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An article posted by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2014/09/15/downvoting-considered-harmful.html has interesting insight into moderation:
A study http://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/disqus-icwsm14.pdf [PDF] published in a journal of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence found that sites that have a "downvote" button to punish bad comments lock the downvoted users into spirals of ever-more-prolific, ever-lower-quality posting due to a perception of having been martyred by the downvoters.
Cory continues: What's more, positive attention for writing good posts acts as less of an incentive to write more good stuff than the incentive to write bad stuff that's produced by negative attention.
How Community Feedback Shapes User Behavior http://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/disqus-icwsm14.pdf [Justin Cheng, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Jure Leskovec]
Why Reddit sucks: some scientific evidence http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/09/why-reddit-sucks-some-scientific-evidence/ [Henry Farrell/Washington Post]
So... do you downvote? if so, why? Does this article make you reconsider your down-modding?
[Editor's note: I offer for your consideration and commentary our very own SoylentNews Moderation FAQ.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16 2014, @01:11PM
I would consider downvoting myself.
I know that sounds odd. But not everything I say is +5 insightful. In fact most of the time it is against groupthink.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 16 2014, @01:50PM
"most of the time it is against groupthink."
When everyone thinks alike, then no one is thinking. Can't remember who said that, a general, I think - I'll check . . . . Ben Franklin said it, and later George Patton said it again. Ahhh, Albert Einstein is also credited with it. There's no telling who said it first, but there are three great men who believed it!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Funny) by JeanCroix on Tuesday September 16 2014, @01:51PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16 2014, @01:53PM
whooosh
(Score: 1) by JeanCroix on Tuesday September 16 2014, @01:54PM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday September 17 2014, @12:24AM
When everyone thinks alike, then no one is thinking. Can't remember who said that, a general, I think - I'll check . . . . Ben Franklin said it, and later George Patton said it again. Ahhh, Albert Einstein is also credited with it. There's no telling who said it first, but there are three great men who believed it!
Yeah but none of those guys ever met a hipster.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 16 2014, @02:23PM
A +5 post, in my book, has a strong argument behind it, ideally with credible sources and evidnece, whether or not it matches or goes against groupthink. For example, if someone puts together a well-reasoned argument that Windows was a superior operating system to *nix, that would be worthy of an upmod in my book, even though I and I suspect most Soylentils disagree with it.
Also, watch out for "against groupthink". Groupthink is limited to those cases where a lot of people believe something that they cannot or will not independently verify, primarily because the people around them believe it. If almost everyone believes something different from you, but can and ideally has verified that view independently from sources or experiments outside the group, then odds are you're just wrong. Insisting that we don't fly because we're pushed down to the Earth by the Noodly Appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, isn't fighting against the oppressive groupthink of gravity, it's just wrong (or funny, if it's clear in the post that you know it's wrong, but watch out for Poe's Law).
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16 2014, @03:05PM
Most of the time though +5's are lazy 5's. Most of the time it is 'yeah I agree with that'. Instead of that really adds to the conversation. So that is why I will downvote myself. Its not because it actually is a good point but because I am spouting off my opinion. I many times do not use my points. Because I think the conversation is rated correctly.
Groupthink is limited to those cases where a lot of people believe something that they cannot or will not independently verify
As someone who has a degree in economics (a degree I argue is only useful for arguing on the internet). I see many bad decisions done by the group. Some of them are simply political (e.g. my team vs your team). Some of them are jealously (e.g. "I dont think someone should have that much money"). Some of them are greed (e.g. "I dont want that applied to me if I come into money"). Some of them are basic misunderstandings of what economics is (i.e. the study of scarcity and plentiful and the effects on value). The group however is not going to change its mind. Why should they? Its just an internet post and you are dealing with raw emotion not facts.
Insisting that we don't fly because we're pushed down to the Earth by the Noodly Appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, isn't fighting against the oppressive groupthink of gravity
That is more insulting of the readers intelligence and trying to pull the conversation into something you want to talk about. Which is the existence of God. There are plenty of discussion boards where you can take your pick of how you feel about it.
It is more of an affect that people are mostly smart. However, they are also wildly stupid. They learn how to do something very well they then misapply their knowledge of being good at something to thinking that they are good at everything.
So that is why I downvote myself. People misattribute a point they agree with, with something that should drown out all other POV's.