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@Riot: How will you ensure that dissenting voices can be heard on these forums?

mi ramfan·11/21/2013, 2:44:21 AM·18 votes·1,688 views

I mean, as cool as the idea of "most upvoted posts get seen first is", it's not very conducive to hearing multiple points of view. That kind of system works well when everyone uses upvotes and downvotes the right way i.e. upvoting good posts regardless of whether or not they agree with them and downvoting troll posts/mindless raging/porn/etc.

However, we know that that's not really the case on Reddit nor on GD as it is right now. People are upvoting posts they agree with and downvoting posts they don't agree with, regardless of the actual quality of the post. And the worst voters out there just read the upvote/downvote count and follow the herd.

Being an opinionated person, I don't always agree with the majority of the population on General Discussion (although I do sometimes). What will your system do to protect my right to speak my mind and have my voice heard? How will your system differ from reddit (where anyone who disagrees with popular opinion quickly has their post sink to the bottom with downvotes and vanish) in order to accomplish this? And moreover, until you can guarantee that people like me will be able to make our voices heard, why even come to the new forum?

33 Comments

Pendragon11/21/2013, 9:02:49 PM8 votes

I think the trick here is to consider context. People should always see what's relevant and interesting to them - which means that if someone wants to see a logical well-rounded back and forth debate from two sides - that experience should exist. If someone wants to see a one-liner funny circle-jerk then that experience should also exist.

We can use reddit as a comparable since you brought it up

However, we know that that's not really the case on Reddit nor on GD as it is right now. People are upvoting posts they agree with and downvoting posts they don't agree with, regardless of the actual quality of the post. And the worst voters out there just read the upvote/downvote count and follow the herd.

This is true on some parts of reddit, and not true on others. take for example this discussion on /r/AskHistorians about trying to uncover some history about a sword.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13ri0u/this_is_short_sword_found_by_my_family_member_at/

Compared to this post on /r/AdviceAnimals about a guy saying something awkward to a hairdresser

http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1r4uum/oh_dear/

Both of the subsequent conversations are relevant to the context in which the discussion was started and neither would be the same in the other context - because each of the communities has their own guidelines and unique cultures. One of the really cool things we can do with this platform is create lots and lots of appropriate contexts where different things will appeal to different people.

For example - we could create a sub-community where you have to be Platinum or higher to post specifically dedicated to strategy discussion with heavy on-topic enforcement.

Being an opinionated person, I don't always agree with the majority of the population on General Discussion (although I do sometimes). What will your system do to protect my right to speak my mind and have my voice heard? How will your system differ from reddit (where anyone who disagrees with popular opinion quickly has their post sink to the bottom with downvotes and vanish) in order to accomplish this? And moreover, until you can guarantee that people like me will be able to make our voices heard, why even come to the new forum?

You have the freedom to speak, but you don't have the right to be heard by people who don't want to hear you. There should be a place where you can say what you want to say, and people who it's relevant to are going to engage with what you say.

Would we make a chat bar where anyone who wants to say something could blast a message to all players who are currently playing LoL? Of course not - that's ridiculous. Any forum or conversation platform is a discussion and content tool, not a broadcast platform. People treating it like a broadcast platform is one of the biggest reasons we're making many of these changes.

Daen11/21/2013, 3:50:48 AM5 votes

To my knowledge it's noted that zeroed or negative threads are overly punished, as currently a single downvote can potentially completely eradicate a thread.

Honestly, to an extent I agree. Without a bumping mechanic it's difficult for threads that're written well but not necessarily agreed with to move properly, and I propose a solution!

If comment volume (excluding the OP's replies) were factored into the Hot equation, this problem would be less of an issue. A thread with a decent amount of negativity around it could still be relatively high in the Hot listings if there's a lot of conversation around it, and in my opinion Hot really needs to be about the conversation not about the popularity.

djump11/21/2013, 3:43:08 AM4 votes

Yeah, this is a tough issue. I agree that the simple up/down voting system is lacking. In my mind an ideal solution would be having a couple different categories of rating. Things to the effect of "agree/disagree" "thoughtful/mindless" and "amusing/boring". I would certainly love to be able to browse posts with that kind of specificity.

But realistically, I think that's a little too complex and would be too visually cluttered to work in practice. I'm not sure if there is anything you can really do other than try to promote a mature culture in the community.

An interesting test in my mind - but one that would be difficult technically and only effective over time - would be to weight the up/down votes you see on a post according to who voted. And give more weight to votes from people that you have upvoted and less weight to votes from people who you have downvoted (neutral if you have not voted on them before). If you stuck around on the forum long enough, that could be really effective I think....if they could pull that off at all technically.

March of Dimes11/24/2013, 2:47:03 AM2 votes

You expressed my concern with the new forums perfectly. Yea, I'd like to know what stops such a system from degenerating into a popularity contest where we'll need to cater to the mainstream in order for our posts to have visibility. For instance, any sort of mathcrafting that contests what's widely accepted is usually downvoted instinctively by GD as something that makes them feel uncomfortable. Doesn't matter if they have a rational counterargument or not, it's downvoted because they don't like coming to terms with a previously-accepted fact being possibly being wrong.

Anything to keep such posts from getting scuttled to the bottom of the new forums?

agent tony11/22/2013, 7:33:31 AM2 votes

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Cupcake Bot11/28/2013, 6:38:41 AM1 votes

I'd like to just see a UI option on the forums like I've seen elswhere:

Sort by: Chronological order(ascending/descending) Popularity (ascending/descending)

I'm just saying.

VexingRaven11/25/2013, 4:19:22 AM1 votes

The simple solution is scrap the whole reddit-style nonsense and return to a chronological threading style like every other sane discussion forum on the planet. I don't come to the forums to look at what's the most upvoted, I come here to see what other people have to say and give my own opinion. I don't care what the mindless GD swarm thinks is the best post, I commonly disagree with it in fact. I'd rather see it in chronological order, as people reading through a thread tend to be influenced by it, and posts at the beginning will be vastly different from those at the end.

I think I understand why you want to do it this way: It makes longer threads more feasible, to a certain extent. But very rarely do threads actually get to be over 10 pages. By that point everything that needs to be said has probably been said. I don't think it's worth the tradeoff of turning discussion into a popularity contest.

eKatSS11/21/2013, 3:25:49 AM1 votes

I too do not like the voting system's effect on thread order. So I only browse the forum with "Recent" ordering. The simple fact of starting a seemingly uninteresting thread makes even less people read it, since it's buried at the bottom with a rating of "1" at the beginning.