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A comment on Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment. Parent comment

Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by jlg23 on Thursday May 21, 2020 @11:38AM (#23259720)
> But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned.

Kurt Tucholsky gave great advice on how to write a letter to a government agency that is applicable to all potentially heated discussions:

* write letter.

* put letter in drawer.

* wait three days. don't look at letter in drawer, write a new letter and send that one.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by castillar76 on Thursday May 21, 2020 @11:54AM (#23259970)
This is absolutely true, and it's unfortunate that the current format of sites like Reddit and HN discourage this kind of behavior. The comments that get the most votes are the ones that have been present the longest, which incentivizes early and fast, "shoot from the hip" commenting so your comments get into the flow early where people can see and vote on them. In most large subreddits, it's basically not worth your time to comment on anything more than 12 hours old or so: no one but the original poster (and sometimes not even them!) will see or read your comments.

I'm not sure how best to fix that. Some subreddits like /r/scenesfromahat use a timed-release system that only displays vote scores on comments after a fixed period (12 or 24 hours, I forget which). That at least helps reduce the first-comment effect, but it still means that anything after the votes are revealed is basically not going to be seen.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by AlexMax on Thursday May 21, 2020 @12:52PM (#23260924)
> I'm not sure how best to fix that.

At a certain scale, I think threaded conversations are incredibly difficult to follow without a voting system to sort it out, and once you introduce a voting system you end up with voting system problems as you mentioned.

I honestly think that flat forums are more fit for purpose. Multiple concurrent conversations end up being a bit messy, but there was at least a reasonable chance that someone would reply to any given post, since everybody in the thread was on the same page.

Heck, you can even gamify engagement with a flat forum - one of those that I still frequent allows you to "react" to any given post. It doesn't actually do anything except have a number beside the post tick up, but people still use it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by ardy42 on Thursday May 21, 2020 @12:20PM (#23260417)
> I'm not sure how best to fix that. Some subreddits like /r/scenesfromahat use a timed-release system that only displays vote scores on comments after a fixed period (12 or 24 hours, I forget which). That at least helps reduce the first-comment effect, but it still means that anything after the votes are revealed is basically not going to be seen.

Isn't that a standard subreddit setting? I don't think that actually affects the problem you were describing. I think it's only meant to help keep the vote tallys from influencing user behavior (e.g. bemoaning how many up/down votes some comment got, being extra motivated to karmawhore).

In my experience, quick-feedback scores seem to have a negative influence on people's behavior and emotional experience. IIRC, HN used to show comments scores, but stopped some years ago. I personally try to disable such "features" as much as possible.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by munificent on Thursday May 21, 2020 @01:26PM (#23261575)
> The comments that get the most votes are the ones that have been present the longest, which incentivizes early and fast, "shoot from the hip" commenting so your comments get into the flow early where people can see and vote on them.

Reddit's default "best" sorting algorithm is designed to mitigate that effect [1]. It does a good job of not biasing old comments in terms of sort order, but it doesn't help the related problem that older comments tend to accumulate the most replies so newer stuff can still get drowned out in terms of quantity of other content.

[1]: https://redditblog.com/2009/10/15/reddits-new-comment-sortin...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by ryandrake on Thursday May 21, 2020 @08:22PM (#23267316)
I guess one way to combat this is to just not worry so much about whether a comment gets lots of upvotes or whether or not it is even read. They’re fake internet points, don’t mean anything, and are not worth anything. If you feel you can contribute to the conversation, do so. Don’t worry about whether you’re commenting early enough or whether you are betting on the right “lucrative” thread. Your comment could be one out of a thousand—who cares? HN karma is not some kind of competition.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by staycoolboy on Thursday May 21, 2020 @11:53AM (#23259946)
Hey, that's a great idea!

Instead of getting warned or banned, a user is placed in a timeout box where all of their posts get a three day lag and remain editable, and when the user logs in, they must re-read their posts before proceeding to the site. Kind of an 'in-your-face' reminder not to be a troll.

It wouldn't stop the insane trolls, but maybe it would give the borderline trolls time to think.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment by CogentHedgehog on Thursday May 21, 2020 @03:53PM (#23264131)
I like this idea too. Also temporary bans are good for offering a cool-down period for users who generally are constructive but tend to lose their tempers from time to time.
[ Parent | on HN ]