Comment by paul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paul | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm not convinced. What if the upvoting really is representative of a large number of the users?

I don't upvote that often on reddit, but probably half of the time (at most once per day) it is for a Ron Paul link (and it's always something that I read and liked).

RP may be marginal at the national level, but that doesn't imply that he's marginal at all other levels as well. And of course, "...great new things often come from the margins, and yet the people who discover them are looked down on by everyone, including themselves. ... But the best thing of all is when people call what you're doing inappropriate. I've been hearing this word all my life and I only recently realized that it is, in fact, the sound of the homing beacon. "Inappropriate" is the null criticism. It's merely the adjective form of "I don't like it." So that, I think, should be the highest goal for the marginal. Be inappropriate. When you hear people saying that, you're golden. And they, incidentally, are busted."

That said, news sites probably need some kind of clustering in order to ensure that there is a diversity of topics on the front page. Google news and Techmeme both do something like this, of course. There's no reason reddit couldn't.

I notice that Paul Graham hates seeing Ron Paul articles, but Paul Buchheit does not.

Maybe PG is used to seeing his name in Reddit since its beginning? Paul Buchheit does not expect any articles to be about him, so when he sees " Paul " in an article, he does not feel an instinctive reaction of curiosity followed by quick repulsion.

I'm kidding, of course, but it could definitely be a learned reaction of seeing many Paul articles to be about oneself.

> I'm not convinced. What if the upvoting really is representative of a large number of the users?

My bet is that up voting is definitely representative of a large number of the users, but that many are voting out of support for Ron Paul instead of because they read and liked the linked article. You could argue this not necessarily a problem. I guess it becomes one if it hijacks the focus of the site for the remainder (or majority?) of users.

Judging by the kneejerk pattern of the voting on the comment thread, it's largely zealots.

I dunno. I'm beginning to hear Ron Paul evangelism from RL friends, mostly over FaceBook. I'm pretty sure they didn't get it from Reddit.

I suspect it's mostly because people are so fed up with everything connected to the current Washington establishment that they'll vote for anyone who sets himself up as an outsider. Ron Paul's been one of the few candidates that's consistently against the Iraq war; many people will vote for him on that basis alone, regardless of the rest of his positions.

I think it's telling that the friend who's been trying hardest to convince me to vote for RP is a pro-choice Green Party atheist. When I showed him Ron Paul's recent voting record (which included a bill to eliminate all federal laws on abortion, a bill to privatize a large federal wildlife refuge, and a bill to prevent laws on school prayer), he said "It doesn't matter. He's against the Iraq war, and that outweighs everything else." He's willing to set aside every other political belief he has for that one issue. I suspect a decent-sized portion of the American electorate is the same.

And this is supposed to refute what I said? Single-issue voters are the ultimate zealots.

No. It's supposed to point out that nothing you've said refutes what Paul said. Ron Paul's supporters may be zealots and yet still be representative of a large number of voters.

I've been a Ron Paul zealot since years before Reddit existed, but I'm not one of the people voting up the Ron Paul stories. (It's a rarity that I use my up arrow on Reddit any more at all.) My one data point does not make a trend, but I think it's pretty plausible that the sort of people who support Ron Paul are just the same sort of people who find their way over to Reddit. Ron Paul is a libertarian, and it's nothing unique to Reddit that tech-oriented internet forums tend to be populated disproportionately by libertarians.

The disagree&downvote pattern on comments is definitely a problem, but I think it's a different problem and it seems to happen on a wide variety of stories. (which isn't to say that there's not zealotry involved, just that I don't think that's the only thing driving the RP stories)

It could also be argued that your comment was completely off topic for the link, kind of like the guy who always complains about the xkcd links on reddit. Would you argue that xkcd is driven by zealotry, or are there just a lot of reddit users who who actually like seeing xkcd? (and again, I'm one of the people who occasionally upvotes the xkcd comics)

never thought i'd see the day where a pg comment gets voted negative :)

I think zealous voting is indeed representative of the current userbase:

For a long time the quality and diversity of links in Reddit was quite stable, reflecting the strong core userbase. Major systemic issues [1] led to more junk-food like submissions edging in, and slowly the forces involved drove out the original core audience, long-september style. This process continued gaining momentum, until fairly quickly lurching to the new stable state we find it in today. A similar process can be observed in wikipedia: those who care the most, have the most time, and the most tolerance for internet drama naturally dominate: the young and the passionate.

1. a) Reddit conflated two distinct actions into a single vote: training the recommendation engine (vote on what you like/dislike) and judging quality (what is good/bad). This lead to a culture of voting on taste, tending the system away from voting on quality, partly because of: b) The nature of these systems, like the mainstream media, is to tend to the lowest common denominator as audience size increases. This should not have been surprising.

How to avoid these issues? Paul's suggestion (somewhere else on this page) about automated topic clustering is a good one. A similar approach I favor is encouraging clusters of users to form naturally, using a collaborative classification/filtering approach; even something as simple as allowing three tags per link could do this. Once clusters are established, it should be much easier to allow users to opt-in or out of the clusters they like/dislike. The editor/oracle approach and/or weighted voting should also work, but seems like a lot more effort.

[ahem. I feel like I should mention I'm somewhat biased, as I'm now working on something experimental in this domain]

Note that reddit comment voting is very kneejerk because it doesn't count for anything. It isn't associated with your karma score.

And because the average user is now 15.

Is there any data that shows this?

paul> I'm not convinced. What if the upvoting really is representative of a large number of the users?

pg> What if the upvoting really is representative of a large number of the users?

What if most of the users on reddit are, at this point, zealots, due to the effects of crowding out more moderate users?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com