Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference in social news sites?

Posted by amichail on Thursday May 14, 2009 @02:10PM
from the self-post dept.

It makes no sense statistically. Perhaps it's done that way to attract more users and encourage voting at the cost of fairness?

( 7 comments | on HN )

Re:Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference i... by noodle on Thursday May 14, 2009 @02:26PM (#609308)

could you elaborate more? i'm not 100% following. huge difference as compared to what, or in what sense?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference i... by twoz on Thursday May 14, 2009 @02:38PM (#609351)

I'll take a stab a reframing the OP's question.

Why not start posts at zero karma instead of one?

Does the current initial karma setting (1 point) affect user behavior in any way?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference i... by amichail on Thursday May 14, 2009 @02:40PM (#609356)

In many subreddits, a single up vote would send a submission to the front page.

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Re:Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference i... by mooism2 on Thursday May 14, 2009 @02:50PM (#609370)

Would these be subreddits where there were not that many votes being cast? Or not many links being submitted?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference i... by amichail on Thursday May 14, 2009 @02:55PM (#609376)

Yes, they are less popular ones. In many of them, the upvote from your submission alone is enough to send the entry to the front page. This happens with subreddits that are more popular than you might suspect.

All this appears to encourage submission and voting by giving you unreasonable power.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference i... by noodle on Thursday May 14, 2009 @02:53PM (#609372)

time is a consideration, at least in part. don't know enough about how its taken into consideration at reddit, or here on HN, but it clearly plays an important part.

fewer votes over a very short time will tend to weigh more heavily than more votes over a long time.

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Re:Why is it that a single vote can make a huge difference i... by mooism2 on Thursday May 14, 2009 @03:29PM (#609436)

Reddit's ranking algorithm: http://uggedal.com/reddit.cf.algorithm.png

and HN discussion of it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231168

[ Parent | on HN ]