New post grace period

Sir ArmaMalum·Aug 5, 2014·6 votes·408 views

Very rough, sudden idea that I believe may have been discussed in scattered posts but I'll just mention it anyway.

#The Problem

Random/inappropriate downvoting killing a thread before it can get any traction whatsoever. The infamous '0' in the first 5 minutes of a post being up that tells you anyone looking at the 'hot' ordering will never see your post. Whether it's a victim of a downvote spree from the front page (another issue but we'll shelve that for now) or another forum goer with a grudge seeing an opportunity for some anonymous payback, a single downvote can kill a thread, while it takes several for a post to rise above the rest.

On the flipside, we also have to understand the point of a downvote, a way to express a negative opinion towards the overall use of a thread. In other words a way to say "this thread is a waste of time and others shouldn't be bothered to read it". When dealing wit the number of forum posts GD handles everyday this can be a godsend for sorting through the random, unnecessary, troll or incomprehensible posts that plague large communities like this.

So we need a solution that preserves the role of a downvote, but protects newer posts from that early "first blood" downvote.

#Solution

A certain length of time after posting (let's say, for now, a single hour) a post cannot be brought below a visibility score of 1. Downvotes are still recorded and brought into effect normally after the grace period, requiring no 'return trip' by anyone wanting to keep a post down, but allowing any good post to have equal chance with other recently added posts to accrue upvotes.

Thoughts?

19 Comments

ploki122Aug 5, 20142 votes

Hmm... I really feel like it's pretty overkill for something as simple as "seeing new posts more". Since hot already has an algorithm to take in accoutn upvotes, downvotes and novelty, wouldn't it simply be easier to say "can downvotes account for less for newer posts while browsing 'Hot'?"

DaenAug 5, 20141 votes

The infamous '0' in the first 5 minutes of a post being up that tells you anyone looking at the 'hot' ordering will never see your post.

I've noticed this, but I think it might be a bug. I created a thread yesterday that got a downvote within the first 5 minutes and it totally dropped off of Hot, but it kept reappearing and disappearing throughout the day until I commented on it.

A certain length of time after posting (let's say, for now, a single hour) a post cannot be brought below a visibility score of 1.

If assuming people are perfect and would never abuse the system, this would work fine. That being said, it would also allow threads that should very clearly not be allowed to exist to be visible for an entire hour unless a moderator takes action. I could make a thread that is just "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" which would sit there for a full hour unless deleted by a moderator, and with a massive community it's just not feasible for moderators to do everything.

Unless player moderators. Pls.

Sir ArmaMalumAug 5, 20141 votes

....full hour unless deleted by a moderator, and with a massive community it's just not feasible for moderators to do everything.

I completely agree, but I think there is some room for creativity for this. Like, say, a report of any kind chips off time from the grace period so your example post of "AAAAAAAAAA" would be deducted 20 minutes of grace time for every report, meaning after three reports those downvotes would kick in immediately. All of these are still example times, of course.

DaenAug 5, 20141 votes

Functionally speaking, this essentially transfers the purpose of downvotes into reports.

I think a more ideal solution would just be to make the first downvote or two worth less in the general calculation. If this is in fact a problem, a slight tweak of the algorithm should be able to (in theory) solve it.

Sir ArmaMalumAug 5, 20141 votes

The main idea is to give new posts even ground as far as time and prevent unfortunate random circumstances from putting them below the threshold of "1", that being the score of new posts and have all new traffic layering on top of the posts.

When you think about it, that first downvote, even tweaked, on a new post has more power in it's single action than several upvotes because of how a post's visibility is affected. And the idea here is to mitigate that early downvote's power without taking away the use case of a downvote.

DaenAug 5, 20141 votes

When you think about it, that first downvote, even tweaked, on a new post has more power in it's single action than several upvotes because of how a post's visibility is affected.

Assuming this is the case, wouldn't it then be easier to just tweak the power of that first downvote down than to create an entirely new system to do roughly the same thing?

the idea here is to mitigate that early downvote's power without taking away the use case of a downvote.

Arguably, replacing downvotes with reports for any amount of time is taking away the use case of a downvote.

Sir ArmaMalumAug 5, 20141 votes

Assuming this is the case, wouldn't it then be easier to just tweak the power of that first downvote down than to create an entirely new system to do roughly the same thing?

Easier, yes, but it eliminates the actual use of that downvote, which could have been a perfectly valid use. My idea has more of a time delay on downvotes. They have the same amount of power but the effect itself dowsn't come until after the grace period.

Arguably, replacing downvotes with reports for any amount of time is taking away the use case of a downvote.

If it was completely replaced sure, but couldn't you also say spam/rage posts like the example we're working with also warrant a report anyway? After the grace period is over the downvote will come into effect and bring the post down in the list, so arguably it's still good to downvote the post while you're reading it, even if the effect isn't immedite there will still be an effect.

Hyrum GraffAug 6, 20141 votes

Functionally speaking, this essentially transfers the purpose of downvotes into reports.

Not really. See, the fundamental problem here is that downvotes have multiple meanings.

This is an example of where I'd love to turn this comment into a new discussion. As it is, I'm just going to drop the link.

I think a more ideal solution would just be to make the first downvote or two worth less in the general calculation. If this is in fact a problem, a slight tweak of the algorithm should be able to (in theory) solve it.

The only issue I see with this is that, if a post gets, say 50 upvotes and 50 downvotes, I think they should all be worth the same. Though you could also argue that by this point it doesn't matter.

If you're going to argue that the first few votes should count less, but then count full after a certain number of total votes, I don't think that's significantly different from what Arma is talking about.

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20141 votes

Notification: added in the link to the "let's talk about downvotes" thread in my other reply to this copy - now the first part of my reply makes sense.

MackleDogeAug 5, 20141 votes

Does something like this really need to exist so I can't instant downvote "OmgZZ rito no loss 4gvn!!!11!!!" threads off of the Hot sorting? If people are really that interested in making sure they don't miss threads, they can use the Recent sorting. I'm not personally seeing this as a valid use of resources or time, nor an actually needed feature.

Sir ArmaMalumAug 5, 20141 votes

I agree, but at the same time a single downvote from someone on a spree could kill the next single best idea for a skin or game mechanic. An hour may be too long I admit, it could be just five minutes for example.

As for using recent, I agree that's easily the case now, but thinking ahead to where (hopefully) the majority of vBulletin has migrated over the recent ordering isn't going to be all that useful with the insane amount of traffic, which also means the 'hot' ordering will have exponentially more use and significance. And as I mentioned to Daen there can be a bit of creative tweaking around this baseline feature for obvious spam/rage posts that everyone will agree is a waste of time, like a report removing fractions of the grace period, allowing the inevitable downvote to come almost immediately after say two or three reports. Which with high traffic would probably be in a few minutes tops. Of course, this is just me brainstorming I'll admit I have barely thought this through, just getting words down right now.

MackleDogeAug 5, 20141 votes

general principle here

Downvote sprees, downvote bots, personal vendettas, and inappropriate voting are all things that occur on any board or forum that uses a voting system. By using a system in this format that somewhat ties if not completely ties visibility to said voting system there are going to be issues with threads getting or not getting visibility.

single best idea

If it's a really good idea, people will see it and share it, pretty simple to me. I don't think a bunch of trash threads should get free visibility just because a single thread might have a not trash idea. At some point we have to look at what the potential gains are costing, and I'm not seeing this a a net gain.

larger community

Things won't be seen. Just how forum boards with a large community work. Even with this system, some things will get buried that shouldn't and some things will get a bunch of visibility when they don't deserve it.

Summary

This sort of idea is a good one that works if the community creates threads and votes on those threads responsibly. The fact that you have to come up with this idea to begin with tells me the community doesn't fit that description. At the end of it, I think that the Boards team have larger priorities to work on and more important areas to develop and spend resources on.

Sir ArmaMalumAug 5, 20141 votes

I completely agree that ideally this feature shouldn't be needed, as well as it being a generally low priority issue. It's truly not too much of an issue right now, but I'm thinking of potential problems as the traffic rises and the solutions of such. This isn't the greatest solution I agree, and in fact is probably not a good idea I see after this discussion, but then again that's why I posted it. ^_^

Earl EulrichAug 5, 20141 votes

I honestly would favour getting rid of downvotes alltogether and only allowing upvotes...so it´s still possible to highlight threads you think have a positive impact, but threads don´t get downvoted just because that button often gets (ab-)used as a "i disagree"-button.

Sir ArmaMalumAug 5, 20142 votes

The problem that creates is that it puts 'trash posts' (rage threads, spam threads and generally posts that are a waste of time to read) on even weight with new posts, as well as creating a huge load on the moderation team. Downvotes are a form of self-regulation for the community, or at least that's the intent imho.

Earl EulrichAug 5, 20141 votes

I´d favour that problem over having posts randomly downvoted that would have been worth reading I think. You can downvote posts without much thinking, but for upvotes (atleast I myself) take a lot more consideration if I really want to support that post, so for me an upvote-only forum would actually somewhat make sure that the self-regulation is reasonable and not affect-driven.

mi ramfanAug 7, 20141 votes

Let the people who like downvotes keep their downvotes, but make downvoting only affect the visible score of the post; upvote count and post count determine where the post is located on the browsing page.

It's a good compromise for both sides. We already have a "report" function that fulfills the function of the downvote in getting rid of porn, ads, and trolling without silencing legitimate posts. Now people who get a kick out of downvoting or who have one issue that they spam downvotes on can still downvote without silencing unpopular opinions. It's a win-win.

CupcakeTrapAug 7, 20141 votes

Huh. Just saw this post, shortly after posting a similar idea on another thread.

My version is subtly different: rather than enforcing a visibility floor, I propose that downvotes are simply ignored for the first phase of a thread's life.