[Feedback] The Dreaded Downvote

Hyrum Graff·Jun 7, 2014·22 votes·563 views

TL;DR A single downvote shouldn't decide the fate of a thread; number of people who have voted on it should play a factor in its ranking in addition to the up/downvote counter.

###Scenario 3:

I make a forum post. It is upvoted by 100 people, and downvoted by 101 people. Balance: 0

I think it's pretty clear here: although the community's opinion on this post is mixed, it's a topic that a LOT people feel strongly enough about to vote on. Conclusion: this post deserves front-page visibility.

###Scenario 2:

I make a forum post. It is upvoted by 3 people, and downvoted by 4. Balance: 0

This scenario is a little more ambiguous - it could be a post like scenario #1, or it could just be a post that got some outlier upvotes. However, it's probably gotten enough visibility by this point that if it were a hot topic or an important issue, it would have gotten more votes. Conclusion: does not deserve high visibility.

###Scenario 3:

I make a forum post. One person downvotes it immediately. Balance: 0.

In this scenario, I could be a troll, who one person saw, downvoted, and moved along. On the other hand, I could also have made a good post, that someone didn't like. It's just too early to tell. Conclusion: Deserves visibility, but not as much as the post with 201 votes.

The point is, these are clearly three different scenarios that deserve three different display behaviors. But right now, scenario 3 kind of dooms a post to #2's deserved fate.

I have no clue what the boundaries between the scenarios should be (more likely, it should be a continuum). Residents of the CB, what do you think? How many neutral votes does a post need before it should be deemed not pressing? How many more before it becomes an important but hotly contested issue? Is my analysis even on-point at all?

Cheers,
Hyrum Graff

Edit: since this thread has become popular, I'm just going to drop in an @Tamat @Affordance @Bear Hat Alice (any other people on the CB team I should be tagging?). Also @Baconhawk, 'cause, you know.

So, @Rioters: What are your current thoughts on the issue? If you haven't decided what you want to do about it yet, where is it currently on your priorities list? Is there anything we, as a community, can do to help you deal with the issue better (feedback, analysis, etc)?

28 Comments

12talesJun 7, 20145 votes

Agreed.

I think that the weight of vote count when determining visibility would have to be determined in reference to the number of users who frequent the community and the ratio of views:votes. If there are 2000 users, and they all vote on ~half of the threads they read, then a thread with only 20 votes shouldn't necessarily be given exceptional weight. On the other hand, if there are 100 users who judiciously vote on only the finest or most reprehensible of content, that same thread with 20 votes should probably be given as much visibility as possible. So, since I don't have access to the actual numbers, I can't really suggest any specific benchmark.

Hyrum GraffJun 7, 20141 votes

I like the ratio of view:votes idea, and especially the idea of using the average ratio of views:votes as a benchmark.

PendragonJun 9, 20144 votes

Over time we want to make sorting a lot more intelligent than it is right now. We're working on building a large enough data set to start figuring out what types of factors really make content more relevant to a person.

We're definitely considering that downvoting might not be the best option.

Hyrum GraffJun 9, 20141 votes

I'll look forward to hearing what story the data tell. (Dev blog? Rito plz!)

######Thinking out loud: Are there any experiments you could run that would help make it clear what metrics are important for visibility (off the top of my head: what if you temporarily made there be 2 voting counters, one for visibility, and the other for your feeling towards the post?)

Hyrum GraffJun 14, 20141 votes

Hello! I'm wondering what you think about KSHarrison's comments, below.

Cheers,
Hyrum Graff

ModCaptainMårvelousJun 7, 20143 votes

I agree 110%, especially because of that one guy who hangs out and always downvotes people stuff in Fan Creations. Not sure who he is but posts will go from +3 to 0 in the span of under 3 minutes. Possible, but waaaaaaaaay too erroneous to be logical.

Hyrum GraffJun 7, 20141 votes

If they go from +3 to 0, either that guy has 3 accounts he's using to downvote (unlikely) or there are 3 people downvoting the thread (more likely).

Also I don't think we have to worry too much about fan creations; as long as we have riot girl, the redtracker will continue to give all the good ones visibility ;)

ModCaptainMårvelousJun 7, 20143 votes

It's not go from +3 to 0, it's go from +3 to 0 in under 3 minutes. Yes, it's possible three people read it in 3 minutes and then downvoted it. It stops being likely when this happens for almost every thread done. And actually, it's VERY easy to skew voting with accounts. You only need a level 1 account to vote and you can actually register 3 accounts on, say, EU/NA/OCN and rapidly switch from NA to EU to OCN and downvote in all accounts.

And you may not have to worry about it, but discrediting a problem because "OH don't worry about it" is just as bad as disregarding any other problem.

Hyrum GraffJun 8, 20141 votes

I didn't think about using accounts across multiple regions, that's a good point.

I wonder if Riot could implement some kind of "downvote fairy / smurf scanner" which would prevent people with known smurfs from downvoting the same thread with multiple different accounts.

ModCaptainMårvelousJun 8, 20141 votes

I actually wasn't aware about the multi-region cheat either. Someone had to point it out to me.

I think the easiest way of doing it is a system for repeated downvotes:

User 1 downvotes a post by User 2
User 2 gets upset and goes around always downvoting User 1
This system goes off and notifies that there is frequent downvoting of User 1 .
Someone (Perhaps a moderator) checks and see why there's an alarm going off.

From there, moderators can determine if this is malicious downvoting, if this is just downvoting someone you disagree with and/or someone trolling or if it's just a coincidence.

More often than not I'm thinking the former, especially if three-four of the same name appear on every thread downvoting everything by a specific user.

darkdillJun 10, 20141 votes

Yeah, it really sucks being one of the victims of this sort of thing.

Sir ArmaMalumJun 7, 20142 votes

I'm with 12tales, although OP is a decent step as well. Ratio of views to votes imho can better display a post's validity. Essentially if 5 people vote on a thread with only 20 views that's 1 vote for every 4 people, and deserves more attention to see if the trend of active voting continues. But a post that got 5 votes after 500 views may have the same score currently but hasn't been accepted well enough to warrant an opinion.

Essentially it makes active threads more visible without reverting back to bumping, and gives less weight to 'meh' posts that don't accomplish much. Not to mention, if this mechanic is advertised well, will also mean that ignoring hate/rage posts instead of swarming them with downvotes would be the best approach to stop them. Which, imho, would be a huge leap in re-conditioning the playerbase's approach to forum behavior. All in ideal cases of course.

There are drawbacks to it as well, like ratio adjustments that may be needed and if the community is simply inactive one day the system may get diluted to a point of confusion. First things first we would need more people :P

Hyrum GraffJun 7, 20141 votes

What do you think about this? The following is how people tend to vote on posts:

If a post doesn't matter to us, we ignore it. If we agree with it we upvote; if we disagree, we downvote. Additionally, we downvote threads that are unconstructive, or generally do not deserve visibility.

There's a problem here, because a downvote (let's say we're talking about an in-game change) could mean two things:

A change that we really don't want Riot to make.
A change that we don't care about, or a troll thread.

The second case is something that should rightfully disappear from the 'hot' listing. But the first is something that Riot should see, and currently this doesn't happen. You could argue that this means we need a paradigm change, to "Ignore Troll threads, vote on threads you care about, whether you agree or disagree."

This means that trolls, who post threads we don't care about, get few votes; people who post threads we care about but disagree with get a negative indicator, and people who post threads we agree with get a positive indicator. This makes it obvious in what order threads should be shown (note to others: ratio refers to the ratio of votes:views):

Threads that have a high ratio and a positive indicator.
Threads that have a high ratio and a negative indicator.
Threads that have a low ratio and a positive indicator.
Threads that have a low ratio and a negative indicator.

######Obviously there's some balancing to be done with regard to how recent a post is, and balancing between indicator and ratio; perhpaps # of unique people commenting should also be considered.

My only concern about this one is it relies on people changing their behavior, which is never a given - the only way to reliable change how people use the system, is to change how they interact with the system. Therefore, I propose the following change:

####Add a "Neutral" vote.

This way, the paradigm can be: downvote posts that you disagree with; neutral vote posts that you don't necessarily agree with, but think deserve attention. Note that this doesn't have to be the new paradigm, but introducing a new option gives you (Riot) the opportunity to tell people exactly how you intend each of the voting options to be used. Just make sure you know what that is, before you make the changes.

Sir ArmaMalumJun 7, 20141 votes

I agree it's there's no simple silver bullet and more factors being considered will be good if used properly. But I am, however, against comment activity defining any visibility at all. That was actually one my biggest issues with vBulletin. Me simply responding to someone increases it's visibility, meaning any constructive criticism that was still against the OP in fact contributed towards it's success. Making actual arguments (which would naturally spawn more responses and therefore more activity) were in fact impossible because even if you disagreed with a Sensationalist and/or incite-ridden OP the best thing you could do against it is not respond, meanwhile people who agreed with it (swept up in the yellow journalism) flocked to it and bump it as many times as they could giving a false sense of majority. I saw it again and again in GD and it was very disappointing.

Hyrum GraffJun 8, 20141 votes

Note: I edited my post in a major way; I meant to do this immediately, but was prevented from posting it for a couple hours, so your reply doesn't really make sense right now; I'll go back and edit my post again so yours makes sense.

To respond to yours, though:

First, I think that the number of unique people posting in the thread should define its visibility, not the number of posts. So bumping won't have any effect, and a circle jerk can't sustain itself without a constant stream of newcomers.
Second, I still think a downvote should have a negative effect on thread visibility, and a larger one than commenting; if you comment on a thread AND downvote it, you're still producing a net negatice effect on its visibility.
Third and finally, the reason I think comments should have an effect on thread visibility is that I see far too many threads that have really good discusion in them, that deserves visibility, but because people either disagree with the OP or haven't decided on their opinion (read: voted), the thread has really low visibility, which is just unfortunate.

Edit in here: Another possible implementation is this: commenting on a thread counts as a "neutral, but important thread" vote. However, if you comment on a thread, and vote, the comment has no impact on thread visibility. This way, if you want to comment on a thread AND downvote it, the comment won't be an unintentional bump.

Quantum WeebJun 7, 20142 votes

Agreed, this annoyed me so much. I spent an hour writing a long post about Quinn and one random person downvoted it. I couldn't find it on the front page anymore, 2 minutes after it was posted.

PhoenixSlayer13Jun 7, 20142 votes

That's really the major flaw of this system, and a big one that makes GDers hate the Community Beta. Upvotes and downvotes should be about more than "I agree" or "I disagree", they should be "this is well written and thoughtful" vs "OP is a troll".

Granted, this is a lot harder than it sounds, but I do quite like the ratio idea 12tales has suggested. Something at least to combat random downvoters.

Hyrum GraffJun 8, 20142 votes

What if different people had a (hidden) "unreliability" indicator, which made their downvotes mean less? I wouldn't implement it in the other direction, because giving certain people the power to promote threads isn't fair, but I imagine this might help with downvote fairies.

PhoenixSlayer13Jun 8, 20141 votes

That could be useful. Like how reports are weighted.

Hyrum GraffJun 8, 20141 votes

Didn't know that reports were weighted, thanks for the info!

GavranJun 9, 20141 votes

If the GD crowd ever moved here, handing out tons of downvotes isn't an indicator of handing them out frivolously though. It's an indicator that there's tons of things worth downvoting. The report system is able to check the frequency and also the veracity of your reports, and you need both to have an effect weighting system.

KSHarrisonJun 14, 20141 votes

What if there were a separate downvote option for "report this thread for trolling?"

In my experience, downvoting because you personally don't like something has had inconsistent results at best. Its primary useful function is for spam/troll threads, in which case we don't need a downvote option but a report-style option.

Hyrum GraffJun 17, 20141 votes

a report-style option

Which, we do have.

I'd be interested to hear your feedback on my thread here.

KSHarrisonJun 14, 20142 votes

Honestly what's the point of a downvote? It does two things:

It negatively skews the perception of everyone else entering the thread.
It can be used as a form of peer-modding by downvoting a topic until it's closed.

So what if downvotes were invisible to everyone but mods? The limit could still exist to auto close it, but no one can see the number of downvotes.

Continuing the point, we might want to discuss what upvotes do. I can think of two things:

It positively skews the perception of everyone else entering the thread (my intuition tells me that it has less of an effect per vote than downvoting).
It notifies other forumers of trending topics.

So...why do we need to be able to see upvotes as well? Shouldn't we be deciding which topics we read based on whether it interests us? At the very most, a flame icon could be used to indicate trending topics, but the number of upvotes isn't necessary.

Hyrum GraffJun 14, 20141 votes

That's an interesting point. Other people's thoughts? What would happen if you could vote on threads, but not see the actual indicator?

KSHarrisonJun 14, 20142 votes

Unfortunately, we aren't likely to get replies because the thread is trending too old. This is why I find Reddit style formats bad, because they cater mostly to casual players and not meaningful discussion. A productive thread that's doing well deserves to be in the spotlight for longer than a few days. This is impossible in the Reddit format, and it's unrealistic to expect us to constantly remake the thread and garner it attention.

Also, some of the greatest actions in this community came from persistent threads eg. all the skins of champions (battle bunny Riven , surprise birthday Fidd, pool party Ziggs etc.)

FlintfallJun 7, 20141 votes

I was thinking the same thing.

the Anarchit3chtJun 7, 20141 votes

Personally, I think they need to change the default setting to be changed from the "Hot" method. They should have a certain number of threads who have a good ratio of up/down votes on them appear at the top, but then majority of them should be filtered by the time of their posting. That way, the topics that are actually "hot" are still seen, and topics that are given down votes because someone disagrees with them or dislikes them personally actually see the light of day.