Consumers and curators: browsing and voting patterns on Reddit (2017)

>We also show evidence of cognitive fatigue in the browsing sessions of users that are most likely to vote.

Interesting, so if it holds that cognitive fatigue shows up from interacting with content over long sessions, it means that sites that optimize for engagement could end up draining people and reducing the quality of their interactions.

If this holds true across all social media platforms, this explains a lot.

"We find that most users do not read the article that they vote on, and that, in total, 73% of posts were rated (ie, upvoted or downvoted) without first viewing the content."

My goodness I hope that HN is different in this respect, but perhaps I am just engaged in wishful thinking here.

>It is important to be cognizant of potential sampling bias. The only way to collect this data is for users to self-select, i.e., opt-in, to the project. Self-selection bias, especially in online polling, for example, will often skew responses in favor of the most motivated group.

Credit to these guys for stepping out in front of the most glaringly obvious shortcoming of the study. I was hoping the Reddit admins would have given them access to data that they would then retroactively ask the users’ permission to use.

I like the figures in this paper. Does anyone know how they are made? Raw TikZ, or is a template available?