Comment on A perfect? solution to fix reddit/lemmy voting system to make discussion healthy and productive.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
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.
legolas@fedit.pl 1 week ago
I asked ChatGPT about existing experiments on this matter:
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.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
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?