

Ask YC: How to prevent social news sites from devolving? - iamelgringo

The thought occured to me this morning while perusing the headlines on Reddit.  Many of the headlines are starting to read a lot like a tabloid.  A few examples from today:<p> 
Surprise, Surprise: Dozens of CIA Officials Privately State That Tapes Were Destroyed to Avoid Legal Consequences and Public Outcry<p>
RIAA sues man for ripping his own CD's!&#60;p&#62;Culinary Shocker: Cooking Can Preserve, Boost Nutrient Content Of Vegetables<p>
Top Ten Female Streakers-NSFW <p>
It occured to me why this might occur. It seems that letting a democratic process completely replace an editorial process dooms a site to devlolving towards the lowest common denomenator.  Why are tabloids successful?  Because they appeal to the lowest common denomenator.  Whatever copy sells magazines at the newstand is what the editors are going to put in a tabloid.  <p>
What do you think?  Are social news sites destined to devolve?  Should we be expecting to see articles on the Bat Child and clips of "Ow my balls!" posted on social news sites?  How does one keep social news sites from sliding down that slope?
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pg
Not necessarily. I thought about this from the beginning with News.YC, because
I didn't want that to happen here. The solution I came up with is to pick a
group of smart people as editors and weight everyone else's votes based on how
much they overlap with the editors'. Then as long as the editors don't vote
for dumb stories, they won't take over the front page.

I don't have this turned on, but I do have something in the code that shows me
where stories would rank if I did. The good news is that, as of right now, the
front page wouldn't look significantly different if vote weighting were turned
on.

~~~
robg
As I've thought more about it, it sticks in my head: Have you tried weighting
votes by the voter's karma? Use some floor for overall karma, or a logistic
function, and you let the community be the editors. It could drift over time,
but it would take a while to move significantly if at all. I'm willing to bet
that the community principles would continue to drive submissions and votes.
That inertia creates a stable orbit.

The editors seem like great training wheels and a good sanity check over time.
But I'm really curious if they become irrelevant as the community takes on
life. Seems like you could test this hypothesis by using karma-votes to
predict edited-votes. Drift could then be measured as that prediction varies
from the edited standard.

~~~
queensnake
No, the tabloid posters' karma would go up (presumably) and so their postings
would get stronger. (I reason that if tabloid stuff got voted down, people
would post less of it, so it must be finding an audience.)

My personal tactic is to be nasty to posters of crap. It has more impact than
some mere 'point', and gives them guidance as to what's wrong.

~~~
robg
Only to the extent that the community appreciates (and up-votes) what you
think of as tabloid postings. Karma is a function of every submission (and
comment). If the submissions aren't appreciated, neither will be the user. If
a community mind has already set in, it should, in theory, be hard to shake
free of that standard.

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auferstehung
Rob Malda and the Slashdot crowd deserve kudos for blazing a trail and for
sticking to their guns. they seem to have weathered Digg and the like just
fine and will most likely outlast them all. I still stop by Slashdot
regularly, but haven't visited reddit for almost a year now.

Slashdot seems to have found at least a local minima in balancing editorial
selection and audience participation. Firehose, a nod to Digg, is an
interesting spin on democratized story selection.

~~~
Kaizyn
The difference as I see it is that the important things that appeal to the
Slashdot crowd appear there about a day after it shows up on Reddit. On the
social aggregators, you get stories a day early, but you have to filter
through so much more stuff to get at interesting articles. Of the interesting
stuff on social news sites like reddit, you tend to find more interesting
things that never would make it onto slashdot.

------
chandler
> Are social news sites destined to devolve? ... How does one keep social news
> sites from sliding down that slope?

With moderators/editors who are responsible for the quality of content?

It seems that a social news site only stays relevant as long as the people in
charge are interested in maintaining it. As it is, reddit's problem is that
they put "everyone" in charge, and, as it gained popularity, "everyone" was
therefore free to change their mind about what content is acceptable.

To use a successful example besides Slashdot/mefi, look at the n-sider forums
(discussion community focused around Nintendo products). Although membership
is free and content is provided by the community, the quality of the site has
remained generally high for the 6-7 years I've been visiting it. Why? Simply
because the moderators are quick to warn (and ban) members that don't
contribute interesting discussion.

Basically, idealized sites such as reddit misunderstand where democracy exists
regarding the internet--since the ability to found competing communities is
cheap and unrestricted, it shouldn't be reddit's responsibility to give
everyone a voice.

------
Alex3917
The problem isn't people who are actively trying to break the site, the
problem is people who think they are making valuable contributions but aren't.
It's really easy to ban someone who is being malicious. It's much harder to
ban someone who is well-intentioned but useless.

------
Hexayurt
1> Early adopters come in

2> Because they are early adopters, they tend to know about lots of cool
things

3> The site becomes popular

4> Late adopters join

5> Site gets diluted, irritating

6> Early adopters move on

7> Site is a large, popular wasteland

I'd point to Metafilter as a site with unusual longevity due to a closed
subscription process. They recently covered the Hexayurt Project, however, and
I was not impressed - a bunch of braying jackals who hadn't RTFA screaming
their ignorance in public. So even Mefi is on the decline, apparently, at
least in the comments. The front page is still pretty decent.

But that, really, is the key: you need to stop adding posters when the site is
cool and hip, to draw out the period in which the site is providing early-
adopter content.

Moderation systems won't do it: they get swamped by bad moderators over time,
witness slashdot's meta-moderation corrective.

Good luck.

------
robg
I think the problem at a digg or reddit is that everyone's vote is considered
equal. Yet, why should someone who's just arrived have as much say as someone
who's been there for over a year? In real-life communities, voices take a
while to accumulate. Why should online communities be any different?

I'd argue we expect that implicit hierarchy to provide a trustworthiness. If
someone's submissions aren't being up-voted, they have the choice to either
conform or find a community better suited to their interests. To the extent
they match the community principles is the extent to which their own voice
becomes heard and amplified.

~~~
queensnake
But you might frustrate newbies ("I can't get links onto the front page! Too
snobby for me, I'm going elsewhere!"). And users are ultimately ad-bait at
places like Reddit. If Reddit could get Digg's traffic by losing whatever
quality they have, they would in a heartbeat (or Conde-Nast would make them),
whatever regret the original developers might feel about it.

~~~
robg
All the newbie has to do is submit content that resonates with the community.
Think of it as a game that they can play by choice. Sooner or later they'll
figure out what fits. And I'd venture that people do this anyways. It's just
that the power of the original community voice got watered down by treating
every vote equally.

------
ericb
You hit the nail on the head. The next "big thing" for social news will be an
implementation of an "editors" concept. Social sites don't have the lock-in
they like to think. Users moved from friendster to my space and now from my
space to facebook.

Social news is where search was before Google came along. A social news site
that solves the editing problem (designed to naturally implement "star
editors", perhaps) can still win big here by virtue of having better content,
being less game-able, and not degrading over time. Someone do this, and send
me an invite, please!

------
kashif
Social sites which use a democratic process are just that - democratic. You
may not agree with the masses but these are the stories they like. I don't see
this as a problem. The problem I really see is that 'we' only consider what we
think appropriate/intellectual content as acceptable content. These sites are
designed to promote what the masses vote and they do a darn effective job of
it.

"Whatever copy sells magazines at the newsstand is what the editors are going
to put in a tabloid"...isn't this what every startup hopes for - serving the
users need?

PS: I do see spamming as a problem but that can be tackled separately.

~~~
ojbyrne
Both digg and reddit have karma systems so that each vote is not equal. I
think that as a social news site grows (or any community), you have to
subdivide the community somehow - essentially create a collection of niche
sites.

------
simpleenigma
I personally believe that this is where the data you collect about a persons
voting should be used to recommend articles for them specifically. Then you
can go to the main page to see what the community votes up, or you can go to a
personalized page that is designed for you based on your voting and what other
similar users vote for.

Its a mix between democracy and personalization and it allows for the users
who really do want to be the lowest common denominator.

------
awt
In ancient greece, voting was mandatory. If everyone on reddit were FORCED to
vote, I wager that the quality of stories would be vastly improved. I believe
that reddit is currently being run by a small minority of the users.

~~~
waleedka
But how would you force people to vote?

~~~
sethg
Instead of a "comment" link, have an "upmod and comment" link and a "downmod
and comment" link, so that in order to comment on a story, you have to express
an opinion on it.

------
asciilifeform
Sturgeon's Law applies to people. This must be accepted and dealt with. Choose
between dictatorship (omnipotent, zealous editors) or ease of
compartmentalization (a la Usenet.)

------
brk
This has been asked before, a lot of the comments seem to revolve around the
idea that it is unpreventable.

As sites grow in popularity, they attract more "typical" users. These new
users represent the common interests moreso than what a bunch of early adopter
tech-geeks want to see :)

It can sometimes be shocking to remember that the large majority of people on
the Internet are not logical and rational.

~~~
icky
> This has been asked before, a lot of the comments seem to revolve around the
> idea that it is unpreventable.

It's a hard problem, but not impossible. The structure and function of the
site itself plays a large part in governing group behavior.

Reddit worked for a long time because it had smart people, and a voting system
that responded to whatever its userbase wanted. Now it's in rapid decline
because it has a growing majority of not-so-smart people, and the voting
system still responds to whatever the userbase wants. Reddit also suffered
from being known as the site where smart people hang out, which brought lots
of Digg refugees over to it (thereby destroying the quality they were looking
for).

I'd be very interested in seeing a list of reddit headlines with votes
weighted by seniority on the site. It might resemble classic reddit.

------
DarrenStuart
I don't think you would want to as the site gets bigger. I think the solution
is to give the end user a way to filter this stuff out.

take digg for example if you filter out all the stuff you are not interested
in or just look at what your friends are digging it works.

------
gojomo
One dimension of the problem is that misleading, attention-whoring headlines
work. (Maybe the sites even like these, because they generate traffic in
discussion threads.)

Headlines could be rated separately from the link; perhaps a smaller group of
trusted editors, or a random panel of unassociated readers, could approve/edit
headlines. Further, votes without having visited the target article could be
deweighted.

Another dimension is vote-gaming, including outright fraud. Increasing the
cost of votes, with captchas or even registration/poll fees, might help.

Actually making vote-mobs explicit, as in the 'Uberfact' idea [+], I also
think has potential. That is, rather than making recommendations/correlations
for every user account, let users create their own named cliques. (Let the
founders of such cliques have ultimate say on who else can join as voters.)
Then, every article gets a different score per clique, and you can view the
'top' items from any clique's (or combination of cliques') perspective,
whether you share their views or not.

Some cliques could be ideological, others by membership in some external
community, others purely automated (perhaps mirroring some external scoring,
like PageRank or Digg-score). Then you channel a lot of the gaming into a more
productive and filterable expression of passion; the default view of the site
might degrade, but even slightly savvy users can extract a elite, useful view.

[+] [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfac...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfact-ultimate-social-verifier.html)

------
josefresco
digg, reddit and any other socially influenced news site will always "devolve"
into the mainstream and people living closer to the edge will always seek out
more focused and intellectually stimulating sources for news and discussion.

the networks that understand social influence and are brave enough to see
where it can take them are the ones who will survive. Not the ones looking to
control and guide the process with 'editors'.

------
optimal
When I first saw the headline, I thought it read "How to prevent social news
sites from developing."

'Cuz that might work, too.

------
curi
Shouldn't it be the highest common denominator? In the metaphor, I prefer a
number compatible with me first, and a higher one second. The highest common
denominator is the highest number compatible with everyone.

