this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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17
A perfect? solution to fix reddit/lemmy voting system to make discussion healthy and productive. (fedit.pl)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It was probably suggested before, but the topic is not raised too often so here goes the solution:

  1. We introduce two types of threads - normal and "controversial/heated/political" (probably there is a better name)

Normal type is for "technical" discussions, where the best answer is accepted as best by some very large percentage of people, lest say 90-99%. The treshold could be a matter of discussion, but you get the idea. So that would be questions like "How to fix dead radiator in PC", "Whats best way to do this or that"

Controversial is for discussion where there is potentially lot of disagreement, but also where there could be just some disagreement, but we want to hear other points of view. So all of the political things, questions about genders, etc, everythign that creates heated conversation. Probably could also be used for humourous topics.

The thread type is set while opening a thread, but it can be changed any time during the discussion by forum moderator

  1. We leave normal type discussion as they are on reddit/lemmy whatever. For controversial first when user enters the thread, all of the comments are sorted in random order. All of the comments vote scores are hidden. Now user casts votes in "one go". Only until they finish casting votes, other votes are visible for them. Changing already casted votes on these threads is NOT POSSIBLE. They unfortunately cant vote on new comments which were added after they voted. THey are only allowed to vote once. TBH users dont usually come back to threads after they visited them once so its not like we make some common behaviour impossible

This way we eliminate sheep behaviour and demand making their own decision by user. And we force user to be responsible for making a decision. Someone might argue that we sometimes change mind, but it doesnt matter, cause the number of times we change minds is really tiny and the gained changed behaviour is far more valuable. After everything is visible for user they can now sort by most popular comments which is now available.

That should be it. We also might introduce thread freezing if necessary.

What do you think? And also, since lemmy is open source, do you think there is a change that some bigger instance migght create a fork that introduces some of these changes as an experiment?

top 13 comments
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why do people obsess so much over how many up/down votes a comment gets? On reddit the reason you didn't want to be down voted was because you would get timed. You would have to wait 10 mins to hours between comments. You would be blocked from posting in certain communities.

Here it does nothing except rank you comment slightly lower. The threads are not exactly so huge that you're getting buried.

Often a ton of down votes isn't sheep behaviour its just the majority opinion. I think we can give people enough credit that they aren't down voting things because they are down voted they are down voting them because they don't it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I asked ChatGPT about existing experiments on this matter. Sheep behavious is real:

Key Studies: The "Hidden Votes" Experiment (Muchnik et al., 2013)

One of the most well-known studies on this topic was published in Science by Muchnik, Aral, and Taylor. Researchers manipulated upvotes and downvotes on a social news site (similar to Reddit) with 100,000+ users. When an initial upvote was artificially added to a post, it increased the likelihood that others would upvote it by 32%. Downvotes did not have the same effect—they were often corrected by other users. The experiment suggests strong social influence in voting behavior. "Bandwagon Effect in Online Voting" (Lorenz et al., 2011)

This study found that when people saw public votes before casting their own, they converged towards the majority opinion. The effect was particularly strong in subjective judgments, like ratings of art or music. YouTube and Social Proof (Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006)

In a controlled music experiment, researchers manipulated download counts for different songs. Songs with high fake download numbers became even more popular, showing strong herding behavior. "Hidden Likes" Experiment on Instagram (2019)

Instagram conducted real-world A/B testing by removing visible like counts in several countries. Initial reports suggested reduced social pressure, but Meta has not released detailed statistics. What Happens When Votes Are Hidden? Some studies show that without visible votes, people rely more on personal judgment instead of following the herd. However, others found that herding still happens when other subtle signals (such as comments, engagement, or reposts) remain.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ok that study found people were more likely to upvote upvoted posts. They did not find people were more likely to downvote downvoted posts.

So I think it proves my point and kind of goes against your entire post. People arent down voting posts mindlessly they are doing it because they dont like the post. So why do we need to rework how down votes work?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You base your answer on only first study when I pasted four examples? And potentially there is more?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I dont agree that those studies change much since they focus on likes and are focusing on public social media where your likes are shown to friends. For the purpose of the discussion lets accept your premise and assume that people will vote biased based on whatever the majority like/dislike is, im still struggling to see what problem this is causing.

In your technical thread example we assume the "best" comment will be the most upvoted. But it wouldnt be considering that most upvoted will be the earliest comment that sounds reasonable enough to get mass upvotes and then it will out compete other comments via upvote bias. Since people are more likely to vote things if they are upvoted so we cant just trust upvoted comments. Here we just trust that the majority of people know best and show the highest rated comments first (if the user has comments sorted by top)

In the controversial thread you suggest we hide upvotes from people and show them comments in a random order and force users to vote before votes are revealed. So now people will see a political question/topic and enter the thread only to be greeted with random quality of comments. I fail to see the value of this. If I wanted to sort through a bunch of stupid takes I could sort by controversial. I don't think its a good user experience to to open threads on spicy topics and see a bunch of unfiltered takes by default.

I think the current system works well for displaying good comments to the average user. If you want to see controversial comments there is a sort option that does just that. Its good to open a spicy thread and get an instant sanity check. If users are constantly having to sort by "controversial" to find opinions they agree with, that may say more about the distribution of opinions on the platform than a flaw in the voting system itself. It seems you are trying to find different ways to sneak opinions in front of people hoping these changes will change how they're received.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Yeah, techical should have actually objectively best comments on top. I don't agree that in this category the earliest comment wins. Maybe sometimes, but usually I don't think so. It depends on the size of the thread if people go through the whole section or just small piece. But that's my opinion but to prove it we would need data.

The value in controversial category is that people dont upvote just because others upvote. It demands thought from a user.

I think ultimately it's about whether you want to seek the actual truth and getting somewhere with the discussion or not. Truth can only be discovered when thinking is turned on.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

20250218_180348

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@[email protected] Very reasonable proposal, but, I think the controversial posts not showing votes, should be the default for all posts. There's a lot of brigading, especially in some Lemmy groups.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

On ActivityPub everything is public, brigadiers will use software that shows them votes even if you hide it in Lemmy UI/API.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

That may be true but in practice adding friction to a given interaction makes it happen less, and that makes a big difference at scale. You don't need to prevent anyone from doing it, you need to change the dynamics that result in it happening in a group large enough to cause a problem

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's got some good ideas but you lost me at once they vote they can sort by most popular comments. So users only get one vote ? Also how do you stop the sorting before vote the sort happens at the app level or browser level. If I have all the comments via the api I can't sort and nothing can stop me from doing so.

But I like the other ideas I also think it would be good to expand to 3 types of threads the two you listed but I would use technical vs normal and add a serious type for non-technical threads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yeah, I edited the answer forgot about case when user wants to vote on many comments, check it out now and see if your questions still hold.