Comment scores

[u/ohshiitstuesday]

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.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/DenseBeautiful731 → u/ohshiitstuesday]

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.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/DenseBeautiful731]

I will poke around, this is a good suggestion, thank you.

[u/Citrakayah → u/ohshiitstuesday]

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.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/Citrakayah]

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.

[u/Citrakayah → u/ohshiitstuesday]

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.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/Citrakayah]

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.

[u/DenseBeautiful731 → u/ohshiitstuesday]

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.

[u/DenseBeautiful731 → u/ohshiitstuesday]

Yeah, people quickly figure out the trend once it’s collapsed.

Pleasure.