It was probably suggested before, but the topic is not raised too often so here goes the solution:
- We introduce two types of threads - normal and “controversial/heated/political” (probably there is a better name)
Normal type is for “technical” discussions, where the best answer is accepted as best by some very large percentage of people, lest say 90-99%. The treshold could be a matter of discussion, but you get the idea. So that would be questions like “How to fix dead radiator in PC”, “Whats best way to do this or that”
Controversial is for discussion where there is potentially lot of disagreement, but also where there could be just some disagreement, but we want to hear other points of view. So all of the political things, questions about genders, etc, everythign that creates heated conversation. Probably could also be used for humourous topics.
The thread type is set while opening a thread, but it can be changed any time during the discussion by forum moderator
- We leave normal type discussion as they are on reddit/lemmy whatever. For controversial first when user enters the thread, all of the comments are sorted in random order. All of the comments vote scores are hidden. Now user casts votes in “one go”. Only until they finish casting votes, other votes are visible for them. Changing already casted votes on these threads is NOT POSSIBLE. They unfortunately cant vote on new comments which were added after they voted. THey are only allowed to vote once. TBH users dont usually come back to threads after they visited them once so its not like we make some common behaviour impossible
This way we eliminate sheep behaviour and demand making their own decision by user. And we force user to be responsible for making a decision. Someone might argue that we sometimes change mind, but it doesnt matter, cause the number of times we change minds is really tiny and the gained changed behaviour is far more valuable. After everything is visible for user they can now sort by most popular comments which is now available.
That should be it. We also might introduce thread freezing if necessary.
What do you think? And also, since lemmy is open source, do you think there is a change that some bigger instance migght create a fork that introduces some of these changes as an experiment?
Why do people obsess so much over how many up/down votes a comment gets? On reddit the reason you didn’t want to be down voted was because you would get timed. You would have to wait 10 mins to hours between comments. You would be blocked from posting in certain communities.
Here it does nothing except rank you comment slightly lower. The threads are not exactly so huge that you’re getting buried.
Often a ton of down votes isn’t sheep behaviour its just the majority opinion. I think we can give people enough credit that they aren’t down voting things because they are down voted they are down voting them because they don’t it.
I asked ChatGPT about existing experiments on this matter. Sheep behavious is real:
Key Studies: The “Hidden Votes” Experiment (Muchnik et al., 2013)
One of the most well-known studies on this topic was published in Science by Muchnik, Aral, and Taylor. Researchers manipulated upvotes and downvotes on a social news site (similar to Reddit) with 100,000+ users. When an initial upvote was artificially added to a post, it increased the likelihood that others would upvote it by 32%. Downvotes did not have the same effect—they were often corrected by other users. The experiment suggests strong social influence in voting behavior. “Bandwagon Effect in Online Voting” (Lorenz et al., 2011)
This study found that when people saw public votes before casting their own, they converged towards the majority opinion. The effect was particularly strong in subjective judgments, like ratings of art or music. YouTube and Social Proof (Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006)
In a controlled music experiment, researchers manipulated download counts for different songs. Songs with high fake download numbers became even more popular, showing strong herding behavior. “Hidden Likes” Experiment on Instagram (2019)
Instagram conducted real-world A/B testing by removing visible like counts in several countries. Initial reports suggested reduced social pressure, but Meta has not released detailed statistics. What Happens When Votes Are Hidden? Some studies show that without visible votes, people rely more on personal judgment instead of following the herd. However, others found that herding still happens when other subtle signals (such as comments, engagement, or reposts) remain.
Ok that study found people were more likely to upvote upvoted posts. They did not find people were more likely to downvote downvoted posts.
So I think it proves my point and kind of goes against your entire post. People arent down voting posts mindlessly they are doing it because they dont like the post. So why do we need to rework how down votes work?
@legolas@fedit.pl Very reasonable proposal, but, I think the controversial posts not showing votes, should be the default for all posts. There’s a lot of brigading, especially in some Lemmy groups.
On ActivityPub everything is public, brigadiers will use software that shows them votes even if you hide it in Lemmy UI/API.
That may be true but in practice adding friction to a given interaction makes it happen less, and that makes a big difference at scale. You don’t need to prevent anyone from doing it, you need to change the dynamics that result in it happening in a group large enough to cause a problem
@misk@sopuli.xyz
Sure, good point
@legolas@fedit.pl
It’s got some good ideas but you lost me at once they vote they can sort by most popular comments. So users only get one vote ? Also how do you stop the sorting before vote the sort happens at the app level or browser level. If I have all the comments via the api I can’t sort and nothing can stop me from doing so.
But I like the other ideas I also think it would be good to expand to 3 types of threads the two you listed but I would use technical vs normal and add a serious type for non-technical threads.
Yeah, I edited the answer forgot about case when user wants to vote on many comments, check it out now and see if your questions still hold.
