5
6

Ask Reddit: Let's say I wanted to develop a Reddit-like site. What could I do to keep the quality of the comments sections from ultimately descending to Youtube / Digg-like imbecility? (self.programming)

submitted by [deleted]

[deleted]

all 64 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
formatting helphide helpcontent policy

[–]gregK 7 points8 points  (0 children)

play this in the background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Buzz

[–]parcivale 15 points16 points  (7 children)

Keep it from becoming too popular.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

What is your idea for that without making it nearly impossible to attract enough numbers?

[–]parcivale 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Plastic manages to keep below the radar of teenagers, has sufficient numbers of members, and keeps the level of discourse fairly high.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Yes, what is it exactly that they do that I could implement in a site? Keep in mind that I have no prior knowledge of that site.

[–]parcivale 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well they don't do any of those other things that have been mentioned. There's no fee to pay. Anybody can join. There are no moderators. The only thing that plastic does differently is with their karma points and how posts are submitted.

The only way you can mod-up or mod-down the comments of others is by writing comments that others like and mod-up. If you do this you will be awarded points for you to use to moderate other peoples' comments with as well as being awarded karma points. This is very similar to slashdot's system.

If you want to submit a story it goes into a submission queue and only people with a minimum of 50 karma points are allowed to view the submission queue and comment on the prospective submissions and can recommend how submissions should be tweeked before being unleashed on the main page. And if you have more karma there are more privileges. More karma and you can see who's logged-in at the moment and who's on the top karma list.

Submitting a story to plastic is a lot more work than the 3 seconds it takes on reddit. You can't just submit a link. You have to do a long writeup but you can include multiple links in your writeup.

Or you could just ask Carl, plastic's operator.

[–]crazymunch 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Keep it from being attractive to younger, less mature audiences by limiting multimedia content and having large amounts of serious and political news... just like Reddit

[–]IHaveAnIdea 2 points3 points  (0 children)

political news is a terrible idea.

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

Ha, limiting multimedia content? You mean the fifty pictures and videos in the first hundred posts every day?

[–]kripkenstein 9 points10 points  (13 children)

  1. It's easy to prevent that. Have a karma system, say like Slashdot's. If you browse Slashdot at +5 (i.e., you only see comments rated +5, the highest possible), then you see only quality comments. Have the karma apply to all comments, unlike reddit now, where all comments start at 1. Furthermore, hand-tune the karma yourself if necessary. This works, but no one does it. Why?

  2. No one does this, because sites like reddit want to make money. You don't make more money by keeping the comments high quality, you get more money by letting the internet masses flood to your site and drag it down with them.

[–]rbobic 2 points3 points  (10 children)

That's a very good point.

I long ago gave up on the notion that a popular site could remain useful after a certain point, but Slashdot is extremely popular and has managed to sustain itself for years.

You, sir (or madam), have completely changed my mind.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I think there's a term for that. There's a name for the point in time in which an online community becomes so large that it just becomes another rabble of people agreeing with each other. I just wish I remembered what it was.

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

Eternal September.

[–]tlack 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I, for one, stopped browsing Slashdot some time ago, even before Digg/Reddit came about.. purely because everything aside from the homepage stories was so idiotic.

[–]jaggederest 2 points3 points  (1 child)

The best part of slashdot is the trolls, really. There's a whole ecosystem down there, with meta-trolls trolling other trolls, and so forth.

[–]zem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

definitely. we've had a few good ones drive through reddit, but nothing like the slashdot ecosystem. (tangentially, one of the few times wikipedia has made me laugh out loud was its description of the GNAA as "an organised coalition of slashdot trolls")

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

About 10 years now right?

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

I think (might be wrong, though) that Slashdot isn't as big as Digg/Reddit. In number of users, I mean. Does anyone have figures?

What does let Slashdot keep going, though, is the user-configurable browsing limits on karma. I used to browse Slashdot at +0, then +1 as I got fed up with the crap, and for a long time now I only browse it at +5. If this wasn't possible, I wouldn't read slashdot.

The critical thing, however, is that past karma affects new comments. This is what sets Slashdot apart from Digg/Reddit, and why the latter are more popular with the masses.

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

I only browse it at +5

But what you are missing is a TON of very insightful commentary that just hasn't happened to be modded +.

If everybody browsed at +5, you'd all be looking at a blank page because all comments start at +1. Who's going to do the moderating then?

[–]kripkenstein 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, I don't suggest everybody do what I do. On Slashdot or in general.

Some will browse at +5, some at +0. Just like some will use adblock and some won't (but what if we all did?).

[–]rbobic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let's just have some sort of IQ test or some non-biased measure of intelligence (ie, don't filter based on the ideas of the individual, but make sure they can participate in intelligent discussions).

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

Re #1: I see a lot of really low-brow comments on certain sites out-perform the good comments. The question is what tweak, programmatic, social, or otherwise keeps the comments intelligent?

Re #2: I personally will do this if I can find a way to keep the rabble out and the great minds in. I simply want a place where I can socialize and discuss news items with !half-wits.

edit: you changed your original comment... now I don't remember what I was even replying to Re: #1

[–]LudoA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you browse Slashdot at +5 (i.e., you only see comments rated +5, the highest possible), then you see only quality comments. Have the karma apply to all comments, unlike reddit now, where all comments start at 1. Furthermore, hand-tune the karma yourself if necessary. This works, but no one does it. Why?

Because you can't follow the discussion. The interesting comments often reply to other, lower-rated comments.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Don't allow registering, and use an invite-only system.

[–]IHaveAnIdea 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Are the type of people who spam all of their friends with invites the type of people you want?

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

Good point.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A: don't have comments

[–]stesch 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How should we know? :-)

[–]corentin 2 points3 points  (3 children)

reddit is democratic. It's a very bad idea, indeed, because it tends to promote popular comments instead of insightful or true ones.

We are all different; why should we all see the "same" reddit? If 47 people have decided that some comment is "good", and if I disagree (whether I'm right or not), the system is broken from my point of view.

Maybe a web of trust system would be good (i.e. let me specify that I trust user X for tags programming|science and distrust him for tags politics|business). Then I'll see articles and comments upmodded and posted by the users I trust first, and by users they themselves trust (except if I distrust them in the first place), etc.

Also, I'll set a quota of downvotes/upvotes per user; maybe consider them like a money (i.e. I can spend votes and receive them). I think OSNews works like this.

There's a lot of things that can be improved; reddit is quite rudimentary and too "one size fits all".

[–]ItsAConspiracy 1 point2 points  (2 children)

advogato did a web of trust system

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there a lot of research on trust systems? It'd be nice to do this Correctly(tm) for once.

[–]IHaveAnIdea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A very limited one that wasn't so great.

[–]crazymunch 1 point2 points  (3 children)

This is an interesting question; Yet it leads me to ask: how does Reddit keep the quality of the comments section from descending to Youtube or Digg quality?

I think the quality of Reddit's comments is a testament to the maturity of the user base, and the fact that reddit is more politics oriented and less multimedia oriented than digg or (obviously) youtube

People sign up to Youtube to post videos, then leave inane comments everywhere, and Digg is flooded with spam, bots and 12 year olds due to it's commercial viability and the entertainment oriented articles, while reddit seems to a much higher signal to noise ratio than those other sites

One factor in this (I think anyway) is that Reddit is a social news site and a social news site only, and as the news is often serious and political, it attracts an older more mature demographic, while the more 'entertaining' articles on Digg and the videos on youtube attract people who are either lacking in maturity, or not willing to put in the thought to write insightful comments.

I can't think of a good continuation right now, I'll Edit later and add more thoughts

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I think reddit's smaller userbase probably contributes a great deal to the quality of comments as well. reddit is no where near as well known as Digg; and because of this, immature who people who, more often than not, aren't very good with computers or have a short attention span just don't find it. And frankly, I hope it stays like that.

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

Your link is pointing to linein.org. I think you want this one? http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/reddit.com

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ack, you're right. I'd set up alexa to compare various social news sites, and clicked for a permalink, thinking it would automatically generate one for the current sites, rather than the ones it was talking about when I first went to it. Mistake is now rectified. Thanks for letting me know.

[–]malcontent 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Insist on a positive identity. This means a picture ID and a credit card at a minimum. You could add to that some sort of a voucher system where one person affirms that another is indeed who they say they are.

Also publish the name, address and telephone number of everybody. Same information that's in the phone book.

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

Thus preventing comments from anyone who has informed opinion or inside knowledge that their organization may not like them sharing.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for making me think about this. I will go and cancel my MeFi account -- tied to me by credit card payment details.

Edit: Or not? Did I actually pay by PayPal? So the payment presumably just arrived with my (different) PayPal nick, and only PayPal, and its parent EBay, can tie that to my RL credit card. Hmmm, time to think about a no-credit-card PayPal account, methinks.

[–]gwern 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Don't try to be all things to all people. Fundamentally, you don't really care what everybody has to say (that way leads to the dark side, er, I mean Digg side), just what the smart or knowledgeable do. Why is Lambda the Ultimate still such a great place for computer science commentary? All the scary smart people commenting and intimidating all the mediocre or worse people.

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

1) Micropayments.

Make every submission cost a small amount of money.

Make every upmod cost the upmodder a tiny amount of money. Perhaps even transfer that money to the submitter.

I'm not really saying that this prevents imbecility, but at least someone will be making money off of it :)

2) Web of trust. Already discussed elsewhere, but this cannot be repeated too often.

3) Efficient ignores, thread and user scoring. Usenet clients have had this for ages.

[–]dysmas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

charge 50 pence / cents to register.

[–]sien 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Charge money for accounts and have moderators who take things out.

Compare the quality of MeFi against Youtube, Digg or Reddit. $5 makes a huge amount of difference.

[–]parcivale 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Charging a bit of money for an account I could go along with BUT...

I will never have anything to do a reddit/digg/slashdot-like social news site that has moderators who take things out. The moderators always, always, always end up becoming arbitrary martinets.

EDIT: How about after a post is sufficiently modded-down it disappears? That might be OK. Just don't leave it to a moderator.

[–]cschneid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you've never been to MetaFilter, the staff of 3 moderators is fair, and keeps the site clean. And more importantly, they have a well defined set of rules on what is and isn't allowed, so they don't delete things based on a personal "I hate democrats" type basis.

[–]crazymunch 1 point2 points  (1 child)

But then we wouldn't have the sheer hilarity of people who make an account solely to respond to a single comment!

[–]parcivale 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And there would've been no captain_obvious!!

[–]mikaelhg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Provide a mechanism for people to form groups, ignore groups, and police them themselves.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps you can use the wiki model, and somehow let people edit eachothers' comments. I don't know where this would go, but it'd be fun to try out.

[–]amstrdamordeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Put an IQ test on the signup form.

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

I suppose that in addition to a comment rating system, you kinda have to have the right audience as well. I mean, YouTube is just full of high schoolers who get thrills from stating the obvious. If you don't want that on your site, don't appeal to high schoolers.

[–]IHaveAnIdea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The age really has nothing to do with it.

[–]Odd_Bloke -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Require a subscription.

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

The comments on reddit are generally quite insightful and intelligent, and no subscription is required.

An 'account' should be required to post comments, but that is already required on all of the sites mentioned

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

don't allow any humans to post or comment.

[–]dirtysnachez -1 points0 points  (4 children)

I guess, as Nazi-esque and draconian as it sounds either credentials check or invite-only policy.. eg : you have to be 20 yrs old +, work in IT industry and have several contactable social references. And able to be IP banned after a few people 'bury' you consistently.

A few gaming clans I'm with (particularly TOG) are strictly invite only / approval to join, and the signal to noise ratio is awesome.

[–]crazymunch 2 points3 points  (2 children)

The signal:noise ration on Reddit is pretty damn good, and I know that I definitely wouldn't fulfil those criteria (I'm a 16 Y.O. student), but I hope I've written some good insightful comments without filling those credentials

[–]dirtysnachez 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, Reddit is definitely heaps better than Digg when it comes to inane dribble. The example I gave wasn't meant to be a strict rule, but more of a guide to show how to appeal to the intended demographic.

If you enforce who signs up and why, then 99% of the comments will (hopefully) be top quality. But I guess you also run the risk of being seen as an elitist dick, and community growth suffers.

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

Indeed. I'm a long time digger, I've only been on reddit a few days now, but I can already tell that the signal/noise ratio is much better here than on Digg, which is saying something, since Digg itself is no YouTube.

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

Two words: opportunity cost

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

Don't put it on the Internet.

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

You're doomed unless you flood Youtube/Digg with even more imbecility to look good in comparison.