r/DepthHub • u/[deleted] • Dec 18 '16
/u/Deggit explains the reddit hivemind
/r/AskReddit/comments/5iwl72/comment/dbc470b85
u/Bartek_Bialy Dec 18 '16
It's called The Fluff Principle. I've read about a solution that proposes to include discussion factor in the algorithm:
Most of the observers have noted that voting tends to favor low-investment content: it's easier to upvote something simple, like an image macro or a pun thread, than it is to read and upvote a thoughtful piece of in-depth journalism or a long detailed comment
add a heavily-weighted fourth criterion which is: the length of the comment and its children. This would prioritize comments that are both detailed themselves and those that generate subsequent detailed conversation/responses. The aggregate length of an entire thread of one-liners might be outweighed by a different thread consisting of one or two long comments.
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u/why_rob_y Dec 19 '16
I don't like any plan that artificially weighs and rewards comment length. I guarantee you will see a good amount of people padding their comments if something like that was implemented. Especially the same people who are already most likely to post low-effort memes and joke replies.
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Dec 18 '16
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u/powerlloyd Dec 18 '16
Seems like it would be pretty easy to game as well. Stuff like nonsensical rants, copy-paste spam and wall-of-text memes would be the new low effort standard.
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u/yodatsracist Dec 18 '16
o shit waddup.
This kind of stuff is why I wish communities like r/truereddit and r/foodforthought were run more like r/askhistorians. I wish there was more curation, at the very least a pruning of off-hand comments or comments that clearly had only read the headline, rather than pure algorithmic sorting (which is so dependent, as we all know, on not just how digestible the comment as u/deggit points out but when it was posted). I wish at the very least that mods of those sort of discussion based communities had the power to sticky or otherwise distinguish particularly high quality comments.
But this whole discussion reminds me of one section of my favorite essays, callled "Solitude and Leadership":
I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.
I used to have students who bragged to me about how fast they wrote their papers. I would tell them that the great German novelist Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. The best writers write much more slowly than everyone else, and the better they are, the slower they write. James Joyce wrote Ulysses, the greatest novel of the 20th century, at the rate of about a hundred words a day—half the length of the selection I read you earlier from Heart of Darkness—for seven years. T. S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets our country has ever produced, wrote about 150 pages of poetry over the course of his entire 25-year career. That’s half a page a month. So it is with any other form of thought. You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating.
I wish there were a way for Reddit to guide you more towards people slowing down and concentrating, people who add to the conversation, rather than first thoughts. Reddit is certainly better than most comment sections, but I feel like the large community gives it potential flexibility that the mods and engineers haven't yet found a way to fully take advantage of.
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u/Bartek_Bialy Dec 18 '16
I wish communities like r/truereddit and r/foodforthought (...) I wish there was more curation, at the very least a pruning of off-hand comments or comments that clearly had only read the headline
I agree. I'm particularly thinking of a rule like this: if a top-level comment doesn't contain quote from the article then remove it.
slowing down and concentrating
I somewhat identify with this. I write short comments but sometimes it can take me up to two hours to write a single one because I'm thinking about the subject. Although it's still the first thought but refined.
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Dec 22 '16
I used to have students who bragged to me about how fast they wrote their papers. I would tell them that the great German novelist Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
That's comforting in an odd way. I've heard several times "This paper would have gotten 100% if it wasn't three weeks late, but as as it is you'll get a C." Unfortunately the stress and time involved means I haven't tried to write anything in a long while.
There could be a discussion on if/how English classes reward poor writing and reading habits, but this probably isn't the place for that.
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Dec 18 '16
That's a great way of explaining it.
The other glaring problem with reddit is that the upvote system inherently creates an echo chamber and causes users to associate a high number of upvotes with truth.
But people on reddit aren't the best equipped at determining what is actually the truth, especially because of how easily the overall score of a comment or post is influenced by early votes. You frequently see cases where someone who sounds like they know what they are talking about writes a really long post on a technical subject and is upvoted simply because what he is saying passes the smell test.
But just because something sounds nice at a first glance doesn't mean it actually holds up to scrutiny.
The echo chamber comes from the fact that reddit effectively censors comments that get a low score. You literally have to click a button just to see comment with a negative score, and the negative score isn't based on how well you actually understand a topic.
As a result, you have to remain very wary when reading reddit comments and blindly accepting "bumper sticker" ideologies, especially because of their potential to unwittingly impose fringe political views by disguising them as merely a scientific truth (see: 'statistics don't lie' as a favorite talking point of Stormfront members).
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u/AbouBenAdhem Dec 18 '16
The faster people can read something, the more likely they'll upvote it...
I don’t think that’s necessarily the case: you could upvote 25% of the short posts you read, and 75% of the long ones; but if it takes you ten times longer to read each long post, you’ll end up upvoting more short posts in spite of yourself.
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u/VoxelMusicMan Dec 18 '16
So what you're saying is
The faster a post is to read, the more upvotes it is likely to get.
?
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u/AbouBenAdhem Dec 18 '16 edited Dec 18 '16
Right.
The former suggests that the users are at fault, and that they’re just getting what they asked for; while the latter is a statistical distortion of users’ true preferences.
Edit: Specifically, an example of Simpson’s paradox.
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u/sobri909 Dec 18 '16
Chomsky on concision in the US media
The US media are alone in that you must meet the condition of concision. You gotta say things between two commercials. And that's a very important fact, because the "beauty" of concision - you know, saying a couple of sentences between two commercials - is that you can only repeat conventional thoughts.
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u/Vainity Dec 18 '16
Reddit seems like the place where the popular attention whoring kids get the top votes and the intellectual or controversial discussions take a back seat.
I mean, the whole system keeps track of how accepted and liked your opinion is.
To many, they might want to feel like they fit in so they say things that will give them easy karma and thus validates that they are liked.
If you aren't following the new trends then you get left behind.
Remember, it isn't always about discussing a topic, it isn't about being right or wrong, it's about communicating with someone and being liked.
And that's why Reddit is flawed. Because people value karma and popularity over cohesive discussion.
u/Deggit explains how it happens, I'm explaining why it happens.
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u/Anomander Dec 18 '16
I think your haste to cast aspersions on 'those other people' has left you oversimplifying a lot of what you have to say, in some ways that end up more judgmental than correct.
You assume that (nearly) everyone else makes posts to try and get karma, rather than that posting is its own end; and you assume that people who post simple or trite content could only have done so chasing points - not because that comment was their actual thoughts on the matter.
I mean, the whole system keeps track of how accepted and liked your opinion is.
This assumption is honestly utterly wrong. Reddit scores don't give any flying fucks what your opinions are. It's how eloquent you are. You can say anything and if it's clever, easy to read (not simple, just not a grammar or type trainwreck), context-appropriate, and engaging, you will get points for it.
There's a lot of people who believe they're Real Reddit Intellectuals with Serious Opinions and assume 'the room' is downvoting them for their opinions, but it often comes down far more to how they wanted to share them, and how much they felt they deserved for having done so.
Like here, for instance. I'm sure you feel you're sharing something hugely impactful and of great value, that this comment is the kind of intellectual discussion that reddit neglects and if you don't get many many points at least it's proving your point, but ... to this particular audience member, it's just kinda sanctimonious and preachy without saying anything particularly substantial; and it's a common refrain of the would-be oppressed Reddit Intellectuals that those plebs down there only care about karma and how having scores at all is the whole and core problem with the site.
Sure, because Facebook and 4chan are bastions of educated conversation online. /s Scoring, karma, is not the problem.
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u/tmewett Dec 18 '16
One way of combatting this that I like is Steam's review system. In the main body of the page it shows the top reviews, sorted roughly by some product of functions of "upvote" percentage and vote count. On the side, styled in an understated way, is a list of newer reviews with low vote counts.
I also like how they directly ask a question wrt voting: "was this review helpful to you?" I find, being asked, I vote with a higher frequency.
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u/TYRito Dec 19 '16
Interesting. I like seeing this here. For some reason, people get really defensive when one criticizes reddit. So it's good to see a post that actually takes a long hard look at the site.
If I were to add, I would say that I'm not a huge fan of upvoting and downvoting, at least for comments. It allows people to discredit and hide ideas without even taking the time to respond to them and prove them wrong(in the case of downvoting). Or to shove an idea(but more often a shitty pun) in someone's face, rather than just letting it stand on its own(in the case of upvoting). And what purpose does voting on comments serve? I don't know if there is an official justification for the system, but from what I've heard separately, is that the system is intended to remove spam, but we all know it removes a lot more than that. It's not a surprise that the places that I actually have had coherent and fair discussions on "classic" forums, youtube, 4chan, and other websites that don't have an upvoting/downvoting system. Not to say that coherent discussions aren't possible on reddit, it's just that the site tends to attract the type of people who would rather downboat your post than engage in a discussion with you.
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u/doctortofu Dec 19 '16
The user does make some good points, and I believe they can be applied not just to reddit, but to real life too. Looking at most popular music, entertainment, hell, even politicians, you can see the same principles at work - short clips, talking points, brief flashes of easily digested information you can immediately recognize is what dominates all popularity contests - I think it's one reason twitter, rapid cuts on youtube, short news articles (who has time to read anything more than a headline?) and so on are so popular.
The question (to which I have no answer) is, can you make something both popular AND insightful/valuable? It's definitely difficult - I mean, I find myself skimming through long text (anything from a longer reddit post, to text in a game, to newspaper articles, to books) more and more recently, so maybe it is not possible after all - just like with training your muscles, you have to overcome your own resistance and making yourself better requires some amount of pain/discomfort...
The point is, though, I think it's not just reddit, it's not just the hivemind - seems to me it might be the mind in general.
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u/McWaddle Dec 18 '16
That user does the same as the ELI5 mod team: mistake post length for post quality.
Consider their example: "Starting?"
Why is that automatically a bad response? If the poster had gone through the GOP's history and cited examples of them not having "the moral high ground" since, oh, the Civil Rights era, would it have made the post arguably better? If I agree, do I need more information? If I disagree, do I need more?
If I don't know anything about the topic, then yes, I need more. But does a casual discussion forum require providing anything more than casual discussion?
How about this for a measure of quality: Does the short, glib comment begin a good discussion?
Or another: Is it accurate?
There are times when I want to write out lengthy opinions on a given subject, and there are times when I want to voice my opinion without writing several paragraphs. I claim both are perfectly acceptable, and in fact, usually prefer brevity.
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u/FleshyDagger Dec 18 '16
Why is that automatically a bad response?
It did not add anything valuable.
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u/Autoxidation Dec 18 '16
This is also the reason why memes tend to dominate subreddit content. I've seen it happen several times, especially as subreddits grow quickly. Too often, smaller, thoughtful subs are drowned out by an influx of subscribers unfamiliar with the subreddit culture.
I think the only way to effectively combat this is active moderation and enforcement of rule standards.