Comment by cootsnuck
2 months ago
The RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite) browser extension indirectly does this for me since it tracks the lifetime number of upvotes I give other users. So when I stumble upon a thread with a user with like +40 I know "This is someone whom I've repeatedly found to have good takes" (depending on the context).
It's subjective of course but at least it's transparently so.
I just think it's neat that it's kinda sorta a loose proxy for what you're talking about but done in arguably the simplest way possible.
I am not a Redditor, but RES sounds like it would increase the ‘echo-chamber’ effect, rather than improving one’s understanding of contributors’ calibration.
Echo chamber of rational, thoughtful and truthful speakers is what I’m looking for in Internet forums.
That’s what everyone living in an echo chamber (and especially one of their own creation) thinks they’re in.
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flat earth creationists would describe their colleagues the same way.
a group of them certainly is an echo chamber; why isn't your view?
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it depends on if you vote based on the quality of contribution to the discussion or based on how much you agree/disagree.
I don't think you can change user behavior like this.
You can give them a "venting sink" though. Instead of having a downvote button that just downvotes, have it pop up a little menu asking for a downvote reason, with "spam" and "disagree" as options. You could then weigh downvotes by which option was selected, along with an algorithm to discover "user honesty" based on whether their downvotes correlate with others or just with the people on their end of the political spectrum, a la Birdwatch.
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Echo chambers will always result on social media. I don't think you can come up with a format that will not result in consolidated blocs.
Reddit's current structure very much produces an echo chamber with only one main prevailing view. If everyone used an extension like this I would expect it to increase overall diversity of opinion on the site, as things that conflict with the main echo chamber view could still thrive in their own communities rather than getting downvoted with the actual spam.
Hacker News structure is identical though. Topics invite different demographics and downvotes suppress unpopular opinions. The front page shows most up voted stories. It's the same system.
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More than having exact same system but with any random reader voting ? I'd say as long as you don't do "I disagree therefore I downvote" it would probably be more accurate than having essentially same voting system driven by randoms like reddit/HN already does
That assumes your upvotes in the past were a good proxy for being correct today. You could have both been wrong.