Who’s up for a live field test of down-voting?
A year ago, we expressed our views poo-pooing the utility of “down-voting” disliked content. We said specifically were concerned that packs of mischievous users operating in cahoots would be more damaging when voting down than when voting up.
However, at various times in internal meetings the topic has come up again as a solution to a few problems, mostly fixating on the amount of precision our community has to express themselves and whether a pack of users actually has more control in the status-quo up-voting only environment. These waves of internal debate and some external observations regarding the “enjoyment” communities take in having more control (e.g. Digg vs. Reddit) have eroded us back into a willingness to test this utility.
For reference to some past discussions, I'll post links in an answer here.
There are also a couple of feature decisions that you'll want to read below.
Timing-wise, dev-team hopes to be ready for a trial of this next week.
Are you game?
by
snapster
asked 11 months ago
selected past discussion links on this topic:
http://deals.woot.com/questions/details/f547acce-76eb-4175-a37f-77897e6fbd7a/can-woot-staff-please-integrate-the-ability-to-down-woot-a-deal (see @shawnmiller’s forward thinking even here)
http://deals.woot.com/questions/details/ca30e950-1109-4d52-8563-d40e4e27ba28/why-is-there-no-vote-down-need-to-be-able-to-down-vote-the-items-that-are-not-h (in which you see my more close minded reply)
two known feature decisions:
1. You can only down-vote in a balanced relation to your upvotes within a 24 hour rolling period. We may tweak whether you have to bank some upvotes first, or the precise balance ratio as we go to drive the healthiest site activity.
2. An item "Going Popular" is an irrevocable system event for a variety of reasons. Once popular, it may be voted down to oblivion on it's Woot counter, but it will not become unpopular (i.e. it won't go off the front page). You must work in advance to proactively not like something before it becomes popular to effectively curate the popular page.
I'm not crazy about this feature at all, but that said, if it has to be, I like your two safeguards.
But then the Zippys will just downvote all of the "not a deal" items out of spite.
Sounds good to me. Though I feel like it'll be a little abused, like in OhCheri's case. Something tells me she's going to start getting some downvotes :(
i'd be down for a field trial. give it a week and see how it goes.
I'm a little skeptical (I suppose I always am) about how this is going to go. That means more buttons I can press, which is always dangerous.
I think it's important to be able to express negative opinions, but the capacity for abuse may be too high.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.
Let's give it all she gots. We'll find that great white piece of blubber if it kills us.
@capguncowboy: Zippys gonna hate. . .
My deals are doomed.
I've found that the Woot community is always extremely hesitant towards site changes. I mean, it's only a test right? If it concludes in chaos then they can just revert it back to the old way.
I for one LOVE testing periods =D
I love to hate. Bring it.
I have mixed emotions about this, and can see some abusing the down vote feature...
We don't seem to have much "hate" on deals.woot so I can't see many situations where you would need to down vote someone unless it's a spammer
Love the idea. lets do it.
Looks like this could lead to problems. I'm in.
@promyst: I wouldnt waste my downvote on a spammer, I'd use a tattle.
It can't hurt to try.
Perhaps users lower on the reputation totem pole should need to bank up votes depending on their rep to be able to down vote, no down votes for new accounts (white triangles) for 3 days after creation, and the higher your rep is, the less votes (if any) you'd need to bank to down vote. It seems like a fail safe to me to prevent a flood of user accounts from mass down voting out of spite.
Too much?
I'm down for a little "Kiss n Tell"
A thumbs up and thumbs down system works on many other sites, I don't see why it wouldn't work here.
Couple of quick questions -
Will deals be allowed to go negative? I see many duplicate posts that people vote up because they do not read the comments and if the deal were allowed to go negative, maybe people would stop and see why.
Will down-voting also have a 5 min window?
@tiamat114: New accounts can't vote unless they have bought something.
I have studied and I am ready to take the test! Lets go 4 weeks!
@snapster I see a way to beat one safe guard. You want me to blast it here or PM on woot side? I am not sure it is obvious.
Would posting a deal count towards the up vote in the balance? Cause frequent posters could down vote competition.
"...Cause frequent posters could down vote competition."
This is what I am worried about, invisible warfare
@theoneill555: Ah, never knew that. That's even better!
I am also skeptical of the abuse this system could generate. People downloading deals because it might not be something they like, or not what "they" consider a deal. I like it now that they just don't have to vote for the deal. But who knows - a field trial will allow all of to see if it would work.
also, as @theoneill555 asked, will there be a five minute window? I think there should be.
@caffeine_dude: great - please shoot it out in the open. we may have thought of it already but no harm here in advance of trial
Dumb question - I have never noticed that one can "downvote" unless one voted on any particular thread of comment. In other words, just because I vote FOR XYZ I can then go to WRT and take away a vote?
@theoneill555: [Will deals be allowed to go negative?] Yes
I also believe the 5 minute thing will still exist; in fact it would likely have some platform meaning now other than just maintaining quality of leaderboard.
@klozitshoper: this is the proposal for the test, yes. I would say this is more to encourage generally healthy site activity than it is any correlation between good and bad that might exist in the same topic (proposal is balancing all voting on the platform, not narrower)
Yup, let's give it a shot! If it's a "not", let's shoot it down!
BTW, this could have been labeled, "Black Triangles chime in"
@snapster: Re: "can only down-vote in a balanced relation to your upvotes":
I know votes are free and users are encouraged to throw them around, but couldn't a few mischievous someones just up-vote a bunch of random items to be able to coordinate a targeted down-vote frenzy?
I like when the community, or those most active, have the ability to test potential tools that, as a whole, serve a better purpose.
I also like the fact that this question validates my comment the other day:
http://deals.woot.com/questions/details/f0820500-506a-4f88-8ac4-c5a90acc4190/do-you-give-mercy-votes-on-either-deals-or-questions#53a732cc-701d-45f9-8761-1b0c2920e794
@snapster: Thank you.
Another question -
Will there still only be one counter or will there be two? I would be nice to be able to see if a deal actually has down votes.
@chris12345: People can do that with up-voting as well as down-voting.
@theoneill555: I love the idea of two counters as opposed to just one jumble of votes!
@snapster: It is certainly worth a try.
@snapster: Pretend I want to be a negative warrior.
I just sort all deals by oldest and vote up everything old, giving me ammo for my pew pew pew.
I am stretching it a bit here but:
The you could follow the negative votes.
http://deals.woot.com/deals/users/caffeine_dude/voted
To make it more effective get a gang of negative warriors.
I can not find it now but we even discussed how the top 10 chart holders may influence voting. When I was #1 I voted on a tennis mag as a joke\to see if it would get voted to popular, I would not have voted on normally. FYI it went to popular.
That being said still want to try it.
@xarous: I don't quite follow the logic of the comment you linked to, but they've been kicking this idea around a long time. Some of those questions that Snapster mentioned are from November 2009.
I just realized a possible problem. With deals there is some standard, and you probably won't have people downvoting things they just don't like. Perhaps things they disapprove of or don't think are good deals, but you get a different problem with questions. People WILL downvote because they think a question is silly, and while some are and should be downvoted to oblivion, it's possible someone still wants an answer.
TL;DR--downvotes on questions may cause more problems because voting on questions is more subjective.
@chris12345: yes - it's not fail safe if a user is intent on being subversive. one counter is that "bad" activity would be fairly easy to spot, but honestly we have not decided on which way to address that once spotted.
This is a wonderful idea.
@caffeine_dude: agreed - system would not be hard to game but perhaps overly mischievous gamers would be fairly easy to spot. I mentioned we have not decided on how to moderate against such activity, but one example is to have their negative powers suspended or revoked.
that said, down-voting lots of deals you truly investigate and then disfavor wouldn't necessarily be wrong.
A syndicate of sorts could form and gather votes in order to murder an offending deal. It could even be organized in the questions section: "Who hates deals for XYZ? Join us with your downvotes and let's get rid of 'em!"
@rlapid2112: yes. this was our exact reason not to implement... and it is also our primary reason to implement. it should be an energetic test.
I like it!
I think in terms of "here there be dragons," but I'm game for a test run.
A test trial sounds like a good idea. Sure some people may abuse it, but when not abused it can be effective.
I also wonder theoneill555's question of will there be one jumble of votes or two separate counters?
@trahentis: consider that if focus shifts to fresh tabs (because that's where down-voting is necessary to stop something from going popular) then people will be around to pity-answer even dumb negative-vote questions and those asking them will receive answers.
@snapster: Would there be any way for the site to force a comment if you want to down-vote?
It seems only fair that, if you want to leave a down vote, you should justify it.
@duckcake: @theoneill555: separated down / up vote bucket optics is likely and has been discussed, though it may only be visible on the detail landing page of the deal/question.
@theoneill555: I think if I down voted and evidence in the thread did not exist, I should post a comment, but I'd hate the annoyance of restating the obvious if deal research or whatever proved a deal was crappy and it was said already.
I think this has Fail written all over it... but its worth a shot. Lets see how it goes.
@snapster: Thanks, that is understandable. I was just thinking of the abusers.
@snapster: you make it sound so fun!
BTW, Wootbot will get a lot of downvotes.
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