This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Downvoting doesn’t have any substantive effect on the visibility of a comment, though. On Reddit, sure, the downvotes are visible to everyone in real-time, and if the downvote ratio is big enough, the comment becomes hidden by default and has to be manually clicked on to become visible. Here, though, the comment “score” isn’t even visible to anyone, including the author, for a full 24 hours, and even after that the comment is just as visible as it was before.
I routinely downvote posts I disagree with - even well-written and effortful ones. I do so not to discourage the author from posting further about his or her views, but because I want that author to have a realistic idea of how relatively popular those views are in this space. I think that this information is useful to me as it pertains to my own posts. I eagerly await being able to see the score on my own comments; not only for the cheap dopamine rush, although that’s certainly a factor, but also because I want to see how well I’m doing at persuading people. If I got a lot of downvotes, it’s probably because I’m not doing a very good job - or, at least, I didn’t with that particular comment - of bringing people around to finding my way of thinking persuasive.
Sure, maybe it’s because the comment was poorly-written or poorly-argued, and maybe a better version of the same comment would have gotten a better score, but as a rule of thumb it’s useful to assume that the score is a reflection on whether or not people agreed with the sentiments I expressed. That helps me, because it means I can craft future arguments around things that resonated with people, and maybe de-emphasize or be more elective about expressing certain ideas that are turning people off.
Yeah, sure, it’s a bummer when a comment I thought was a banger gets a lot of downvotes, but I’d still prefer that to one that got very little engagement, positive or negative, at all. Ideally the downvoters would accompany their votes with an argument, but realistically people don’t always have time or anything profound to say, so the downvote is just a way to casually express “your idea is not popular here, if people like me have any say in it” and move on. I do this myself. It’s not the greatest use of the forum’s mechanics, but it works well enough.
In other words, you are trying to build consensus?
There's no rule about how you can/should vote (we wouldn't really have a way to enforce it anyway), but admitting that you do this certainly affects how I view your participation here.
No, because I can’t control how other people vote. I see it more as providing real-time information about the current ideological balance of the community. I’m not trying to build anything, but merely to provide a snapshot. Just like when people show me, through voting, a sort of snap poll on where my own views fit in the ideological balance here.
Look, obviously I would love it if everyone here came around to agreeing with me about What Needs To Be Done about the issues I care about. In that sense, I am trying to literally “build a consensus” by actually persuading people to agree with me. So is everybody else here. But I’m not trying to use my upvoting/downvoting to alter other users’ perception of the validity of a particular comment. Again, they can’t even see how I voted until a full 24 hours afterward, which means hopefully we can avoid the sort of downvote spirals that take place on Reddit.
I think that for the most part, people interpret votecounts as "people want to see stuff like this", even if it doesnt effect visibility anymore. And I think this interpretation is correct, in the sense that most people vote like this, too. If you use your votes differently, youre propably not sending the signals you want.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well, since AFAIK, themotte.org never defined what the arrows mean here, I can't say you're wrong, but this community emigrated from Reddit, where the arrows did have an intended meaning
I think it's fair to assume that on this Reddit clone, the arrows have inherited that meaning. In my opinion, a measure of value is better feedback than a measure of agreement because I want to optimize for good participation. Optimizing for agreement is how you get an echo chamber, or audience capture.
"So don't do that then, and ignore the downvotes", I assume you would say? Sure, but I think you admit the vote score do matter. That "cheap dopamine rush" exists and affects how people feel about their posts. I worry when I see threads like the pronoun one where someone is patiently laying out a minority opinion, and getting negative reinforcement for it.
I found myself agreeing with both of you and my synthesis is that I shouldn't fuss over the regulars, but strongly avoid downvoting newbies to groom them into staying
Yeah I'm a bit like you - how I vote depends on various factors, and how new they are is a big one. I generally try to upvote users I haven't seen a lot of, posts that can lead to interesting conversations, and posts that put a lot of effort into explaining their beliefs and how they reached them - even if I think the logic in the post is supremely flawed. With regulars on the other hand, I vote primarily on the strength of their argument, and downvotes I save for either extremely poor arguments or disingenuousness.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Finding out how popular one's positions are is definitely pertinent information, but up/downvoting doesn't do a good job of conveying that. Of the posts of mine that I notice get downvoted, they tend to be short questions that don't get answered. Absent other indicators, my conclusion in this context tends to be "damn people really don't like it when I ask about this, maybe because it undermines their positions?" (to be clear, I'm not saying this is necessarily a correct conclusion). And if I'm concluding that about some downvoting, then the indicator is too muddled to be a reliable source of info.
This drives me crazy, I usually make an effort to upvote people who ask good questions because no one else ever seems to, here or on reddit. I think asking the right question to the right post is extremely useful for coaxing out relevant information in discussions and the fact that people downvote or ignore well placed questions always irritates me.
More options
Context Copy link
I’ll have you know that my persecution complex relies on those sweet, sweet downvotes.
They downvoted him because he told the truth!
I upvoted you to deny you your martyrdom. This was a crushing setback for you on the memetic battlefield. Admit ideological defeat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link