Re:The curse of the upvote
by davidw on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @05:07PM
(#267888)
This has been discussed a lot, but one element you left out is that the "wisdom of the crowds" doesn't work as well if you can see how people already voted (although you hint at it with a comment about a few downvotes being followed by many more). It creates a 'cascade' rather than genuinely independent assessments.
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The solution I came up with was just hiding the number of votes either way. Bump up good things and lower bad things, but otherwise keep it normal. It's not a perfect solution, but at least it stops the groupthink and leaves us with the dilution problem.
thesixtyone.com, a social music site, has a clever way of dealing with this: You can "bump" a song, but it costs you "points," which you see a return on if the song becomes popular. It turns upward momentum into a currency instead of something tossed around in large amounts.
Re:The curse of the upvote
by fauigerzigerk on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @02:32AM
(#268280)
But that only exacerbates the problem. People will start to vote for what they think others will like instead of what they personally like.
But that's how the stock market works. :) Trying to do better than that is futile.
Re:The curse of the upvote
by fauigerzigerk on Thursday August 07, 2008 @08:46AM
(#269581)
The stock market wouldn't work either if users of the products companies make would act like investors. Just imagine what they would buy :-)