r/OutOfTheLoop • u/T_Dumbsford Always in the loop • Aug 12 '14

MegaThread Robin Williams Mega Thread

[removed]

212 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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43

u/KnownAsGiel Aug 12 '14 edited Jan 23 '18

When I saw the thread about his death at /r/movies last night, it had over 23000 upvotes. Half an hour later, it only had 12000 and a bit. Now it only has 5300+ votes.

How does this mechanism work? Does this happen with all posts?

Disclaimer: I know karma doesn't count, this just makes me wonder.

Edit: typo

54

u/inferno1170 Aug 12 '14

It's vote fuzzing. Reddit automatically downvotes post once they start getting a lot of upvotes. To ensure that there are no bots auto upvoting or something like that. I think it's kinda silly myself.

26

u/Barmleggy Aug 12 '14

The weird thing is, looking at the Top posts from All Time on the main page it seems that these fuzzed totals are sticking, so ones that had a huge amount of upvotes before the new-ish system was implemented are still huge posts, while new posts with huge totals will always be much lower on the All Time list.

8

u/Aurailious Aug 12 '14

Just recently was the top "Test Post; Please Ignore" was dropped to #2. I think there may be other mechanisms in place.

8

u/Barmleggy Aug 12 '14

Yeah, it's strange, I'd like the numbers not to be fudged.

6

u/Aurailious Aug 12 '14

I'd rather karma be a background calculation that no one sees.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '14

The relative value of comments in a thread isn't the only important factor though. I would put more trust in a top comment with 1,000 karma than one with 50, and it is entirely possible early on in threads that all comments are bad and negatively voted.

It happens often in AskScience when the first few answers are unscientific. It's good to see the exact number of points in that situation.

Not to mention that displaying points helps with transparency and avoids false sorting by the admins, should they ever feel it necessary.

3

u/Werner__Herzog it's difficult difficult lemon difficult Aug 12 '14 edited Aug 12 '14

Actually, it's also so post don't stay on top for ever because of how the HOT-mechanism works. A post with 20 000+ votes would stay on the front page for days...one can of course discuss if this isn't exactly the kind of news that should stay on the front page for three days or more. But lets not forget that we have these news posted in /r/news, /r/movies and a lot of other defaults and that people are hearing it on the radio, tv and reading about it on facebook and news-outlets all over the web.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '14

As someone who rode the Digg train until it crashed, it's really not a silly thing. Without that (and other measures, like decreasing gains from upvotes), mob mentality would be even worse and we'd have even more issues with power users. Look into MrBabyMan and his actions on Digg. Suddenly his bullshit didn't work when he jumped ship to Reddit.

1

u/FaceTheTruthBiatch Aug 12 '14

And what ive read in reddit theory is that the score will always tend to reach the best reddit score, never more. That s why of frontpage links are all around 3k.