15.06.19 Morning Coffee: Downvotes, Power, and You Favorite Tribes
Morning Coffee is a user-created discussion series where Snapzu members can check in with each other in a relaxed environment.
We are experimenting with different formats and ideas, so feedback is very welcome!
What's up, snapzites?
Yesterday you shared your ideal version of Snapzu. At the top of your lists were high-quality discussion and freedom of opinion, especially without fear of the downvote. Many of you wondered how we might handle rogue chiefs and mods. It was also clear that, while we appreciate the quality and camaraderie inherent of a small community, we would all like to see more activity around the site. We all agreed that we like where Snapzu is going, and we'd prefer not to emulate other popular communities. So, let's tackle some issues for our future health:
The downvote's main function seems to be to act as a spam-deterrent. Users will inevitably abuse it and downvote dissenting opinions. How would you handle this?
Many of us have experienced or seen cases of community leaders abusing their power. Oftentimes, the common user is unable to seek justice. What systems can we put in place to keep our leaders accountable, and even remove them if need be?
For those lamenting the lack of content, it's no mystery — posts and comments will come with new users. Still, there are areas of Snapzu enjoying lively conversation. So, where have you all been spending most of your time?
Check out /t/devilsadvocate, where you can argue the other side and see if you can't come out of it with a better perspective on things.
Remember to visit /t/newtribes for places of interest.
Join the Discussion
I really like the idea of downvotes inviting a comment on why you used it. No comment results in no impact on the post or reply being downvoted. An objection was raised because sometimes the options listed don't match the reason, but I presume an "other: fill in the blank" might be possible.
I've seen entire communities be unable to seek justice. :/ One of the problems is that the admins in the other forum remained strictly neutral and wouldn't take sides no matter how many members of the community petitioned for help. The only way I can think of to address this is for the admins to come before the community and arbitrate, or perhaps set up a tribe specifically for mediation. Naturally, this means more work for the admins so I don't assume this is automatically the correct answer.
I made my own tribe that I post to almost exclusively but I don't advertise, and somehow it's not getting any traffic! /s
Great points.
Unfortunately, the downvote-with-reason system can also be abused. A few users who dislike a comment can mark it as spam, for example. But I agree that it's better than nothing.
I think a tribe for mediation is a great idea. caelrath suggested something like a tribunal. I think we'd need to involve Team Snapzu at the highest level, regardless.
Granted. Nothing is fool-proof. Someone determined to do harm will find a way around any obstacles. But it should help discourage the casual troll and serve as a reminder that the downvote really is not a button for "I disagree."
Alternatively, one of the options could say "I disagree" and when selected has no impact on karma.
But then just by being a choice we are almost accepting that "I disagree" is a valid option. If only this was less complicated!
Or we put it there to acknowledge that people are going to do it anyway, so let's be honest about it.
Yep, at this point might as well accept it as the reality of things and find a way to mitigate as much as possible.
Lol. We should give the option of an automated "I disagree" response. They can also have the opportunity to send an automated "I disagree" PM, and even automatically change their profile title message to "I disagree". Maybe that would satisfy them.
Did you hear about the thought experiment of the monkeys in a cage with a banana?
You put four monkeys in a cage and when the first one goes for the banana, you spray all of them with a garden hose. You continue every time it happens and eventually, they'll stop each other before one gets the banana.
Then you replace a monkey with a new one. It'll try to go for the banana but the others will stop it. You continue replacing monkeys until none of the orginal ones are left and they'll still stop each other from getting the banana even if no one knows why.
That worked for early reddit (and by early, I mean when I created my account 9 years ago). Admins would stress that the downvote is not a disagree button. Then users would tell each other. The new one would tell newer ones.
At one point, the admins made a mobile version that said "I agree / I disagree" in its voting area. The community was outraged, the downvote is not a disagree button they said.
Then monkeys got in so fast that they didn't know about the downvotes.
And nowadays, if you say that the downvote is not a disagree button, you get downvoted.
So idea would be to ensure it's clearly featured to every new user so they can perpetuate the culture. Maybe an explanation popup for the first time it's pressed?
So have I. One moderator jumped on my case because I posted a Prairie Home Companion link in the sandbox on a forum I favored....It got so bad on this forum with the power hungry mods that people left in droves. Finally,one admin asked me why the place was starting to look like a ghost town...I told him in a very long, detailed pm. I left the website soon after and it eventually was made up of just the mods and their groupies. The website finally died and that was that.
I was part of this one forum at one point in time. These guys wanted to make the forum the "next big thing", with their only offering being that you could express yourself and use the site as a platform of free speech, without being censored (barring illegal content). What it ended up being was a group of power-abusing mods and admins trolling the very small user base very early on, driving people out before it even got the chance to grow into anything. From there, a few database mishaps and the entire forums getting lost on more than on occasion lead to everyone leaving except for the mods and admins themselves. Anybody who was friends with them didn't remake their accounts after everything had been lost.
Moderators can make or break a system, and it really comes down to whether they're lax about thing and intervene appropriately, or if they're in it for a power trip.
1. Down vote is too important to scrap. It's positives far outweight the negatives.
2. I like the mod logs idea mentioned a few times. If something get's removed there better be a damn good reason for it.
3. 50% front page, 25% feed, 25% misc.
I don't think anyone is suggesting scrapping the downvote (unless I missed it) - just trying to take steps to make sure it's used appropriately.
That's basically what digg did in version 4. And 3 days later they were history.
Did away with the down vote or tried to take other steps with it?
Downvotes, or as they called them "burying a post." Basically, in v4, they redid a large portion of the site, with many many bugs present, a UI that the majority of the users hated, and made it a better platform for advertising instead of making improvements to help the community. It was a problem that came about in part from them working towards making it something profitable (ala advertising) versus something the community built.
Here is a link on reddit that discusses it a bit more in depth than what I'm able to, since it's all second hand on my part.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but could you elaborate on what positives and negatives you're thinking of?
I know that getting down voted every so often is not cool but that's what happens when you give people the power of anonymity. I'd be willing to bet that if votes were public (for example people can see how everyone voted, some sites do this), people would down vote less for stupid reasons, but now everyone can see your voting history (I would hate this).
Positives:
1. Spam/troll protection (a few down votes and its over)
2. Anonymous
3. I don't see a lot of abuse (right now)
4. Down vote reason selection is there if people are willing to use it
Negatives:
1. People will feel butthurt when down voted, esp for no reason
Feel free to add to this list.
The problem with anonymity is obvious... the problem with posting names with votes is far fewer votes and possibly no down votes even when warranted because no one wants to be the 'bad guy.'
Also under negatives:
2. The change in karma affects visibility.
3. If downvotes provoke moderator/admin intervention as is being discussed, it creates more work for them.
4. It can color people's perceptions of the content of the post even if they don't realize it.
2. I think you mean reputation not karma?
3. Agreed
4. Agreed but again it's just expanding on my negative point. New users may get turned off if they see a down vote right away
Whoops! Heh. Yes, that's what I meant.
I think it's important to distinguish between "I got a downvote! What a crappy user base!" and "that post has a lot of downvotes. It must not be very good."
First off, I think it would be good to have the "down vote reason" functionality expanded into all areas of the site. This means on text posts, comments and related content. Once this is functionality everywhere, it can be expanded into new directions. I personally feel there should be a "report" button for all comments so that the community could better moderate discussion and quickly remove spam / abusive content. I think also if there was a way to track "false reports" and then punish those who make them, it would get rid of the whole brigading threat.
I think a public mod/admin log of all moderation actions would be good so that everyone can see what is happening in each tribe. Maybe even include "report" actions made by users listing the reasons so that the reports stay true and it keeps people from making false reports (this may however have the negative effect of retaliation from users that have been reported). As for power hungry moderators, I think we should have a limit on the amount of mods per tribe and maybe even hold quarterly elections for all qualified users at higher tribe levels (large tribes). We can use reputation score and tribe mastery to auto qualify all eligible parties to be listed on a ballot, and all members can then vote on the mods they wish to remain. All competing/selected parties would need to agree to allow their FULL comment logs to be viewed by anyone during this process. Its only an idea, and I'm sure there would see be some sort of corruption but its definitely better than no chance at having the community choose who rep...
... Read FullGreat ideas.
I think giving everything a 'downvote reason' is a good idea. The 'report' function would also be useful, if a little redundant.
If someone reports a comment, would there be an automated system or would someone actually look at the comment? If it's the latter, and the report is a false one, you could give the offending user a strike. Multiple false reports could result in a punishment. If it's automated, maybe there's a solution for that as well.
Really interesting ideas regarding leadership positions. Voting could be effective, and I like using rep and tribe mastery to determine eligibility. I think transparency is vital.
I see the comment reporting system as a way to actually remove bad content like spam / abuse / racism / etc while down votes are mostly for sorting and possibly hiding bad comments. Since comments can be made from multiple tribes within a single member posted snap there is no good way to allow all chiefs & moderators have free reign on moderating them (this is why we cannot mod them now). A good way to imagine what would happen is to have a snap posted into /t/atheism, /t/religion and maybe even /t/christianity and /t/buddhism. Now I can see some great discussions taking place between those 4 tribes being linked into a snap, but I just don't see how 4 chefs (and their staff) in one kitchen can do a good job moderating that type of situation, to put it simply, it would be a cluster fuck. I think its great that comments cannot be moderated because it gives everyone a sense of freedom to express their opinion without the fear of coming across a mod that is having a bad day. Now, going back to the reporting function, this would give the whole community the power to decide what is acceptable and what is against the rules. Of course I see all reports processed by super-mods manually and those report which are false can effect that member's report score or something along those lines, if a member makes too many false reports they will loose their ability to report, and maybe even loose the ability to affect the voting system in a negative way (rep, position, etc). Again, its just an idea for how we can manage the comments. Mods would still be able to decide if a snap stays in the tribe or is booted...
... Read Full1.) This can really apply to upvotes, too, we just tend to be more worried about the negative. The problem is that both votes are anonymous, so a person could be targetting anothers user's snaps/comments and up- or down-voting based on that. Or a user could search for a certain term and vote based on the term. So, what would be needed is almost a moderator just to look at the votes and 'confirm' them. Of course, that opens a entirely new can of worms.
2.) Seems like there should be a way to 'report' a chief/mod abusing 'power' that maybe triggers a review, perhaps by a randomly chosen group of other tribe leaders or users who aren't part of that tribe?
3.) I'm doing what I can :)
I think you bring up a good point upvotes can be abused to. It mostly results in a hivemind, where people say certain things and conform to popular opinons simply to get upvotes. I don't think anything can be done about this however. Every system comes with flaws.
Aye, and there will always be someone there to exploit those flaws... eventually.
1. Right. At least upvotes don't do any obvious damage, though.
2. Like a tribunal. Obviously, we'd need to keep in check the tribunal itself. Maybe if all their actions are made public, and Team Snapzu oversees them.
3. That's all we can ask :)
1.) Well, non-obvious damage can still be damage. If snaps are artificially inflated to seem accurate/liked/good, then that could begin people to doubt the ratings at all when (if this happened often enough) obviously bad posts are still upvoted regularly.
2.) Basically what I was thinking, yeah.
3.) Then I shall carry on! :)
It seems someone has decided to put the downvote system to the test.
We're looking into it.
Thanks, team!
:)
Oh. Goody.
I feel like this echoes off what I was saying yesterday, so my input here is going to obviously be in support of everything I stood by previously.
1. I think it would be great if at least, whenever you downvote someone, you get a pop-up asking "why are you downvoting?" you are then supposed to write a reason (or select from a list of reasons) and at the bottom of the topic there would be a "downvote log" with all the explanations for each downvote. People would be able to read the reasons presented there and figure out for themselves whether there were valid arguments in favor of turning the comment down.
2. I was thinking of making the option to flag a mod. Whenever you flag him, you are supposed to write a reason for which the mod is flagged. If the mod receives an overwhelming amount of flags in a short period of time (say, for example, 20% of the members subscribed to a tribe flag a moderator), then the admins get an alert reporting this. They are then able to decide whether that mod should stay or go.
3. Spending my time everywhere! I try to find topics to comment upon. I'm managing /t/dota2 and /t/devilsadvocate (thanks for advertising it!) and looking forward to whatever other challenges may come up!
A great day to everyone!
1. I agree. I like the log idea. Let's also add the ability to upvote/downvote and comment on the downvote reasons :P
2. I could see that being a potential solution.
Great day to you, as well :)
Logs, comments, and review all seem good - especially if, as much as possible, we keep things in the open. I think it was the behind-the-scenes decisions that really raised the ire on reddit recently. Well, that and the seemingly unevenly applied standards that were claimed to be violated.
. >I was thinking of making the option to flag a mod. Whenever you flag him, you are supposed to write a reason for which the mod is flagged. If the mod receives an overwhelming amount of flags in a short period of time (say, for example, 20% of the members subscribed to a tribe flag a moderator), then the admins get an alert reporting this. They are then able to decide whether that mod should stay or go.
And perhaps people outside the tribe (who won't have a vested interest one way or the other) could discuss and vote on this. There could be a sub section that only those called upon to address the person/persons could see and participate in and the admins of the site could also be involved as needed.
1. By reinforcing the mindset that the downvote should be used only for "extreme cases". By downvoting on Snapzu, you are literally hurting someone's reputation. Therefore, downvotes are only used when someone is being a jerk, or breaking rules.
2. As much as I hate to say it, I don't think Snapzu will ever be as big as Reddit. However, there are benefits that come from having a small community. If one community leader abuses their power, everyone will hear about it. The leaders reputation will be ruined quickly.
3. I usually look at the feed where the content from all of the people I follow and all of the tribes I follow is. However, I do spend some time in the documentaries tribe.
I think there isn't much to be done with the downvote system for topics, despite the possibility for abuse, it's a necessary part of the system.
However, I would love to see a rethink of how comments are displayed:
Imagine instead of one comment column that is ordered by "most upvoted" or "highest upvote to downvote ratio" (what I assume is the current "best" filter) , there are two columns of comments. One column will be the popular/best column, using the ordering similar to the current filter, and the other column would be dissenting opinions ordered by upvotes but not downvotes.
Let me give an example with some possible upvotes/downvotes.
Here is a list of comments with upvotes/downvotes:
15/6, 32/74, 6/9, 54/32, 10/15, 12/12, 1/20, 5/7, 16/5, 20/30
The current filter would order them like by the best ratio:
16/5, 15/6, 54/32, 12/12, 5/7, 20/30, 10/15, 6/9, 32/74, 1/20
The new system would display like this:
Column 1: 16/5, 15/6, 54/32, 12/12, 5/7
Column 2: 32/74, 20/30, 10/15, 6/9, 1/20
You can think of this new column as a dissenting opinion column, the truly inane comments still get pushed to the bottom like the 1/20, but the controversial 32/74 comment is quite as it should be, displaying prominently.
The best way I can describe the benefit of this is a reduction in the "echo chamber" effect, that being the propensity for these sites to bury dissenting opinions.
I don't know where to leave this thought, but this felt like the right place.
I wish the downvote wasn't anonymous...
One of the things it is so easy to do is to troll and just downvote everything. I wish that your name was attached to it so that way people would know who exactly was displeased with what was being said to them. Now, I get that this would open people up to being msg'ed and harassed by others and that's something I haven't thought through, but dangit, it's just so mean and crazy to see folks downvoting what is just an opinion even when there is no malice in said opinion.
Anyway....
Hey, thanks for sharing.
I actually completely agree. I know there would be difficulties with such a system (like those you mentioned), but I feel it would be worth it. Unlikely to happen, but you could bring it up with the admin.
I hate the fact there is no visual notification that anyone has responded to my comment. LOL. I have to click the notifications thingy and check to see if anyone has responded or not. That's something that really needs fixin' :D
As for your response to my response. Moo! ;) Thanks man.
Do snaps get ranked strictly by upvotes, or are downvotes accounted for as well? It seems like if they are ranked by votes, they should be ranked by total votes: i.e. a snap with 10 up and 10 down votes should rank higher than a snap with 15 up and zero down.
That would remove the incentive to downvote something just because a user doesn't agree with it because downvoting would get that opinion more visibility, not less.
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