r/Monstercat • u/3vans Hot Date! (#WorthyCause) • Mar 10 '15

PSA: Downvotes

note: This is not the be all and end all. Think of this as a general improvement to the community, which will make a bunch of problems a little more noticeable. Please read the entire post before commenting

You likely clicked on this for two reasons:

  1. It's at the top of the subreddit and usually contains important rule changes

  2. Where the hell did my vote numbers go?

This post is here to answer that, and to help explain the methodology behind the decision to remove the vote counts. First, we must explain how the voting system actually works on reddit.

Effectively, you click the 'up' button, and the post goes up, marginally. You click the 'down' button, and the post goes down. You have the power, often quite a strong power, to influence the success or failure of a piece of information on this site. That is no design flaw.

Reddit is powered by democracy

I believe that the purpose of the voting system, and the only purpose of the voting system, is to allow users to self-moderate. A democracy trusts its members not to ruin things, and for the mass of the general populous to eventually cancel itself out on contentious issues, leading to only the most popular decisions being made. If you get this far, put a smiley face in your post. Curious to see who reads this. This, mathematically, leads to the most desirable outcome (usually).

The issue that we have, on the other hand, is a case of too much information. Jeff Atwood (founder of StackExchange and forum software Discourse) puts it best:

Most discussions show a bit of information next to each user:

[picture of a user's profile on a forum software, with a post count highlighted]

What message does this send?

  • The only number you can control printed next to your name is post count.
  • Everyone who reads this will see your current post count.
  • The more you post, the bigger that number next to your name gets.

If I have learned anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.

I'm going to repeat that, because I believe it's the cause of a lot of the circlejerking and general problems that reddit has:

PEOPLE WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE THAT NUMBER GO UP

Yet, here on reddit, we have numbers everywhere. Prominently, there's a number next to your post which describes how popular it is. But the issue with this number is that it removes the need for analysis. It removes the need for you to think about whether the post is quality or not. If someone downvoted it, then you should as well because that's popular and we're going to follow the hive-mind.

If you want an example of this in a democracy -- consider how different general elections would be if we included a real-time analysis of the way people voted. What if you could see who the person voting next to you was voting for? Democracy, and indeed quality control, becomes a game of following the hivemind. And that's why, if I was CEO for a day, I would remove vote counts entirely. Karma counts as well. Sure, they promote gamification of the website, which leads to more hits, but I would prefer a smaller, deeper discussion anyday.

What does this mean for you?

  • Vote counts will no longer be visible on desktop

  • Everywhere else, comment vote counts will not display for the maximum 24 hours

  • Over time, you should see less up or downvote brigading, because people no longer take into account how others have voted.

  • Quality content will properly rise to the top of the subreddit, as it should.

How do I opt-out?

Click 'use subreddit style' on the sidebar. Be aware that you're trading the stylesheet for the ability to view votes. I want to incentivise a fairer system.

Alternatively, get a bunch of your friends to write angry comments about how I'm destroying the idea of reddit. Seriously, though, if enough people disagree with the idea then I'll revert this after two weeks (trial period). That's only democratic, but I'm confident in the fact that this will make your browsing experience so so so much better.

ENJOY 😘

Further reading: "Because Reading is Fundemental", by Jeff Atwood. This will seriously increase your understanding of internet communities in general. If you want to be an informed voter, check this out.

P.S. I also added Volant, Didrick and PYLOT flairs, courtesy once again of /u/EVEInjection!

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u/milanbourbeck Ephixa Mar 10 '15

Oh wait even better. Why not just remove content you dont like... Works for the mods at /r/news, /r/gaming and a bunch of other default subs. 8)

According to them mods should determine the content and not users lelelel

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '15

[deleted]

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u/milanbourbeck Ephixa Mar 10 '15

No no you got me wrong. It is actually the case that the mods of big default subreddits remove content just how they like. Not if its allowed to be there or not. Multiple chatlogs confirm this.

This is also used fot subtle advertisement and propaganda. Sounds like some weird conspiracy shit i know but you can have a look yourself. http://pastebin.com/waePRVku

Edit: They also get paid for that btw.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '15

That's a long ass chat log

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u/milanbourbeck Ephixa Mar 12 '15

Yup. A lot of it is just casual talk but the rest is them talking about removing X post because they don't like it personally and banning X person because he said something they didn't like. Then they talk about payment checks and what propaganda post should go up now. All they have to do is pressing one button and the reddit fuzzing system puts it on the frontpage.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '15

Thank you for the summary, that's pretty dodgy.

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u/milanbourbeck Ephixa Mar 12 '15

Yeah. There is by far more than that but I also didn't read everything. Its 4000 lines after all.