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Hide comments in downvoted threads option #443

Closed frediy closed 9 years ago

frediy commented 9 years ago

From Matthew.Fallshaw on September 03, 2012 12:54:53

To discourage troll feeding…

Let a "downvoted thread" (DT) be any comment with -3 or lower karma and all descendent comments (thus a karma 30 comment replying to a karma 0 comment replying to a karma -4 comment are all DT comments since they all have -3 or worse karma or share a -3 or worse karma ancestor).

In article views: collapse all DT comments, regardless of their individual karma. In /comments, /topcomments and the side-comments sidebar: don't show DT comments at all, regardless of their karma.

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=345

frediy commented 9 years ago

From zildjoh...@gmail.com on September 03, 2012 12:17:01

Do you want to keep the karma penalty on downvoted comments, or remove it?

Cc: zildjoh...@gmail.com
Labels: Estimate-2

frediy commented 9 years ago

From Matthew.Fallshaw on September 03, 2012 12:45:12

Cc: lukep...@gmail.com yudkow...@gmail.com seventee...@gmail.com

frediy commented 9 years ago

From Matthew.Fallshaw on September 03, 2012 14:33:37

Status: Authorised

frediy commented 9 years ago

From shmi...@gmail.com on September 14, 2012 17:01:31

Change the definition of DT as follows:

Let a "downvoted thread" (DT) be any comment with -3 or lower karma AND its author has negative 30-day karma [then continue as before]

This is to avoid accidental censoring of controversial comments (and self-censoring) by the forum regulars in good standing, as well as to prevent abuse by sniping (quick downvoting by three members or even one member with two sock puppets).

Additionally, this virtually prevents a race condition where a comment is downvoted while a reply is made, yet not karma loss warning is shown.

See http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/eb9/meta_karma_for_last_30_days/7aq8 and http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_worst_argument_in_the_world/7fg1

frediy commented 9 years ago

From yudkow...@gmail.com on September 14, 2012 20:30:47

I'm not sure this should be an option, except maybe for moderators like Alicorn who want a complete Recent Comments feed to ban outright spam. The basic problem with trollfeeding is that there are people motivated to engage in it, they damage the community as a whole, and either they don't want to stop or they find it hard to stop. It's not clear to me that LW benefits from being divided into a clean area and a PVP slum. I suppose we could develop the preference option and then remove it if necessary, but I wouldn't want that to slow down development.

There's also the question of whether to remove trollfed comments from Inboxes, but that makes even me feel slightly nervous - besides, an exchange between two people that nobody else sees is only very slightly damaging.

Does anyone have any strong reasons why LW is better off six months from now if there's a preference option instead of just an automatic behavior to hide such comments? If not, I would just like to see the behavior.

frediy commented 9 years ago

From robot...@gmail.com on September 14, 2012 22:11:51

Maybe only hide the following kinds of comments, so that good subdiscussions are not affected? (1) Highly downvoted comments; (2) Any comments by authors of highly downvoted comments, that are located under them inside the same thread; (3) Any comments replying to the comments in (1) and (2).

(I expect this kind of solution won't work in the sense that people who participate in big bad threads will care about them enough to save permalinks and follow from there, so the discussions won't stop; I think stopping these discussions is more important than hiding them, as no automated solution can significantly repaint the community culture, the culture itself should be shaped.)

frediy commented 9 years ago

From zildjoh...@gmail.com on September 20, 2012 08:03:50

Has a consensus been reached on this, so I can start development? Here's what I need answers/confirmation for:

frediy commented 9 years ago

From yudkow...@gmail.com on September 20, 2012 09:00:54

On reflection - since these changes are noticeably more extreme, let's increase the threshold to -4 instead of -3.

frediy commented 9 years ago

From robot...@gmail.com on September 20, 2012 12:36:36

(Comments should be removed only from recent comments pages, and collapsed on other pages, if I understand correctly. Probably not affected at all on user pages.)

frediy commented 9 years ago

From Matthew.Fallshaw on September 20, 2012 23:52:24

John, this comment doesn't modify your instructions. You should proceed as Eliezer has described.

Eliezer, rather than remain silent and be assumed to agree, this seems to me to be a bad idea:

  1. I don't understand why it's important to stop discussions you don't want rather than just push them to a place where only willing participants can see them.
  2. As described this will be confusing to users some who see comments they made or responded to disappear.
  3. This will continue to punish good behaviour (users explaining downvotes to those receiving them).
  4. … and it smells really bad - it's pattern matching as a bad idea.

While I think this will suppress some of the behaviour I think you're trying to suppress, I think it will do so at an unnecessarily high cost.

If your goal is to improve the quality of visible discussion on the site it is not clear to me that you are choosing the simplest or least aggressive path to achieve that goal. It is not clear to me what other useful goals this would be the simplest and least aggressive path to.

frediy commented 9 years ago

From yudkow...@gmail.com on September 21, 2012 10:16:04

  1. Because I don't think LW benefits from having a PVP server. Trollfeeding behavior is addictive; people experience a strong drive to engage in the fight, even though they don't feel any sense of pleasure or reward afterward. People may also feel obliged to respond to a comment that they think lots of other people will see.
  2. The comment should still be there in the post, though collapsed.
  3. If you have lots of karma, fine.
  4. ...I can't really process this in consequentialist terms; it seems like ordinary forum maintenance to me.

What's the proposed thing that's simpler? Just hiding in Recent Comments without charging a fee?

frediy commented 9 years ago

From weida...@gmail.com on September 22, 2012 01:14:58

Eliezer, some of your own recent comments were voted below -4, presumably due to people strongly disagreeing with them. If this change had been in place, then very few people would have seen those comments and the followup discussions probably wouldn't have taken place. Is this simply a cost you think is worth paying, or do you expect people to change their voting behavior to not downvote to -4 except for trolling, or something else? Why don't you like shminux's 30-day karma idea for reducing such false positives?

frediy commented 9 years ago

From yudkow...@gmail.com on September 22, 2012 06:40:50

Certainly my own hedons wouldn't have gone down if the ensuing discussions didn't take place. It's not clear to me that LW would have been worse off if those discussions took place. And yes, I'd wistfully hope for some amount of community norm-change around, "If it's worth replying to, clearly it can't be so bad that I ought to vote it down to -4" just as I'd hope for some amount of realization that "If it's voted down that low, I should just ignore it instead of replying to it", but those may both be wishful thinking. My mental model of Professor Quirrell is saying things like, "You expect people to change? Are you eleven years old, Mr. Yudkowsky?" If people could be moved by persuasion, we wouldn't need code.

Meanwhile people are still replying to eridu, his karma is down to -243, I'm still manually going through his user profile and banning everything that got voted down, and I'm about ready to start deleting the replies by the trollfeeders, since this feature isn't ready to be rolled out.

frediy commented 9 years ago

From Matthew.Fallshaw on September 24, 2012 00:02:00

In comment 12 by project member yudkowsky:

  1. Because I don't think LW benefits from having a PVP server. Trollfeeding behavior is addictive; people experience a strong drive to engage in the fight, even though they don't feel any sense of pleasure or reward afterward.

If downvoted comments are hidden by default, in posts and the Recent Comments feed, then: … all in a dark corner the user voluntarily approached. You're describing those users who have chosen to hunt out these discussions and are having them in relative private. I think you're proposing that we spend resources to prevent consenting adults from playing, in private, in ways you find distasteful.

People may also feel obliged to respond to a comment that they think lots of other people will see.

If downvoted comments are hidden, who will expect lots of other people to see them?

  1. The comment should still be there in the post, though collapsed.

You answered John's question "Should these comments be removed from the page completely, or merely collapsed by default?" above with the word "Removed". If you've changed your mind here, can you please instruct John that you have done so?

  1. [… continue to punish good behaviour (users explaining downvotes to those receiving them)] If you have lots of karma, fine.

?!?

What's the proposed thing that's simpler? Just hiding in Recent Comments without charging a fee?

Hiding downvoted comments in post body and Recent Comments. No fee.

Owner: yudkow...@gmail.com
Cc: Matthew.Fallshaw

frediy commented 9 years ago

From yudkow...@gmail.com on September 24, 2012 00:31:18

Comments should be completely removed from Recent Comments and collapsed, but not removed, in the post.

frediy commented 9 years ago

From weidai.w...@gmail.com on September 25, 2012 12:03:40

I want to point out that people use the Anti-Kibitzer may unknowingly vote a comment down to -4. And also that people currently use downvotes to sometimes express disagreement (and not to indicate bad comment quality), and after this change may be incentivized to use other ways to express such disagreement, which may worsen the SNR.

frediy commented 9 years ago

From wjmo...@gmail.com on October 02, 2012 19:07:35

Merged and deployed.

Status: Fixed

frediy commented 9 years ago

From robot...@gmail.com on October 05, 2012 04:33:44

This possibly resulted in Bug 353 https://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=353

frediy commented 9 years ago

From robot...@gmail.com on October 05, 2012 04:51:47

Another related bug: https://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=354