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Comment by falsestprophet | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, you never seemed terribly upset about the Paul Graham zealots.

It seems to be a different kind of upvoting. When I write something new it generally shows up on both reddit and del.icio.us/popular. Stuff about Ron Paul only shows up on reddit. What that implies is that people are upvoting it because they want other people to read it, rather than because they found it interesting themselves.

The reddit guys actually worried about this problem from the very beginning. That was why initially there was such an emphasis on voting as a way of training filters: if you voted for dumb stuff, you'd be punished by having to read dumb stuff. But the filter-training message never got through, perhaps because the filtering worked so badly for so long.

I don't think that is the case. Your essays are fundamentally different than the Ron Paul news stories. They have a limited shelf life. I don't really feel a need to bookmark the latest Fox News injustice towards Ron Paul or clips of his last debate or news that the s&p dropped 7% or news that Sarkozy won. I want to read about it; I think it is important; but I don't need to read about it 3 years from now.

But Ron Paul does end up on Digg and Technorati. Ron Paul posters are all over my campus. There are packed rallies and meet ups. I think that Ron Paul is important news right now. A lot of young, technically proficient people seem to agree. (These are a lot of the same people who like you by the way.)

It would make good business sense to implement some sort of clustering method. So, a great number of minority groups could happily use the site and view the ads.

But, if you were the editor of reddit, I would hope you would not censor Ron Paul's stories. The community would if it wanted to; if you search for Ron Paul on reddit, you will find that the vast majority of his stories have 0 points. This invisible hand of the reddit market would surely please Ron Paul.

edit: My god does that last sentience sound dirty...

You're 100% correct. While PG is likely genuinely dissatisfied with the current algorithms of reddit and digg, in this post, he was simply expressing helplessness about the many Ron Paul stories he has had to see on one of his favorite sites, and feels like he is responsible enough for the creation of the site to try to do something about it, but not really being able to do so.

For instance, Paul's argument did not take into account that voting up Ron Paul related articles is more about certain principles than about the man himself.

Some people like that Paul is pro-drugs. Some people like that he has the most consistent voting record. Some people like that he is libertarian. Some people like that he's fiscally responsible. That is not a single issue, unlike what PG has said in another post.

But beyond voting up unexpected political principles, readers also like to vote for articles that mention that media outlets reset or deleted polls and misrepresented their results, as well as those which criticize internet users for heavily favoring Ron Paul the most--which redditors and diggers feel is an attack on them or their intelligence.

Another reason users vote up Ron Paul stories is because users like rooting for the little guy.

Another reason is that users feel there is an injustice being done, such as that the main-stream media is not giving enough face time to all candidates.

Another reason has political roots--some users feel the other candidates aren't good enough, and regardless of what they think about Ron Paul, he has a consistent voting record.

Finally, many users vote up Ron Paul to vote for policy change, and realize there is little chance Ron Paul will actually be elected.

It has also become a self-serving prophecy in the main stream media that internet users heavily prefer Ron Paul and are responsible for online and text messaging votes, so those who use the internet think that's who they should vote for.

There are many, many reasons why Ron Paul is being selected. When articles with his name come up, there are a variety of reasons to vote them up. Those may not be good reasons to vote up those articles, but they're genuine, and I doubt there's a conspiracy.

I don't think anybody (reasonable) believes there's a conspiracy. PG's original point is that a large number of users seem to be voting for Ron Paul stories not because they find the stories interesting and want to read more like them, but because they want to help Ron Paul's campaign or express a political opinion.

The intent of reddit is that users vote for posts they find interesting and against posts they find boring. Any situation that leads to posts gaining or losing points based on other criteria is a sign of a flaw in the system.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I don't find all Ron Paul articles boring, but I only need to see one article about how Fox News tried to make him look bad, not 30. Some sort of grouping might help. Once they have tags, I think it would help to create a flagging system somewhat similar to Craigslist that would allow users to suggest tags for posts. Once a certain number of users suggest a tag, the tag is added to the post. That way, users could filter out tags they didn't want to see, and override anybody who tries to game the system.

"The intent of reddit is that users vote for posts they find interesting and against posts they find boring. Any situation that leads to posts gaining or losing points based on other criteria is a sign of a flaw in the system."

No, the intent of reddit was to get as many users as possible, whoever they are--even if they like Ron Paul stories and pictures of cats--and then sell it for a profit or go public. It's both the most logical conclusion and also the advice of Paul Graham, their investor and advisor. Is Reddit (and digg) not more popular than ever, and did Reddit not get bought? There is no stipulation in Paul's articles or speeches about making something the perfect x, y, or z, but about making something users want.

Paul says that News.YC is better, but it's because it has a much tighter focus with the addition of moderation and the aspect of sharing news and ideas with real people about real issues. It's also because those who have a lot of free time on their hands and want to go where many users are, have the choice of Reddit or Digg. If this site had been the first social news site, it, too, would have deteriorated quickly.

In theory it seems like del.icio.us should have much better content for this reason. But in practice making the front page of Reddit is good for 5-10k pageviews, whereas making the front page of del.icio.us is good for 1,000 at most. This raises the question as to whether the zealotry actually helps make Reddit more popular, or whether the low traffic of del.icio.us is due to bad design or some other factor.

I've thought a lot about this. The answer is that there are several senses of better. The stuff on del.icio.us/popular is "better" in the sense that people only bookmark stuff that means a lot to them. But lightweight stuff [PIC] is easier to click on and thus "better" in the sense of generating more page views.

That makes sense. Similar to that, a while back I posted a theory about why Reddit discourages insightful content:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566

It seems like the ideal social site would use a del.icio.us-like mechanism for promoting resources and reference type stuff, a techmeme-like system for promoting insightful and intellectually interesting stuff (based partly on the amount of discussion), and a Reddit-like system for promoting Lightweight Digital Refreshment. Right now each social site uses one algorithm for all types of content, which is why they're all broken.

Don't forget the advanced recommendation engine.

"Stuff about Ron Paul only shows up on reddit."

And Technorati.

And FaceBook.

and digg

And in debate polls and straw poll votes.

My take on switching to News.YC is that as there is no down vote, its not an "agreement" vote for me, its more that its just want I want to read. Because there is no down (unless its hidden?) my up has more value, I am more careful what I give it to then on reddit. Probably upvote half as much.

if reddit or any other social news is vulnerable, it's expected people would exploit it, and not their fault.

there are ways to avoid misuse.

...adsense suffered fraud, paypal suffered fraud...

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