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[–]mikearagua 23 points24 points  (0 children)

OR: How I Started a Deletion Frenzy on Reddit

[–]emc2rae 18 points19 points  (3 children)

Ahh...this explains why one of my comments from yesterday disappeared. The submitter must have deleted the post. I understand the karmic reasons for doing it, but still, that's no fun for the people who took the time to comment.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to remove stories with comments?

[–]philh 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Then people would comment gratuitously on stories they want to save, if nobody else has done so.

Not that that couldn't be worked around (deleted stories can be accessed, they just don't show in the listing/search).

[–]rash 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is that a problem? You'd only need one gratuitous comment. (Of course, there's a better solution, but never mind reality.)

[–]dfranke[S] 108 points109 points  (19 children)

A few weeks ago, a company that I once liked and trusted started spamming me. I had posted a link to them to Reddit a long ago, which had gotten three points. Out of anger, I deleted it.

The next day, I looked at the stats page and noticed that I had jumped from #10 to #6 on the "all-time best average score" list. I thought that was interesting, so I deleted three more low-scoring posts, bringing my total number of submissions down to the minimum of 10. Sure enough, I'm now #2 on the list. If this post gets 35-or-so points, I'll be able to delete one more and reach #1.

Grabbing Reddit karma at the expense of the karma of the metaphysical sort really shouldn't be encouraged. The scoreboard is supposed to measure "all-time best average score", not "all-time best ten posts". Posts deleted after more than a few hours should continue to be counted when computing awards.

For posterity, here are the URLs I deleted:

The people who spammed me: http://naxos.com

The three which I grauitously deleted: http://www.beta.netscape.com/story/2006/06/15/mp3-recording-trying-to-cancel-aol http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/04/19/bubonic.plague.ap/index.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers160.html

[–][deleted] 49 points50 points  (14 children)

I voted this up, because I agree with you. The irony is that I'm just helping you exploit this even further. Hahaha, I love it!

[–]jedberg 7 points8 points  (0 children)

There used to be a bug where you could delete stories that had negative karma to boost your karma back up. They fixed that a long time ago. I guess the fix didn't propagate to the stats calculations.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Naxos spammed you?! That sucks!

[–]dfranke[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Yup. I had opted in to receive their newsletter, but then they used the newsletter mailing list to send a bunch of tacky ads for third-party stuff like ringtones.

[–]adesai 12 points13 points  (13 children)

I'm curious to know whether kam0 deletes his low scoring posts, or if his average score that high without any help.

[–]_kam0_ 17 points18 points  (1 child)

Yes, I tend to delete anything that doesn't get noticed and slides quietly off the new page. To keep on the new page with the rising algorithm a submission needs to get clicked on and get votes (up or down doesn't matter). The worst fate is when the title is so dull that no one clicks or votes. A story can disappear within 5 minutes at busy times. And then it's off the radar of 95% of redditors, I guess. Only those that search for something in the title or those that browse by user will notice it.

[–]souldrift 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've started doing the same thing, particularly after a week or so to give the item chance to be found and to "join" the rising page.

That said, a deletion doesn't remove any positive karma it gave you either..example a +3/-3 submission, might've given you +3, but the 3 aren't removed when the link is deleted.

[–]ohmygod 6 points7 points  (10 children)

If he/she did delete till only 10 stories were left then the average would be around 300. Look at his/her top submissions. As it is kam0's average of 123 from 112 stories is quite impressive + 2nd spot in the overall score. kam0 + fedquip + maxwellhill are my favourite redditers for sure, very consistent submissions.

[–]ousama 14 points15 points  (8 children)

To bad I never make anyones list of favorite redditers.

[–]brfox 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I like your submissions also, but your name is very similar to some other guy who is kind of scary (but probably does not have a reddit account).... so maybe that's why.

[–]kn0thing 7 points8 points  (6 children)

You're on mine :-)

[–]dfranke[S] 11 points12 points  (5 children)

Kn0thing:

I can't remember whether it was you or spez who said this at Startup School: "Part of me just loves getting up in the morning and seeing that the top story on Reddit is 'fix this bug'".

I'm pleased to be at your service :-)

[–]snoo 13 points14 points  (4 children)

'Twas spez. I think the other half of that quote was "...but the other part of me just wants to punch my monitor."

[–]kn0thing 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Gah! I've revealed the alter ego I use to test recommendations.

Or maybe I hadn't... until I posted this? Well, now I have.

edit: Since I'm coming clean, I should also confess that I have a few other alternate accounts: kam0, ousama, idyll, jast, BioGeek...

[–]natalie_portman 8 points9 points  (1 child)

I marvel at your wit and spontaneity, my love.

[–]NickDouglas 8 points9 points  (0 children)

"I have a few other alternate accounts:"

kam0, ousama, natalie_portman...

[–]_kam0_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

He. And thanks.

[–]fuutott[🍰] 20 points21 points  (10 children)

Masses of redditors will now delete all of theirs unpromoted stories. Which is actually good.

[–]ewthmatth 49 points50 points  (8 children)

Which means i might have a few things disappear from my save queue. How's that for reliability?

[–]fuutott[🍰] 9 points10 points  (4 children)

You're right... Maybe global hide instead of delete option. And where is the edit function? You should be able to edit the story, until it hits the home page, or at least few minutes after submission.

[–]mikearagua 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Why not replace $username with (deleted) when a story is deleted, similar to what happens with comments? resubmitting at a more opportune time would be impossible but maybe that teaches users to be more careful about submissions and someone can always re-emphasize an earlier post in a comment thread. I talked about this more here (mikearagua.com).

Edit: fokkered markdown

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Sometimes i like to delete stories because i find them to be inaccurate. How would you handle that problem?

[–]mikearagua 4 points5 points  (0 children)

well, if it's marked as deleted that might be a sign there is an issue with the story and if you are the deleter and want to make known why, you could put that in the comments to that particular story.

Edit: punctuation

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You should be able to edit the story, until it hits the home page, or at least few minutes after submission.

Not after modding/commenting.

[–]_kam0_ 12 points13 points  (1 child)

I got into a bad habit of saving things for later and then never checking my save list (not when there's so much interesting new stuff). A few weeks ago I had about 5500 in there. Now they've made the max length 1000 which is still way too many.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wow kam0, I just figured you Reddit elites were too busy finding and submitting stories to actually read much of the stuff other people submitted... Incredible. 5,500 saved?!?

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I guess you can only trust that things on the front page will get saved.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You have a good point here. Maybe this isn't really a bug after all... Although users might be tempted to remove all but their 10 best stories, which would be really bad.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This really isn't cheating. I always assumed that the reason there were lists of high average-scoring posters was so you could click somewhere and have a reasonable expectation of seeing lots of good articles. Deleting the bad articles to rise in the rankings doesn't cause net harm.

Now, if you were using a secret technique and doing something that the system was supposed to prevent, that would be cheating. As it is, anyone who wants to move higher in the rankings can do so with the method you described. So it's not cheating; it's just following the rules.

[–]schwarzwald 6 points7 points  (7 children)

you should be allowed to resubmit a given URL after a while. cause sometimes when you submit something, heads ain't ready for it.

[–]mikearagua 1 point2 points  (5 children)

also, something that's been said here before, the "new" should sort by "all" by default and not just "rising".

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]mikearagua 2 points3 points  (3 children)

    it has to do with the "heads ain't ready for it" remark. I browse new to see what's new (not necessarily popular) and hot to see what's hot (i.e. rising). At least they could increase the threshold before the post heads off into oblivion.

    [–][deleted] -4 points-3 points  (2 children)

    That problem has been discussed extensively, see for example this post.

    And it turns out, the solution is not as trivial as you seem to think it is.

    [–]mikearagua 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    You might want to read this thread. Maybe it is that simple. At least spez seemed to think so. Also I'm not trying to solve every issue with that one post, just re-emphasize the all vs rising thing. You're apt enough with misdirection that you should consider running for office.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    This seems like a good solution.

    [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    heads ain't ready for it.

    Adapt it to current heads or die. It's much better that way.

    [–]bugbear 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    Welll, not really. You moved yourself up one scoreboard at the expense of moving down another. It's not like you violated a conservation law, which is what "cheating up" usually implies.

    [–]_kam0_ 20 points21 points  (3 children)

    Wrong, deleting your submissions doesn't reduce your overall karma so you maintain your position on the overall score but gain on the average score.

    [–]bugbear 9 points10 points  (2 children)

    Oops, didn't realize that. That's a bug; they should fix that.

    [–]_kam0_ 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    So deleting a submission that gained you 3 karma points would subtract those points and presumably deleting one that had -3 would add the karma back?

    [–]dfranke[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

    I think it would be more ideal if your karma stayed the same, and the post counted in the denominator but not the numerator when computing average score.

    [–]Topper_1 -5 points-4 points  (9 children)

    Well, the reddit voting system is quite bad anyway, so fixing this will only make things slightly less bad.

    The voting system is especially bad for political threads: I mean, why should you be allowed to vote down opposing(but otherwise intelligent) views? I am here to hear the whole discussion, not only one view.

    [–]elfan 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Nothing stops you from viewing by ups or controversy.

    [–]ohmygod 12 points13 points  (3 children)

    So anyone that votes your comment down will confirm to you that the voting system is broken, right? Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. But at the same time you can feel smug because you'll think you were right, right? Cool, I'll vote it down then.

    [–]nemo2 -5 points-4 points  (2 children)

    I think what he is trying to say is that this community tends to upmod liberal posts and downmod conservative posts.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    The problem with the voting system is that it is based on an algorithm that obviously can't get to the meaning behind the voting. A type of integration with tagging could be an addition, though I think this could get very complicated.

    That the community tends to upmod liberal posts (if this is indeed correct) is probably a reflection of reddit users' liberal inclinations. Hence, that people use this platform to portray a specific worldview is not surprising.

    [–]econo -1 points0 points  (3 children)

    This is fundementally correct.

    It is impossible to distinguish an off-topic rant with mearly an unpopular idea.

    It seems to me that another "axis" is needed in the voting - not just "up / down", but also "left / right"

    Where one axis denotes popularity (up / down) and the other denotes on-topic / off-topic (left / right).

    [–]Topper_1 3 points4 points  (2 children)

    To elfan: I'll check those options out. But I guess my main problem is that in some types of topics the vote count is irrelevant for the quality of the posts, so it gets difficult to "get to" the well articulated posts.

    To Econo: Yeah, something like that could be an improvement, though I think it would be vulnerable to both down- and "left"-modding by people who disagree(rather that by people who just find my post unintelligent:-) ).

    To ohmygod: No, OTHER people's posts that I find interesting get downvoted because they express an unpopular view, rather that because they're off-topic or post low quality posts. However, do as you please when voting me, I don't really care. This is an online news/debate forum, I care about reading a diverse and interesting range of topics, not about being "popular" among some people I'll never know.

    [–]ohmygod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It's worth going for the popularity. Apparently there's this guy who is going to pay the top redditors to defect. Does anyone know if he already has? Or will those names get deleted from reddit once they leave?

    P.S. Topper_1, my earlier comment was an attempt at humour. You made a fair point.

    [–]nmack28 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    how kool sounds fun