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Data Mining Shows How Down-Voting Leads To Vicious Circle of Negative Feedback
KentuckyFC writes: "In behavioral psychology, the theory of operant conditioning is the notion that an individual's future behavior is determined by the punishments and rewards he or she has received in the past. It means that specific patterns of behavior can be induced by punishing unwanted actions while rewarding others. While the theory is more than 80 years old, it is hard at work in the 21st century in the form of up- and down-votes — or likes and dislikes — on social networks. But does this form of reward and punishment actually deter unwanted actions while encouraging good behavior? Now a new study of the way voting influences online behavior has revealed the answer. The conclusion: negative feedback leads to behavioral changes that are hugely detrimental to the community. Not only do authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more but their future posts are of lower quality and are perceived by the community as such. What's more, these authors are more likely to evaluate fellow users negatively in future, creating a vicious circle of negative feedback. By contrast, positive feedback does not influence authors much at all. That's exactly the opposite of what operant conditioning theory predicts. The researchers have a better suggestion for social networks: 'Given that users who receive no feedback post less frequently, a potentially effective strategy could be to ignore undesired behavior and provide no feedback at all.' Would Slashdotters agree?"
This story sucks. :)
Let the game begin
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Don't feed the trolls?
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I object to Intellect without Discipline.
I look forward to observing the many ironic and humorous mods this topic will induce. In fact, the act of moderation itself may be the actual discussion more so than any of the content.
I would mod my own post as insightful troll, for example. I mean, this is just pandering, right?
That's the criticism, well maybe that's too strong a word... That's the critique I've had of Slashdot's moderating system. By allowing both up-votes and down-votes, you create a system where the voice of the majority can drown out the voice of the minority. I've often seen people here express the mistaken belief that if a minority viewpoint is introspective or informative, it will survive the unfair downvotes and rise to the top. It doesn't work that way.
The average ranking is not rank = up - down. It's rank = p1*up - p2*down. Where p1 is the size of the population which would rank it up, and p2 is the size of the population which would rank it down. A minority viewpoint consequently gets a disproportionate number of unfair downvotes simply because it's a minority viewpoint, and thus has to garner a lot more upvotes just to obtain an equal ranking to a majority viewpoint.
For an apolitical, non-religious example, consider Windows vs. Linux. Say Windows users outnumber Linux users 50:1. Now imagine if a search engine let you rate search results based on whether they were useful or not useful, which is then used to prioritize subsequent search results. In every population, there's going to be an idiot segment who votes stuff down simply because they don't like it, not because it was inaccurate or irrelevant it was to their query. Consequently, if a search for hard disk repartitioning brings up four Windows sites and one Linux site as the top results, the Linux site is going to have 50x as many downvotes from those idiot users who never specified Windows in their search but were upset that an "irrelevant" Linux site was included in the search results. If the idiot segment of the Windows population exceeds 2% (numerically equivalent to 100% of the Linux population), that Linux site will end up with a negative rating regardless of how useful or informative it is.
I say "criticism" is too strong a word because neither way is the "right" way to do it. They are just different. A moderating/ranking system which only allows upvotes simply generates different results from a moderating system which allows both upvotes and downvotes. Sometimes the former is more useful; sometimes the latter is more useful. The important thing is to understand the limitations of both and how it will bias the rankings, and not fall into the mistaken belief that a minority viewpoint has just as easy a time reaching +5 on Slashdot as a majority viewpoint. If a contrary viewpoint reaches +5 on Slashdot, it must be making a helluva good point.
I'm afraid that this article touches on what I perceive as a growing problem: it's the notion that "Everyone's answers and opinions are right and have value."
This might be fine in some areas where many things are subjective, in which case the axiom "there's no disputing taste" is appropriate. In these cases, then I agree that one should probably hold one's criticism.
But especially in the technical areas, such as computer programming and the physical sciences, the laws of physics and logic often times point to a more correct answer. In my own work, I find that I am constantly wading through massive amounts of literature, and wondering -- what the hell happened to peer review that used to weed much of the crap out? Eventually, wrong answers and half-baked opinions stack up to warp reality, such that it is difficult to find or promote the few rigorous and correct.
I think it's a similar situation on peer-reviewed sites like Stack Exchange. Often times, the posted opinions for solution to a problem run the freaking gamut. I am glad that a lot of the good opinions (based on sound reasoning and experience) are boosted up, but the dreck (based on fuzzy thinking, old wive's tales, and "antipatterns") are ranked downward, thus giving some help to an interested third party (such as me) who really doesn't have time to be patient and P.C.
Disclaimer: the right answer can be the minority opinion -- which may have been knocked hard by other reviewers. Here I am speaking about the 99% of the time that the best answer is the most highly rated.
Yes larger population could in theory tromp down a smaller one.
But generally a larger population is more complacent and less likely to do anything, where a smaller population is more vigorous.
I've voiced some unpopular opinions here. Yes sometimes I'm modded down. But pretty often I'm also modded up, so on average I feel the result is actually pretty fair - over time my voice is heard, despite blips of silence.
Read at -1 for a bit before you truly claim that down-moderation is not needed... or at least if not down, some people just need an off switch.
I think a combination of user moderation along with a handful of overseers that address the more egregious moderation abuses by the mobs, would be the way to go.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People who are trying to get "negative" responses are not getting negative conditioning, they're getting what they want.
The trick is to give them feedback they don't want, not necessarily obviously "negative" feedback.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
But mod'ing them down? I like that. It means I don't have to wade through hundreds of trash messages to find anything worth reading.
On slashdot, I think negative feedback does result in more trollish activity, but it also pushes the activity below the threshold at which most people read, so the community doesn't see it and isn't damaged by it. Trolls also don't get mod points so they can't visit their wrath on others.
All in all, I think it works pretty well. I'll leave it to others to discuss if the mechanism to suppress trolls has negative side effects.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
My thoughts are that posting in on-line communities is done mostly for reasons of self-esteem (although there are obviously other motivations) by people whose task is to share and receive useful-to-them information.
If your self-esteem is high, the post itself provides the validation and positive or negative comments have little to no effect on what you post since validation is intrinsic.
If your self-esteem is low, validation comes through feedback. Positive feedback is then seen to come from kindred souls and negative feedback from trolls. In both cases, validation is extrinsic and therefore has a volatile effect on the poster.
My problem with TFA is what they quantify as "better" content. People post using words, phrases and grammar that they come equipped with; their level of education is fixed for the most part; their real-life experience and socialization is essentially fixed for the short run. Their ideas and opinions are already formed. There will not be any substantial improvement in the quality of what people post, no matter what the feedback is.
Obviously, we need to fund more studies, especially studies done at exotic locales and funded by government money.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
6 years ago I suggested that any negative mod should cost you 3 mod points.
/. should increase the maximum points a post can accumulate. Giving more "upside" to the discussion.
2 years ago I said On political threads, all comments should have the same rating.
Today I would add that maybe
I come here for the love
We are told "Do not feed the trolls." But some cannot resist. Why are some incapable of letting the troll starve and vanish?
When a troll posts misinformation (especially those long debunked arguments) I think the people who reply are not attempting to convince the troll (trolls can't be convinced):
They're trying to persuade the reasonable readers with facts and better information.
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It seems the down-mod still has some use, but the up-mod is preferred...how about if it just 'cost more' to mod-down posts?