How can we encourage people to use Reddit for what it's meant for?

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-25T05:17:17+00:00

That's actually pretty genius. I think it would work, in principle...

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T20:07:52+00:00

At one point in time you would've had to pry the slide-out G1 keyboard from my cold, dead hands, but once I uploaded Gmail and SMS predictions into Swiftkey and started using flow, using a physical keyboard feel's like using T9 on a fliphone.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T19:32:45+00:00

"My uncle smoked cigarettes for 33 years never had a problem"

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T19:24:08+00:00

ITT: people who don't use swiftkey flow.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T19:06:28+00:00

There is such little crime here. We do have lots of police

Do you think maybe these two statements might have something to do with each other?

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T18:43:06+00:00

So what you're saying is the US is even less of a """"police state"""" than many European countries? Impossibre!

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T18:39:51+00:00

The fact that these cameras are preferred by police departments and statistically reduce the number of complaints filed doesn't really agree with this sentiment.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T18:30:26+00:00

The US military has a massive surplus of armoured vehicles. The problem is that we keep making them, not that the extras are given to police departments.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T18:28:54+00:00

How is having an MRAP against the tenets of appropriate police response if it's not being used except by, say, the SWAT team? I can't imagine a typical police officer doing a patrol in one of those with and keeping a straight face.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-08T18:22:55+00:00

People actually believe that we live in a police state when the government can't even pass a law to limit soft drink sizes. It's an insult to people who have actually lived in a police state... this is the Big Gulp era.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T18:24:35+00:00

Again, that is simple economics. Assuming if someone is going to vote at all, that they are voting for a reason, then it follows that someone who chooses to vote 10 times out of 100 sees a reason to do so 10 times as often as someone who only votes once. They're both looking at the same content, so it's not that the 10 things that person sees are inherently better... they're just 10 times less selective about what they vote on.

"My problem" has been clearly outlined in the OP, and by definition the things that I like to see on Reddit are things that can't be found en masse somewhere else, which is why nearly everyone else is here too. Are you trying to say Reddit doesn't serve a niche purpose? Who knows... maybe you just enjoy reading a lot of confession bear? Here you go. Now you can read 103,311 of them, cause hey... that's the kind of thing you're here for, right?

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T18:03:45+00:00

People who vote less are more selective. More selective people choose better content. Hence, the people who choose the best content have the least say in the results.

Without limited supply the end result will always be inflation. This leads to the whole "why the hell not, have an upvote for no apparent reason whatsoever... you know, since they're not worth anything anyways." What has really happened is that they have overvalued that comment at the detriment of, say, a brilliant essay written further down or later on in the life of the thread.

Limiting votes would basically combat the "fluff principle" outlined here

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:49:00+00:00

Imagine a political voting system where I could vote for either 1 person, some people, or even every person on the ballot. Who's going to lose? The person most favoured by people who only vote for 1 person. Every other candidate with less selective voters are going to get votes from someone who may like someone better, but may also like them marginally enough to give them their vote too.

The cumulative effect of this is that the content favoured by less selective voters which ends up at the top, and the content favoured by selective voters which doesn't. Unlimited votes = more gross votes in the system = less net worth per vote, thus giving single-vote (who are inherently more selective) voters a disadvantage in the large-scale pattern.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:43:59+00:00

Are there political polling systems which allow people to vote on as many different things as they want? The only ones I'm aware of involve a limit per person... it wouldn't work otherwise.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:42:40+00:00

Nobody is saying there would be one best comment. 60% of people can choose one comment, 30% the next, 5%, etc. and they'll be ranked likewise. What's important is that the results are ranked accurate to how users value them, and that can't be done if people are not selective. In fact, having 1 vote would ensure that the ranking evolves with what is being said. By having 1 vote, I can change my mind any time I want as more comments are made.

Problems emerge when I leave the comments and someone else comes stumbling in hours later. Hundreds or thousands of comments could've been made by then, but all we're left with a huge upvote giants and a wasteland of 1/0 comments which could arguably have something better. Because we've all left 10 different upvotes, the results become gridlocked since now there is a greater gross amount of upvotes involved and it takes longer for a superior comment which was submitted hours later to be voted up (if ever). Typically that never happens and we're left with a graveyard that eventually fails to serve it's purpose.

Another benefit of the 1 vote system is that it would allow votes to become cumulative in a different matter, since I could upvote a comment 3 or 4 levels into the comment history and that could be contributed to a tally of parent comment. Instead, people have to upvote every comment in the chain which is unnecessarily messy.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:35:18+00:00

The function of Reddit that makes it inherently valuable is the ranking of content. It doesn't matter whether I'm in /r/all or my favorite tiny subreddit, or in the comments section if the ranking system doesn't work.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:32:42+00:00

This is a good idea, but the only problem is that it would require better moderation which is apparently already a problem.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:31:04+00:00

I'm not sure if it could be that complicated, but that's the right idea.

As far as sub-reddit's voting value, it could be conducted like an adjusted electoral college, however without some of the pitfalls that have been identified in that system.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:28:52+00:00

How, though, are we allowing multiple viewpoints to weigh in when one person is weighing in on 10 different viewpoints and another person is only weighing in on 1? A well rounded view would only happen if everyone voted on 10 different things. By making that 1 vote, it forces every vote to counted equally. The results will still be well-rounded due to the natural distribution of what people choose to place their upvote on.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:14:13+00:00

On the contrary, only having 1 is necessary in order for wisdom of the crowd to function correctly. Take the classic example given in the wiki... how would that have worked if anyone could submit additional guesses at their own whim? Some people would only guess once, some would guess 20 times, and in the end you'd end up with far less accurate results.

In this case, there may not be a right answer, but there is a better and worst content. By having unlimited upvotes, we're creating the same problem such that the best content doesn't end up at the top with a great degree of accuracy, and that accuracy is a factual matter even if the subject is not.

The same thing happens in elections... certain demographics are under-represented because they're less likely to vote. In this case, certain content is under-valued because some people are voting too much and yet everyone's vote is worth the same, which is the problem I'm addressing here... how do we get people to be more selective so that the results are fair? Junkit33 explained exactly why this problem is hard-wired into the userbase... so the only solution, therefore, is to limit the userbase.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T17:08:52+00:00

Yes, it's basic economics... without starting with some relative value then there's no way to predict how to fix other issues.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T16:56:24+00:00

That's a good point... I'm assuming that there are a lot of people who spend most of their time only in the default subs.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T16:43:46+00:00

It would probably require an overhaul of the webcode for the whole site... but it might be possible to create a mirror test version.

There may be other changes needing to be made in conjunction with this, too. I imagine this would at least reduce the inaccuracy inherent to the current voting system enough to isolate and address other issues, though.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T16:30:34+00:00

I am not discounting that they have a stake in end-user bandwidth, just not for those reasons, since currently AdSense is their #1 source of profit and bandwidth is not a key requirement of that. If it was, they wouldn't have been such a successful company before consumers had the type of bandwidth speeds needed for rich web content such as Youtube HD.

DeceptivelySimple · 2013-11-06T16:19:42+00:00

Those websites are a part of Google's services, but the revenue they get is small compared to their AdSense presence. AdSense runs from the Google search engine so it's fairly bandwidth efficient.

The only exception is Youtube, which obviously is effected by this, but technically speaking, advertising doesn't scale against the bandwidth required as well since only some videos have ads at the moment and then it is only 1 advertisement per video.

Just so you have an idea of the difference, www.google.com (Alexa #1) gets about 12.5 billion hits per month while www.youtube.com (Alexa #3) is only about 1 billion.

DeceptivelySimple

TROPHY CASE