Rank threads and the frontpage by discussion rather than by voting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ideasfortheadmins/comments/rbwn4/rank_threads_and_the_frontpage_by_discussion/

created by [deleted] on 24/03/2012 at 22:08 UTC

609 upvotes, 9 top-level comments (showing 9)

Currently, all of the ranking options for both links on the frontpage and for comment threads are based on some calculation of **upvotes**, **downvotes**, and **time**.

The frontpage can be ranked by: Hot, New, Controversial, and Top

Comment threads can be ranked by: Top, Hot, New, Controversial, Old, and Best

All of these ranking systems incorporate those same three elements – upvotes, downvotes, and time – but give them different importance or weighting.

A fourth element should be added: **discussion**.

One of the main complaints featured across reddit is the decline in content: links that do not attract good discussion and trivial comment threads dominating discussion.

Most of the observers over at /r/TheoryOfReddit have noted that voting tends to favor low-investment content: it's easier to upvote something simple, like an image macro or a pun thread, than it is to read and upvote a thoughtful piece of in-depth journalism or a long detailed comment.

*Step 1:**

Adding a new way to rank comment threads would be a good first step toward allowing users who prefer thoughtful and detailed comments to be able to avoid pun threads full of dispiriting one-liners and stale meme jokes. My proposal is not to get rid of upvotes, downvotes, and time in the calculation of comment ranking, but to add a heavily-weighted fourth criterion which is: the **length of the comment and its children**. This would prioritize comments that are both detailed themselves and those that generate subsequent detailed conversation/responses. The aggregate length of an entire thread of one-liners might be outweighed by a different thread consisting of one or two long comments.

*Step 2:**

Add a new way to rank the frontpage, based primarily on discussion+time rather than on upvotes/downvotes+time.

A major quantitative study of reddit[1] noted that comment length on the frontpage declined – older comments were 2–3x longer than those that appear on the frontpage currently[2]. The author then demonstrated that the subreddits with the most trivial, low-investment content (nsfw, gonewild, pics, funny, videos, trees, wtf) also feature comments with the shortest length compared to subreddits with in-depth or intellectually-stimulating content (philosophy, truereddit, economics) – here's the chart[3].

1: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/l8id4/did_digg_make_us_the_dumb_how_have_reddit/

2: http://i.imgur.com/C8Dr2.png

3: http://i.imgur.com/HOTQP.png

Ranking the frontpage based on the activity and quality of the conversation generated could produce a wildly different experience for users interested in engaging material and discussion rather than low-investment fluff[4]. Using some weighted combination of the following criteria could produce a frontpage ranked by quality discussion rather than by upvotes+downvotes+time:

4: http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

Average (or median) comment length;
Total amount of comment text; and,
Commenting activity (comments per unit of time).

Hacker News already has an alternate frontpage ranking algorithm that shows stories by the activity of discussion[5]. I believe their source code is open, so that may be a good example or first pass of a system that could be adapted to work here.

5: http://news.ycombinator.com/active

*Potential Issues**

First, what role do upvotes and downvotes play in a system like this?* I think will still have a role, especially in downvoting abusive or spam comments below the threshold for visibility. My proposal is not to entirely remove upvotes/downvotes from ranking comment threads, but to change the weighting to favor comment length and discussion more heavily than the other traditional factors. As far as upvotes/downvotes on the frontpage, I suppose they would still matter insofar as you want other people (especially those not ranking the frontpage by discussion) to see content that you value. Finally, upvotes will still accrue to a user's karma as a reward for their contributions (or downvotes as punishment).

Second, will the frontpage be utterly dominated by AskReddit?* Maybe, but probably not. AskReddit seems to be only slightly above average in terms of comment length[6], even though popular AskReddit threads generate disproportionately large numbers of comments. Reddit has already developed ways to make sure that users' frontpages have a healthy mix of stories from gigantic subreddits and obscure subreddits, making frontpage placement relative to subreddit size. The same mechanism should, in principle, work with a ranking system centered on discussion rather than voting.

6: http://i.imgur.com/HOTQP.png

Third, can this system be gamed?* Yes, but perhaps not as easily as upvoting circlejerks. Spammers could start dumping walls of nonsense text into threads. Hopefully this can be countered with good old downvoting and moderation. This type of behavior is probably more transparently spamming than pay-for-upvote networks of dummy accounts, and may actually make countering spammers easier. It's harder to drive a thread or link up to the top of the rankings by making detailed on-topic comments[7] than by clicking the upvote arrow. Finally, unless ranking-by-discussion is made the default method of ranking the frontpage, it's unlikely that spammers and SEO agents will specifically target it for exploitation.

7: http://xkcd.com/810/

*Conclusion**

We need a way to preserve constructive interaction in the face of Eternal September's onslaught of trivial low-investment content. People need to be able to see that the effort it takes to write out a constructive contribution to the community is going to be seen and rewarded rather than lost in a sea of one-liner stale jokes.

Because writing long comments and engaging in discussion is a better indicator of engaging material than an upvote is, and is a better measurement indicator for discriminating between low-investment and high-investment content, giving redditors the option to rank content by quality discussion can help preserve a core community of users committed to making informative and interesting contributions.

Comments

Comment by kemitche at 27/03/2012 at 23:53 UTC

11 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Here's something you might find interesting - the search results take number of comments into account (along with the other standard votes and time factor). They also factor the relevance of the query into account - but for comparison, you could, say, search for:

over18:no

over18:no reddit:wtf

to see how you like the results when comments have a certain amount of weight. This doesn't track comment length, though, but it may be an interesting data point for you nonetheless.

Comment by [deleted] at 25/03/2012 at 05:56 UTC

21 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I do like the idea, however, I tend to just completely ignore threads with >500 comments on them. It's really unlikely that any new thread you create will be seen by anyone, and any reply you make will already be too late for anyone besides the person you responded to to see.

Additionally, having to expand extremely long threads into new tabs is kind-of a hassle as well.

I do agree that we need to have comments factor into whether a topic is doing good. I dislike it when I miss threads because they were downvoted yet had a lot of comment activity on them (the first thing that comes to mind is Woody Harrelson's AMA which was quickly destroyed not too long after it was created, it had a 0 rating but hundreds of comments).

So we could possibly base a system on "Activity" or "Discussion", but if this is added, I would really like to see an easier way to discuss something as well. Most threads become very clustered and hard to follow, which is possibly why most discussions are between two people rather than multiple people.

Comment by electricfistula at 20/04/2012 at 17:25 UTC

9 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Question: Suppose we were ordering reddit comments by number of replies to the comment, as you suggest. What about the case where someone writes "Thanks for posting that"? Doesn't that become more common? Translating what was an upvote at one click with no "comment pollution" into an upvote-comment which is many clicks and pollutes the comment section. Also, won't people reply to comments that say "This" or "Thanks for posting" with explanations about why those comments are bad? Won't this further throw off the comment rating because there will be a lot of insubstantial meta-discussion?

Comment by [deleted] at 29/06/2012 at 23:10 UTC*

4 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by Jaborwaki at 30/06/2012 at 03:39 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I hope this comes into play. I haven't been a member of Reddit of an exceedingly long time or anything, so I haven't witnessed the decline in content but I'm excited to see what I may have been missing. Even if this doesn't come into fruition right away, it has at least spurred my interest in locating actual thought provoking content instead of settling for the usual front page memes.

Comment by [deleted] at 30/06/2012 at 13:28 UTC

2 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by Squeekme at 30/06/2012 at 08:13 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

How about two different systems depending on the subreddit.

E.g. status quo for advice animals. new system for r/science.

Or very limited powers for moderators to give sunken but important posts a reset with +20 upvotes, in certain subreddits, if the comments suggest it is important and call for a rare bump.