PSA: You should vote more

Pendragon·Aug 28, 2014·71 votes·21,378 views

Summoners,

Here on the team that's working on the boards - we really believe that the best way to create a healthy dynamic community is to enable to community at large - and ultimately the individual - to control their own destiny. One of the tools that we've implemented to facilitate that is voting. Voting is incredibly important for a number of reasons and you should do more of it.

Voting controls how content is sorted in "Best" and "Hot" views. While it's not the only factor in placement - it's a significant contributor. When you vote on something you're validating, (or invalidating), the quality of the content and subsequent discussion - and hopefully increasing the quality of the experience for those who come after you.
Voting tells us what you care about. The goal of the boards is to provide you with the most relevant content. The more rich and robust information we have about voting patterns, the better we're going to be able to tune the sorting systems.

**How you should vote: ** My view - Vote with your heart. Ultimately knowing the impact of a vote - means when you cast that vote you're making a claim about whether content is worth seeing or a discussion is worth having. You should not vote based simply on whether you agree or disagree with a point that's made.

Questions to you: Do you view voting the same way? What are some things that you think we can do to encourage more voting

78 Comments

TeenbusAug 28, 20147 votes

I'm not quite sure how to word this, but there's a psychological difference between viewing a post that starts at 1 and remains at 1 and viewing a post that starts at 0 and remains at 0. This may be intentional, but I think that starting at 0 and not allowing users to vote on their own comment makes voting feel more merit-based. This is the tiniest thing because, logically, there's no difference, but it might make people feel better about the board system.

PendragonAug 28, 20147 votes

We may experiment with hiding early votes during the incubation period. Do you think that will address the issue?

InferoAug 28, 20143 votes

At it's root, positive reinforcement or consequences should be sooner rather later (immediacy is king) in order to impart the greatest probability of change.

However, I wouldn't throw out the hiding of votes during incubation idea as a whole. Perhaps hiding down-votes for X-period of time. For an earnest poster who runs the risk of being trolled this would at the very least gives him a running chance at seeking productive comments. While delaying the punishment from down-votes.

Mechanically delaying punishing experience via down-voting would be ideal. As I first stated, a consequence's temporal proximity, in this case being further from the publishing of the post should have a reduced effect and it will be more likely that the OP will post again in the future.

In summary, Incubation period for down-voting would be excellent!

PendragonAug 29, 20146 votes

We tried doing a little experiment with an equivalent of karma and the reaction was pretty negative (each player gets a score of say total upvotes).

InferoAug 29, 20143 votes

I'd say the largest difference/similarity here is a low, or perceived low karma score was just as punishing as down-votes. That's at least my guess not viewing the data.

Old Man TeetoAug 28, 20147 votes

I ended up downvoting this post.

I expected this to have something to do with politic's and voting for your representatives, thus taking a responsibility in the outcome of government.

Instead it was about forum post voting, so I took your advice and voted with my heart.

MyAccountYouGuysAug 29, 20142 votes

Not sure if serious, have an up vote and a wonderful day anyway.

PendragonAug 29, 201410 votes

As long as your vote was honest, that's all I'm asking.

EMOFRATPARTYAug 28, 20146 votes

I don't know if it's encouraging more voting as opposed to encouraging more quality voting.

How you should vote: My view - Vote with your heart. Ultimately knowing the impact of a vote - means when you cast that vote you're making a claim about whether content is worth seeing or a discussion is worth having. You should not vote based simply on whether you agree or disagree with a point that's made.

Couldn't agree more, my friend! However, it's very easy for people to instinctively react...especially to something they might disagree with.

So my question to you is: How do we encourage more votes that are based on the quality of a post and not someone's opinion of that post?

PendragonAug 28, 201415 votes

Actually consistency matters way more than "purity". The system is optimized around how people are behaving. If 20% of votes are nonsense for whatever reason, but we know that - we work around it. What would be bad is if it were 10% one day and 80% the next day, etc.

EMOFRATPARTYAug 28, 20145 votes

I agree in part, but with the way the current system is constructed a single downvote can derail a conversation. Not saying it will, but the power is there from the get-go, especially given how "Hot" is the default page for the Boards.

In trying to improve quality, you avoid that issue entirely. [EDIT: That issue is not avoided entirely, but it would help.] As a counterpoint to my own argument, more votes could increase the chance of that not happening...so that's where I agree with you.

Do I wish more people would vote? Yep. Do I wish more people would judge posts based on content itself versus their opinion of the content? Yep*2.

hugsabugsAug 29, 20142 votes

Just vote with your heart. Your heart will never lead you astray! (Lies)

SluicewayAug 28, 20142 votes

One way I think to encourage quality voting is to make responding to the post in question mandatory in order for a vote to be accepted. I have seen a few instances of a post being given a negative vote without explanation (some mine and some not - I call these troll downvotes in the comfort of my own mind). That way, if someone is going to up or downvote something, they will, hopefully, give reasons or counter arguments. If not, then the up/downvote and the blank reply can be removed, assuming, of course, the moderators have that power.

Edit: When I say that the mods can remove or modify content, I envisioned a system that flags a post if the discrepancy between replies and votes exceeds a minimum value, not that they would micromanage every post that exists on the forums.

12talesAug 28, 20146 votes

That sounds like a massive increase in potential workload for a feature that's centered around preventing users from contributing to the community. Kinda lose-lose, to be honest.

SluicewayAug 28, 20142 votes

You have, in a way, proven my point. I take it that you downvoted my post, but you also stated the reason why you have done so, thereby furthering the conversation (where merely downvoting and moving on inhibits conversation), as well as showing courtesy to a fellow player by letting me know why you elected to downvote.

Edit: Reading over this a few hours later, I realize that I misused the word prove, as one instance cannot be considered proof. What I should have said is this demonstrates my point. On the other hand, those who have downvoted and said nothing have less credibility, nor have they done anything to enhance the argument at hand, which says to me that they have not thought out any reason for a downvote (or upvote, in the case of the ones 12Tales has gotten beyond mine), thus such a down or upvote should have less weight.

InferoAug 28, 20145 votes

So if you're aiming at a positive environment, let's brainstorm methods to positively reinforce voting....cause reinforcing a behavior should by definition increase the frequency of future occurrence for the targeted behavior.

My quick thoughts:

A small dialog box "Thanks for voting! You're vote represents the importance of this discussion."
People like Red Comments in their threads (untested assumption), so some sort of notification that "A rioter has commented on a thread you voted on"
If a discussion becomes very active maybe a notification: "A thread you voted/participated in has reached 50 comments." Perhaps some incremental notifications. This not only reinforces voting but commenting as well.

Just my quick behavior analyst 2 cents.

EMOFRATPARTYAug 28, 20143 votes

Community badges would also be pretty cool. Little Big Planet 2, of all games, had a neat system where you would earn in-game rewards (albeit usually just badges or stickers) based on how much you voted and commented on other players' work, in addition to other community-focused metrics.

http://littlebigplanet.wikia.com/wiki/LittleBigPlanet_2_Trophies

Scroll down to "Share."

Rew711Aug 28, 20143 votes

Twice since I've posted something on this people would look at it but never give a response.

I've posted a champion idea on Akiro that got raised 3 votes but no one said anything about it so I don't know what else I should do about it.

I also posted a old vs new debate that only got one comment and no up or down votes...

I've been trying more to do polls since it allows me to see more on what they think on my post if they prefer no to comment.

DaenAug 28, 20145 votes

So as far as voting is concerned, there is a significant thing I'd like to address. Let's use this thread as an example.

This thread has a poll in it that essentially asks "do you think this content is worth your time?". The poll has (as of me writing this) 152 responses, 148 of which are positive. Let's now take a look at the vote totals, clearly this should reflect the poll...oh. The thread has 30 upvotes, as compared to the 148 positive responses to the poll.

Why do people prefer to vote on a poll rather than use the built-in functionality for voting on content? This is a multifaceted question of course, but I think it comes down to a few pretty important things:

Voting on someone else's content can make your own content less visible
Votes are very powerful
Voting is ambiguous

Voting on Someone Else's Content Can Make Your Own Content Less Visible

If I post a topic about something and someone else also posts about the same topic, the incentive is either to not vote on the other person's content or to downvote it, regardless of the fact I agree. Obviously morality helps to put a damper on this, but the fact remains that voting on others' content can lower visibility of your own.

Votes are VERY Powerful

With the current size of the community, a single vote can completely change the visibility of a given post or comment. If my opinion can completely hide a post or start it snowballing, it makes me very hesitant to vote.

Voting is Ambiguous

If I see two responses in a thread, both of which I like and both of which are +5:

Hilarious remark
Insightful response

This becomes a conflict of interest. I want the insightful response to have more visibility than the hilarious remark, but I still enjoyed both responses. How do I effectively convey both my opinion and my desire for content that I enjoy to rise?

PendragonAug 28, 20145 votes

Voting on Someone Else's Content Can Make Your Own Content Less Visible

Many voters are not posters. Most posters do not post content that heavily overlaps in subject matter.

Votes are VERY Powerful

We may experiment with hiding early votes during the incubation period. Do you think that will address the issue?

Voting is Ambiguous

I'm hoping that over time boards will develop a cultural and a preference such that one of these is preferred over the other. I can imagine contexts where either of these cases is the "correct" way to vote - but it really depends on building a pattern of that in a given community. Maybe a balance community should be super serious, but one about cosplay should be a little more loose.

EMOFRATPARTYAug 28, 20143 votes

We may experiment with hiding early votes during the incubation period. Do you think that will address the issue?

10-15 minutes of "buffer" would be incredible.

PendragonAug 28, 20143 votes

What about like an hour?

Linna ExcelAug 28, 20143 votes

A day would be better.

Hyrum GraffAug 29, 20142 votes

At Boards' current activity level, agreed. But when it's moving at GD pace...

Maybe instead of "for an hour," the metric should be, "for 200 views."

InferoAug 29, 20143 votes

I'd only hide down-votes

Rafael MerloFeb 27, 20152 votes

For the same of the anwser of Tamat in this post: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/tjRUtkyh-voting-on-boards-content?comment=0002

In every of the 3 points Daen put I believe that your stance doesn't solve the problem. That's why:

My vote is to down you and up him, because I agree that this Reddit style board put a validity date on every thread, and only the ones in the first hour get upvoted and late well thought and constructed posts will be drowned in the unupvoted depths, that's why I intentionally downvote almost everything that has more than 1 in their number.

As a prove of what I'm saying I, that am coming "about a month" later, have wasted 10 minutes of my life writing something that almost nobody will ever care. I really would wish for you to hire Rioters especifically to manage feedback in the two hands of we-you. But please, fix your Narrative Team first, they are too huge of a problem that it comes to be dangerous for the health of this game.

wRvwVveWhZAug 28, 20144 votes

People will always get butthurt about anything so I appreciate your post and encouraging but it simple won't change anything (sorry for being too harsh but I still love you)

MyAccountYouGuysAug 28, 20142 votes

There's no need to use 'butthurt'(especially bolding it) as that's asking for trouble, but you have a point. People will get mad over the tiniest things and post stuff they either really shouldn't or in a way that's unproductive. Unfortunately, that's part of the deal with freedom of speech-people can say what they want and technically nobody can stop them, but it doesn't mean we have to listen to them.

wRvwVveWhZAug 28, 20142 votes

I actually bolded it by accident :u First day on boards

MyAccountYouGuysAug 28, 20143 votes

Just gotta delete those asterisks(*) and the bolding goes away, friend. Oh, and welcome to the boards! Hopefully this place grows into something great.

Lumus AvatarAug 28, 20144 votes

What does it say about a thread or people in general when toxic commenters are having their insulting posts upvoted while those same toxic people downvote all the people who would contribute meaningfully to a discussion? I've been noticing this behavior a lot lately and it's made several threads feel very unfriendly and I am avoiding more threads because of the presence of these insulting people. What suggestions might you have to combat these occurrence which can severely hamper open discussions?

PendragonAug 28, 20143 votes

I'd love to see other examples of this if you have them so we can explore the behavior

MrBuffingtonAug 29, 20142 votes

I posted about one example here, I don't want to name-drop unnecessarily but I can go into more detail if you would like.

PendragonAug 29, 20142 votes

Yah - please give me the specific example. Link to the post - etc

MrBuffingtonAug 29, 20142 votes

This is the other thread I mentioned, specifically my comment(s) that most likely incited the activity on this thread (which, I sort of was on tilt in that first thread, so probably not the best-handling by myself). The votes have shifted a bit, but the (imo) inflammatory comment I responded to in the latter thread was up by 5 votes, while my thread dropped from 7 -> 2 upvotes at the same time (I was refreshing rather frequently, so I am fairly convinced the two are linked). I wasn't following the activity on the first thread too closely, though if you have access to the voting histories, I suspect you could find similar situations. Thanks for your help, please let me know if I can do anything else to help

TrylobyteAug 29, 20144 votes

The way I see it, there are two types of people who vote on posts.

People who believe a discussion is good, well-written, and worth having, even if they don't agree with it.
People who upvote posts they agree with or posters they like, and downvote posts they don't agree with or people they dislike.

There should ideally be some way to mitigate the effects of #2, since I'm pretty sure they're more numerous than #1. I also believe that votes gain power through herd mentality - The more upvotes it has the more likely people are to upvote it, and the more downvotes it has the more likely people downvote it. These two principles combine to form the 'circlejerks' are a big part of what makes General Discussion so difficult to navigate these days. How could we prevent that from happening here?

Linna ExcelAug 28, 20143 votes

Do you view voting the same way? What are some things that you think we can do to encourage more voting

I'm pretty meh about voting. I'll up vote and down vote things sometimes, but not everything I reply to. I'd probably remove the down vote feature, but that's just me.

MyAccountYouGuysAug 28, 20145 votes

I think downvotes are an integral part of the system. Say some guy decides to s**tpost a new thread or drop a troll-y comment, or more hopefully, posts a constructive suggestion you happen to 100% disagree with. If that's the case, there's no need to reply to it and thus give it more coverage when you'd rather it didn't get any, tempting as it may be. You simply downvote and move on.

Linna ExcelAug 28, 20143 votes

Downvoted your response because reasons and I'm moving on.

How does that make you feel?

MyAccountYouGuysAug 28, 20145 votes

I feel fine, that's how the system works. Since you don't feel the need to explain why, it doesn't matter to me. Hell, the forums don't tell me you've downvoted anyway so unless you reply I'd have no idea you'd done anything :P

JingerbeardmanAug 29, 20143 votes

I have a hard time putting much stock in the voting of posts... It is great when that informative post makes its way to the top, but all to often the funny quips drown those out. Sure I enjoy the funny quips but they don't really do much when it comes to the discussion. I want a way to separate the funny posts from the serious ones and the current upvote/downvote system does not provide that.

mi ramfanAug 29, 20143 votes

The problem isn't the number of downvotes vs upvotes, it's the timing.

The first five or so people who view your thread decide its fate. If any of them choose to downvote it, your thread is going away to the depths of page 5 or 6. It doesn't matter if person number 6 might have gotten something out of your thread and supported it if person #5 already made sure that 6+ can't find the thread unless they're specifically looking for it.

I guess I'm fine with "vote counts are hidden for the first hour of a thread/comment's life" so long as they also don't have any weighting effect for the first hour of a thread's life.

PhailRaptorAug 28, 20142 votes

Something that might make a difference here is tying "votes received" to a player's "vote power" and the various factors that determine how quickly discussion falls down the list.

Toe expand on that, if you are posting things that are consistently voted down, over time your own votes will be worth less compared to the "standard" value. This could potentially continue to the point where your posts more easily drift downward when you reach overwhelmingly minute voting power. Conversely, if you are being voted up a lot by others, over time your votes become worth more, and your posts are more resistant to drifting down.

This will ultimately ensure that the people the community has deemed worthy of being heard (quality posters, people who's views have been deemed significant) can be assured that their content will be seen, while those who are deemed to be sub-standard (mindless shitposters, people prone to raging, pointless trolls, etc) will not take up prime real estate both on the Board in question, and in the discussions themselves.

PendragonAug 28, 20148 votes

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that "people" should be funded with visibility instead of content. There are ways that we should be able to predict if content is good or bad - but past performance does not guarantee future success, and a visibility model that rewards early gaming for permanent future gains I think can lead to big disaster.

I think there are certainly cases though where we can know if what someone posts will be/is really bad, and we can build those into the visibility structure.

I'd recommend reading up some on the abuse of Digg's power-user system

DerPunktAug 29, 20142 votes

I don't realy like the idea of content being evaluated by others for me.

I often read the prejudice that the german community is not voting on the quality of a post but rather on wether they agree to what it says or not. This leads to a problematic envirement where critical comments are not being taken seriously or new Ideas are bound to be crushed right after they were posted due to the fact that they adresses a topic which was already adressed eventhough they posted some new concepts to deal with the topic. I am afraid this is not just a german problem, as many people claim, but this is a problem world wide.

What is a high quality comment? Is it a well written text, free of any typos other mistakes? Is it a great written rethorical comment with rathe less actual content compared to it length? Is it sometext with a great idea but poorly wirtten so it gets hard to read and/or understand? Is it all of the above?

I have a problem to decide wether content is of high quality or not. I am involved in the localization board of the german boards and very much interessted in the Player Behaviour system, alot of content I'd claim to be of low quality supplies a player who is not as much well informed on those topics with major insights. Normaly I would not Vote for stuff like that at all. But no you want me to decide to either upvote such discussions which do not provide me with insights but the rest of the community, or to downvote them because overall they are just a bunch of descriptive posts of other discussions which already evolved further - so not state of the art anymore.

So what is a high quality post? Who do I decide? Where is it my private opinion on a certain topic, where is it an objective decision wether or not the post is a win for the community? I can only decide subjective and by that I might vote down stuff which others would see as good content.

TamatAug 31, 20144 votes

I don't realy like the idea of content being evaluated by others for me.

You may enjoy the Boards more if you sort by recent. This way, the content you'll see will be newer, and likely not voted on much by the community. This is usually a better option for those who enjoy helping content evolve into it's final form, but at least this way no one will be evaluating content for you. ;)

I often read the prejudice that the german community is not voting on the quality of a post but rather on wether they agree to what it says or not.

This is one way to look at it. Truth be told, there are tons of ways to vote. Some vote based on how good they think the content / discussion is, others vote because they agree or disagree. As Pendragon stated, as long as you use your heart, it'll be a positive contribution to the Boards, and subsequently, the community.

What is a high quality comment? Is it a well written text, free of any typos other mistakes? Is it a great written rethorical comment with rathe less actual content compared to it length? Is it sometext with a great idea but poorly wirtten so it gets hard to read and/or understand? Is it all of the above?

Bingo, and then some! Beyond discussions, there's a lot of additional criteria for quality of community creations (videos, comics, fanart, cosplay, music, etc). We think that a big part of quality is relevancy. Is the content relevant to something going on in the community? Is it the beginning of an awesome new meme that should be relevant to more members of the community? Will it entertain or make peoples day better? If you keep that in mind, and contribute to the content accordingly, then you'll be making an impact.

Another way to judge is as an individual. Did it give you any feels? Are you finding yourself in agreement or strongly disagreeing? Go with your gut! Once you've found something worthy, do us a favor and vote on it, comment on it, or share it with your friends! If it's awful content that doesn't belong on the Boards, then nuke it with a downvote. There are so many ways to contribute to the process.

Btw bro, there were several typos in your post. Not very high quality if you ask me. :p I upvoted you anyway because your intent was good. :)

Arbitrary Teemo : Teemo

DerPunktAug 31, 20142 votes

I see your point.

But isn't this creating an atmosphere of populism? Popular opinions get upvoted, the rest not, or unpopular stuff even downvoted, to not longer have to deal with it. You just have to think "I don't like this" but you don't even have to say why. Isn't this creating a community that gets a little dull and ignorant? And just think of the rather insecure people who could be prevented from posting a great, but maybe controversial idea in fear of being downvoted. Some people are crushed by stuff like this.

Wouldn't an upvote system suffice? A system where you only mark content as well constructed and stuff, to at least have no negative atmosphere but only a positive and a neutral? Why do we need downvotes? In GD we used them to, community controlled, close threads. Now we have a report button. Do we still need the downvotes?

So I guess not everybody shares my concerns connected to general voting on content. I like to vote on decisions, yes or no, everything should be an unbiased discussion. Is it maybe at least on option to get rid of downvotes?

P.S.: Hope this time I got rid of most typos :D that's what's happening when you have to change in between languages all the time and just stood up plus didn't gave your coffee time to fully unfold its wakening effects.

TamatSep 2, 20143 votes

Why do we need downvotes? In GD we used them to, community controlled, close threads. Now we have a report button. Do we still need the downvotes?

Yes, for a couple of reasons.

Downvotes will help separate the bad content from the good. You seem to see it from a specific angle, that this will only create a culture of populism; however, I think that will be a more niche result. More common than that, downvotes will make it less likely for you to stumble on content that is poorly crafted. Let's say for example, something big happens in the community. This something causes a bunch of people to create new discussions in the Boards. Some of those will be lackluster, and a few of them will add value, and inspire participation. Because you guys have the ability to downvote the junk, that'll reduce the amount of crap that you need to go through to find something that will have a positive impact on your experience.
Downvotes will give you guys the ability to reduce the number of people who see content that should be moderated. When scammers post phishing links, you can downvote it in addition to reporting. This in theory will reduce the number of people who see the content before it is moderated. The same is true for anything else that should be moderated.

I honestly feel like downvoting has way more pros than cons, but we certainly recognize the downsides, and will continue to talk about ways to mitigate those.

Hyrum GraffAug 31, 20142 votes

This is one way to look at it. Truth be told, there are tons of ways to vote. Some vote based on how good they think the content / discussion is, others vote because they agree or disagree. As Pendragon stated, as long as you use your heart, it'll be a positive contribution to the Boards, and subsequently, the community.

Doesn't this make it very hard for you to implement effective sorting that's ALSO difficult to abuse, though?

I Eat ThyroidsAug 31, 20142 votes

So like, I noticed there seems to be a problem in that people both want to raise visibility of issues they care about (and lower stupid issues, like troll posts) while also wanting to show their opinion in a simple manner (I agree or disagree with this idea). They want to do both of these things without conflating them together. So maybe there should be a system that incorporates 3 or 4 types of vote? Like, maybe there should be a vote for "care about and agree", another for "care about but don't agree" and a last for "this post is worthless and everyone should ignore it". You could even add a fourth "I care about this but also don't have an opinion either way". It's a bit more complicated, but it also gives less ambiguity. Another point is that there should be an easy way to "join" threads. Like if me and some other person are actually talking about the same thing, maybe we should be able to somehow combine those posts (at the agreement of both parties, probably with something like a "merge request" button) and thus combine their visibility while also reducing "clutter" on the boards. Unrelated to any of this: red posts tend to accumulate on a single thread, and when I go through the red tracker I'll have like a ten comments on some thread I don't care about (@Lyte please tell me why I was banned again, or something like that) blocking out anything interesting from rioters. You guys should have the red tracker report which threads recently had a rioter show up in them without "repeats" for every time a rioter wants to say something in that thread. Either that or at least don't include the stupid threads of people trying to explain why they called someone a @#$& in game and get their chat restriction removed.