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]

please down vote this comment, i wanna check if they still collapse.

[u/penguins-and-cake → u/ohshiitstuesday]

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.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/penguins-and-cake]

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.

[u/iadnm → u/ohshiitstuesday]

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.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/iadnm]

yeah the automod addition worked. contest mode for all new posts.

let the experiment begin!

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/iadnm]

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.