back for Reddit. The problem is that it won't solve anything. Most
people will still downvote / leftvote things they don't agree with and upvote
/ rightvote things they do agree with. If the desire to silence a dissenting
opinion could be controlled by the majority of people, free speech would not
be such a rare thing, let alone need to be written into law.

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kcl
I wanted to downvote 'funny linux command lines'. When I couldn't find the
downvote arrow my first instinct was to upvote everything else.

~~~
bluemoo
Perhaps you could start a news.yc Vote Exchange website. I liked the funny
linux command line story, so in exchange for me not upvoting it, you can not
upvote something else!

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allenbrunson
related question: i've seen comments here that have, say, -2 points. if you
can only vote up, how is it possible for a comment to ever go below one point?
my guess is maybe you get a down-vote button once your karma goes above a
certain score?

~~~
adamdoupe
You've got it, but you can only downvote comments. And you can't downvote
replies to your comment.

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JulianMorrison
I wrote a reddit post on this <http://reddit.com/info/gg2w/comments>

... although most other commenters didn't agree.

Summary: up only voting measures personal interest. It tends to promote
anything that has a constituency. Up and down voting measures community
approval. It tends to promote group-think.

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whacked_new
I think the up/down voting system is intrinsically flawed. A better system
would be something like a monetary system.

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eru
An information market?

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whacked_new
I've thought of doing that; I assume when you mean "market" it implies trade.
So one way is to invest in shares of a piece of information and get returns to
fluctuate based on the demand for that piece of information. But that would
die given enough users, so implemented something simpler, but similar.

~~~
eru
A prediction market like <http://us.newsfutures.com/> works by having an
ultimate arbiter of value: Either the event in question happens or it does not
happen.

I wonder how one would implement a market based system for recommending
articles. Could you elaborate on your ideas?

~~~
whacked_new
Sure. If all information was traded like stocks, then, the person who speaks
with the most authority would get the most investment. If they become senile,
then they lose value. In terms of the recommendation system, then, it would
simply recommend whatever/whoever has the highest market value, plus whatever
metrics you added in.

You don't have an arbiter though, because information keeps increasing, and at
very little cost, and is not limited by resources in the actual economy. Also,
you aren't making a yes/no prediction, so you are not measuring something like
accuracy (which is measurable). You are measuring a subjective valuation.
Steve Jobs might be only 60% correct that the iPod is the best music player in
the world, but a fan would think he's 120% correct. Even though the prediction
market says he's 60% correct, in the actual market, he earns lots of money.
Something like that.

It's not so far from the karma system, but the karma system is inherently
flawed because it's based on democratic principles. When you see a likeable
merchandise, you don't think in terms of "buy" or "not buy." You think in
terms of value, relative to some baseline. A better system would give users
the power to express this.

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eru
Sorry, I still do not get it.

Could you explain the incentive structure?

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yters
On a hacker site, why not make all the important tools only accessible to
hackers?

