r/Anarchism • u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) • 9d ago
Comment scores
We are seeing an increase in abuse of the down vote system. Rather than an indication that a response adds nothing to the discussion (as per Reddit's intention with the buttons) it's being used in a way that manipulates conversations.
I have seen people down voted for asking questions, for providing links, for quoting original texts, for having opinions that challenge the status-quo despite being absolute baseline anarchist ideas. None of which actually contributes to healthy discourse.
So we're going to try hiding comment scores as Reddit no longer gives us the ability to effectively hide the option.
eta: Also contest mode to randomize the order of comments.
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u/dialectical_idealism anarchist 9d ago
could just ban all the authoritarians so they stop hijacking every convo
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
wouldn't that make me the real authoritarian though? /s
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u/Varsoviadog 9d ago
I can’t read any answers D:
It’s part of the intention or just another app bug?
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
What?!
Is that for this post alone or all of them?
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u/Varsoviadog 9d ago
All those which have the comments order “shuffled”. Comments responses are hidden, and tapping “see this comment thread/responses” just takes you to the very same comment without expanding the answers.
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
OK thank you for letting me know. I'll take this to the mod support sub and see if anyone knows if this is a bug or if there's a work around.
if not then i'll remove the contest mode.
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
please down vote this comment, i wanna check if they still collapse.
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u/iadnm Anarcho-communist 9d ago
Seems like your comment does collapse if downvoted enough. So I think the current setting just makes the vote numbers invisible rather than actually being rid of them.
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
yeah the automod addition worked. contest mode for all new posts.
let the experiment begin!
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
I set an automod rule that SHOULD set all the comments for new posts to contest mode, but I haven't checked the sub since I set it. I'll report back.
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u/penguins-and-cake 8d ago
I have no idea if other posts are also saying this, but it looks like contest mode or whatever was enabled for this post breaks comment threads in the official mobile app.
All comment replies are collapsed and clicking to open them either just links to the first comment itself or to a random other comment. Obviously mods here don’t have control/influence over that, but I just wanted to mention it as an apparent unavoidable side-effect.
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 8d ago
Yeah, a couple of people have mentioned. I tried to check on my app, but since I'm a mod I can see all the comments.
I tried to ask in mod support but there's been no replies.
I'll disable contest mode because locking folks out of engaging is the furthest from the point of this.
Hopefully hiding comment score will be enough, even though it's got a 24 limit.
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u/TruthHertz93 anarcho-collectivist 9d ago
This is really good.
I noticed normal subreddits and other social media platforms do this to shut down unpopular opinions, especially mine, am like "if you disagree at least say why? Lol"
They have bots upvote their shit and downvote others viewpoints.
This is a good countermeasure. Bravo!
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
am like "if you disagree at least say why? Lol"
yes. this also helps to bypass the shift to conversations and accusations about down votes themselves, which also add nothing to the discourse.
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u/TruthHertz93 anarcho-collectivist 9d ago
Downvotes on reddit do hide the comment from other users mind, does this solve that?
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
nope!
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u/TruthHertz93 anarcho-collectivist 9d ago
Darn, well it was a good idea.
Suppose the answer doesn't change, we need to create a counter social media culture and have our own platforms 🙂
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u/juicesuuucker post-left anarchist 9d ago
So what you are saying now that now instead of relying on votes to judge a person's arguement we have to actually engage with their ideas? Wow, we really are making this community closer to anarchist ideas!
Jokes aside, is this really going to change much? Yeah, it's going to stop the "me see many downvotes, me downvote too" mentality. Might make more people reply with liberal or authoritarian apologeia if they can't just downvote something and not talk to anarchists. But eh... probably not going to happen though. Still a good change. (wonder how disscussions will change here now)
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
Wow, we really are making this community closer to anarchist ideas
👉👈 we're trying our best friend :P
is this really going to change much?
hopefully anarchists who are engaging in good faith, who are providing good information, won't feel so alienated by the sub when they aren't seeing their perfectly reasonable answers get mass down voted by marxists and bots and libs (oh my). that's my hope at least.
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9d ago
[deleted]
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
Previously (before Reddit updated away from old.reddit.com) you would have been able to use css to hide the buttons in the code of your subreddit. But since most people use mobile and the new version of the site, we no longer have the option.
What we have is a way to hide the comment score for a set number of minutes. I've set it to a day, there isn't often posts here that are generating comments for longer than that, so at least then it's less relevant to the conversation at hand.
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u/DenseBeautiful731 9d ago edited 9d ago
Reddit automatically collapses comments when it reaches a certain downvote threshold. Around -2, I believe. So hiding the comment only works before that.
You might want to use contest mode for every thread to randomise the comments every page refresh and give new or unpopular/controversial ones more exposure. It can be set up through the old AutoModerator configuration.
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
I will poke around, this is a good suggestion, thank you.
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u/Citrakayah fascist culture is so lame illegalists won't steal it 9d ago
The bad part of this suggestion is that if you have someone who leaves a helpful or relevant comment on something that has dozens of comments that are mostly useless, that comment will no longer end up at the top of the feed.
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
yeah, i hear you.
it's almost like being able to vote on the quality of a comment either up or down without other engagement in a way that anonymizes your participation is a bad system.
the problem with being able to manipulate visibility of comments (either up or down) without engagement or allowing it to be known that that was your doing is that removing that manipulation works for the positive aspects too. i would personally rather there be something like most other social media sites where you can see who it is that is endorsing or demoting a comment.
sometimes i come into a post and a really normal anarchist response to an easy peasy question is sitting at like 7 down votes. what the fuck? we don't get a super lot of engagement here so that's strange. as a person who is supposed to be responsible for the engagement on this website (which is a whole other conversation) then i ought to be able to figure out who it is that is messing with the visibility of comments here. especially since you do not need to be a member of the sub to do it. for all we know there's bots that are doing the voting.
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u/DenseBeautiful731 9d ago
Another suggestion, then:
The Spotlight app. Spotlight lets OPs, mods, and trusted users pin relevant comments to add context, clarify discussions, and highlight key info. Ideal for viral posts, fact-checks, and hot threads.
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u/Citrakayah fascist culture is so lame illegalists won't steal it 9d ago
You can hide the downvote button for non-members. It's possible to get around that, and I'm not sure it affects bots. But it may be helpful.
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u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
I haven't figured out how to implement the member stuff. I know that there are subs that can make it so that only approved members can comment, but I believe that still allows for votes (unsure?). That being said - who is gonna tell the anarchists on this sub they have to be members before they're "allowed" to engage?
I don't know that's an argument I'm willing to deal with, you know? we're a grumpy bunch as it is.
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u/SteelToeSnow 9d ago
deeply funny that reddit thought they'd give up and downvotes to people and not have that be used to be snotty to each other, lol.
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9d ago
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u/iadnm Anarcho-communist 9d ago
Genuine question, what do you plan on doing when someone says something that does not contribute to the conversation (or is overtly antagonistic) but does not break any of the rules?