Ask PG: What have I done wrong?

[RiderOfGiraffes]

tl;dr: Now my votes are broken, and I'm sad. (edited: "dl;dr" -> "tl;dr" - sorry.)

================

I've seen this complaint made several times before, with people finding that their votes are apparently not having any effect. I've watched the discussions, not feeling I have anything to contribute, wondering what they may have done to trigger the secretive "vote-ignoring" logic that you tinker with.

I understand that you need to stay on top of the problem of people gaming the system, and that being too open just makes it easier for people to screw around and make the voting system less valuable.

But generally I rely on high-quality items bubbling to the top, so when I see a comment I think is valuable and yet which is low down in the pecking order, I upvote it. I take care, I try to add value, I invest time.

And now I've found that some of my recent votes haven't made a difference. The comments I thought were worth boosting continue to languish. The people I thought were worth rewarding haven't got the karma.

I've wasted my time trying to make the site more valuable.

So, while I'll continue to believe that things are partially random, but biased to having better stuff near the top, I'm no longer as confident as I was. I'll continue to scan the new submissions to see if there's anything interesting, and maybe I'll click on an up arrow, but I'm pretty disincentivized about bothering to spend time trying to add value.

The message is that my time isn't valued. You've encouraged me into taking without giving back. You've encouraged me to react without thinking.

If that's the message you intended, I think that's sad.

Here are two links to earlier discussions - there are more.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871202

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=233460

[pg]

A few months ago, because of the mob feel that voting was starting to have now that the site has grown so big, I started experimenting with thresholds for which votes got counted (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871202). The best test I could think of was the average score of a user's recent comments, so I used that. Currently the threshold is 2. The reason your votes stopped counting is that you dropped just below that. Your average is currently 1.88. (Ironically, it's much higher now because of the comments on this thread, but comment averages are calculated asynchronously, so there will be a lag before yours is recalculated.)

I'm probably going to do away with the display of point totals on comments entirely, because thresholds haven't fixed the problem. In that case I'll just use points internally, e.g. to sort threads, and then I'll probably go back to counting most votes.

Edit: Since I was planning to toss the threshold when I stopped displaying comment scores, I just reset it to 1. Also, since users asked to see their avg comment scores in their profile pages, I just added that.

[jacquesm]

To use the voting average is a really bad way of doing this. I answer a lot of 'Ask HN' style threads, these are hardly ever voted up and they are a ton of work.

If the effect of this change is that doing work like that gets punished then that is really putting the horse behind the cart.

For instance:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049551

Essentially you are punishing people for being nice to others.

[thorax]

I really like seeing the number of points next to comments. When I come to a discussion late, it's the best weapon I have to skim through lower replies to catch the "theme" of the discussion. It's especially important on nested replies that may be attached to a highly voted root comment.

If you decide to hide comment points, perhaps consider at least showing the points after you vote. I'm not sure if that would encourage voting, though, in a case where people would have skipped voting before. I know I would vote more often in that case.

[abstractbill]

For what it's worth, at jtv we used to have a policy of silently failing various actions when one of our many spam-like flags got raised. It seems like such a great idea - the spammers will have been caught, but they won't know it. Unfortunately I think we've found over time that the negative consequences for users who are falsely flagged as being spammers just aren't worth it, and we have become more explicit about telling users they've been flagged in some way.

Long story short: If you're going to disable some action I think it's actually better in the long run to make it obvious that's what you're doing.

[axod]

If you are going to discount some peoples votes, (Mine seem to currently be discounted), can you let them know that? Or at least not update the UI for them when they click an arrow, or just not give them an arrow at all.

Then I won't be wasting time clicking arrows that don't do anything :/

[ryanwaggoner]

Doesn't that actually encourage more mob voting, as only people who the majority vote up are allowed to vote up? It seems like it would be a self-reinforcing mechanism, with people who often take unpopular stances unable to participate in determining what comments and stories get the most votes?

[10ren]

My votes haven't counted for a while, and my comment average is 2.64 according to http://searchyc.com/user/10ren?only=comments&sort=by_poi...

I think a respectful approach is to be upfront, and just say there's a cut-off, instead of making the votes appear to count. I assume you want to obscure it, to protect HN from scamming, but I'm not sure that valuing protection over respect will work in the long term.

EDIT I'd like to upvote some of the comments here, but what's the point? They won't count.

[tptacek]

I'm 2.89, on a downward trend, and the past several of my votes haven't counted. Is something else going on?

I recognize the good intention, but the "vote not counting" thing is on a visceral, psychological level very irritating. It feels antagonistic.

I recommend that you kill that feature in the short term, and then proceed to remove scores from most comment displays.

[CraigBuchek]

Setting the threshold at 2 seems a bit high to me. It basically requires that (on average) at least 1 person upvotes every comment you make. That's unlikely to happen in a nested thread of back-and-forth conversation. And it's less likely to happen for people that are a little late to the conversation but still have some valid input. I tend to fall into the latter category -- I'm often reading posts that are several days old in my RSS reader.

Setting the threshold around 1.5 might work better. Or perhaps whatever threshold might allow 75% or 80% of readers/contributors to vote.

[TrevorJ]

I always find your continued thinking on ways to improve and maintain this site to be insightful, thank you for sharing so transparently.

[elblanco]

Perhaps instead of point totals, put a comment into a limited set of categories or some such.

Popular - >= 10 votes

Interesting - 3-9 votes

Contributor - 1-3 votes

Neutral - no votes

Unpopular - -1 votes

Detractive - <= -2 votes

And show those instead of points or votes. Karma could still be calculated normally, and the votes could be used internally for thread sorting.

[fjabre]

The problem with mobs is they gang up on individuals and the problem with that is the mob can easily over power an individual.

If you take away the mob's power by only allowing points to go down to 0 or 1 for example instead of -4 it might feel less mob-ish..

EDIT: The end result of mob encouraged commenting is someone ends up with negative points for their comment(s).. Maybe only users who've reached certain karma level should have the ability to down vote below 1. Reduce the size of the mob?

[b3eck]

One suggestion to try: for a young comment whose score has not stabilized (i.e. high recent variability), then no score is displayed except for an indicator for users whose recent comments have low recent variability and high score.

(Edited for brevity)

[psranga]

Thanks for the response and your hard work to build up and sustain a great community!

Have you thought about hiding the submitter's and commenter's name for an hour (or twelve :)) after the post is submitted?

Won't that solve the problem of mob voting?

[mattmaroon]

That's a neat idea.

[zachbeane]

My guess is you got flagged by possible-sockpuppet. See news.arc in arc3.tar for why some stuff gets ignored.

    (def possible-sockpuppet (user)
      (or (ignored user)
          (< (uvar user weight) .5)
          (and (< (user-age user) new-age-threshold*)
               (< (karma user) new-karma-threshold*))))

Since your age and karma don't seem to be a problem, I'd guess an admin or editor marked you as ignored, or an admin reduced your weight.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Interesting - thanks. I wish I could upvote you.

[jacquesm]

No, that isn't it, RoG is well above those thresholds.

[ErrantX]

I've had my voting stopped on a couple of occasions. The last one was because I downvoted someone 3-4 times in a row in the same thread (all their comments needed a downvote :) it wasn't anything nasty) and my voting stopped working for a week or so.

I also think in the past I have had it removed for:

- upvoting different stories in quick succession (came back to the page to vote stories I liked....)

- downvoting the same person 2-3 times in the space of about 20 minutes in different threads (without realising I must stress!) with no other votes in between

It comes back after X amount of time.

> but I'm pretty disincentivized about bothering to spend time trying to add value.

Yeh I feel that; I read now but dont bother to contribute many votes.

[ErrantX]

from pg's comments elsewhere my thoughts on what behaviour limits your voting might be incorrect - simply circumstances of coincidence (and more related to volume of posting_

[revorad]

Chill out man. First, it could be a bug. Second, no doubt HN is a special place, but it's still just a news forum. Get back to work, go out to play, don't make this your life.

</patronising>

[RiderOfGiraffes]

First of all, yes, I am fully aware that this is just a news forum, and that there's this thing called "real life."

Secondly, this is a great resource of both contacts and information. It's made great because of the quality of people here, and the time they take to submit, comment, and vote. Without that time from people with busy lives, HN will become rather non-special.

I'm pointing out that at least one person here now feels, because of a stated policy, that their time is undervalued, so I'm thinking of taking it elsewhere. I do have an outside life, I was investing time here because I thought it might be valued. I'm re-evaluating that decision

I'm not going to walk away without explanation. When people stop being my customers I'd like to know why. I'm giving PG the courtesy to let him know my reactions to his policies. It's his site and he can and will do as he chooses. So far he's done an extraordinary job.

Think of this as customer feedback.

[davi]

I know what you mean but HN has also been a place where like-minded people could identify one another for possible real world collaboration. That's much more than just a news forum.

[jacquesm]

RoG is on the ball and has voiced something a lot of people have been up against. I don't think it should be up to you to tell people what they should do or not do.

For you it is 'just a news forum', for me it has been:

  - a source of knowledge
  
  - a source of friendship

  - a source of income

  - a way to help others

  - a way to find help

[thirdusername]

It's the same for me and has been like that for weeks, months(?). Having your votes on hacker news isn't exactly important to life as others have pointed out but it's slightly demoralizing whenever I forget myself and vote on something only to realize the system just ignores me. I'm useless and valued less than even a new user. :(

I'm considering creating a new user because of that as I've tried to just wait for it to work again hoping it's temporary. I have no idea what caused me to loose my voting rights in the first place and there's no way for me to change my behavior if it's undesirable. I've for the record never voted maliciously and this is my username because I've lost my password twice before not because I have several users to vote with.

[thaumaturgy]

Considering that pg a while back mentioned you specifically on a short list of people whose comments he tends to find interesting, I doubt this was intentional.

It also might've been better handled by a short email to him.

[icey]

I know this may not be the same situation as yours, and it may not be entirely helpful to you; but whenever I've had a problem with my account I've just sent a note to PG and it's gotten taken care of within a day or so.

(I have had voting problems previously.)

[idlewords]

I think what it boils down to is that the devoting logic is easy to trigger and permanent. I haven't had the ability to up or downvote in about six months.

[ErrantX]

I've not heard of the automatic bans lasting that long???

The longest I ever had was about 2 months (give or take - I was away for part of it). The longest ever someone has mentioned to me has been about 3 1/2 months

[Quarrelsome]

Is it not safer to assume it is a bug first of all before claiming that pg is wasting your time and not valuing you?

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Often yes, but in this case probably not. PG has stated publically that he tinkers with whether or not to count votes:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871458

It appears that in this case, as in others before mine, he's decided that he's not going to count my votes. I have no idea why. As I say, it makes me inclined not to bother giving much back to the site, even though it's a great resource.

[allenbrunson]

Okay, so this topic comes up pretty frequently, so I'm going to go at it again. I, for one, completely support what pg is doing.

The overall goal here is not to make any one person feel like a special snowflake. It's to keep conversation at the absolute highest possible quality. To that end, pg and and the editors curb a lot of behavior they find contrary to that goal. They kill spam. They kill articles that are too far away from our core topics. They ban trolls. They ban people who aren't quite trolls, but still have a negative effect on conversation. At the low end of the penalty scale, they sometimes take away your voting privileges, for awhile, or potentially forever. I'm guessing that means: we like what you have to say just fine, but we think your voting patterns are harming the site.

I've noticed this happening to a lot of people, so I've used that feedback to modify my own behavior. I try to make about four or five comment upvotes for every downvote, at least. I don't downvote anything into negative points unless I think it is really harsh and goes very much against the grain. The details don't matter, but the overall outcome does: I try to behave in a manner that I think is good for the site.

If it turns out that pg disagrees with what I'm doing, I'm perfectly fine with that. If he takes away my voting rights or bans me outright, I will still think he's doing a good job.

Here's why I think so: just look at this place! Have you ever seen an internet hangout that got this old and/or this big, yet remained as civil and valuable as this one? I certainly haven't.

That says to me that pg isn't just doing something right, he's doing something incredibly right. I am frankly a lot less impressed by the community-building track record of any of the complainers.

[frossie]

The overall goal here is not to make any one person feel like a special snowflake

If I understood the OP, their issue is not that they don't feel like a special snowflake - it's that this is a site that is driven, among other things, by the warm fuzziness of user contribution, predominantly expressed by voting, and that if users get the feeling that voting is irrelevant this might cause a lot of users to stop contributing.

While one can always say, correctly, "It's PG's site and he can do what he like with it", I think it is fair to comment on things like "if my vote doesn't count, showing me the button regardless and eliciting my vote seems unfair". If The Great Algorithm In The Sky has decided my vote doesn't count, I think it is fair to indicate this to me in some way.

My comment average is 4.24 right now so I am presumably not affected - who knows?, but I sympathise with the essence of the OP's argument. I also sympathise with PG's attempts to maintain the integrity of the site in the face of increasing popularity. I think the issue is not the why, it is the how.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Largely speaking I agree with you. My problem here is that I don't know what I've done wrong. If those responsible (PG and his editors) want to communicate a message to me, they've failed.

I haven't gone around upvoting and downvoting excessively. I've upvoted a few things I think are of value, and I don't remember downvoting anything recently.

I'm just confused.

Feedback works best when it's consistent in direction (but not in frequency) and clearly attached to the action that provoked it. I think PG and friends do a great job on this. I think this is something they get wrong.

[pclark]

I can't believe you made a new submission about this. Seriously. Why can't you email him?

I can't believe you assume there is some kind of conspiracy to render your votes irrelevant. Seriously. It's just the internet.

[ErrantX]

> Why can't you email him?

That would probably be impolite :)

> I can't believe you assume there is some kind of conspiracy to render your votes irrelevant

Please read Riders explanation. There are automatic triggers which stop your votes counting for an unknown period of time if you trigger them. Not a conspiracy; requests for information on this have been posted a couple of times before.

[Slashed]

The same here. I had started a topic on this before and some people assured me that it will probably get back working, as they had this issue before as well.

Personally, I don't care much about this. Though when I start a topic here asking for help, I feel that I should thank those who helped me by upvoting their comments.

[wensing]

I had no idea HN's defense mechanisms were this sophisticated.

[garply]

While we're talking about the voting system - could you please specify more clearly in the guidelines in what circumstances downmodding is appropriate?

[DanielBMarkham]

I've got a better one for you: I submitted an article yesterday. Quickly 3 or 4 people upvoted it -- it was basically an "Ask HN" piece. Nothing special.

But the odd thing was that even though the score increased dramatically from 1 to 5 in just 10-15 minutes, the ranking didn't change that much. Used to be that an increase of that much would get you near the top of the front page, if even for a little bit.

I'm not complaining, just figured somebody somewhere was tinkering or it was some kind of effect of karma inflation. However it does bring up an interesting point about UI design and large groups of users -- any non-obvious new system behavior can easily be interpreted in lots of ways, some of which aren't so flattering to the board owners.

FWIW, I've always thought this behavior was a bug. If I thought my vote was being taken and then returned to me at random times depending on the "smarts" of the system without notifying me why, I'd be pretty mad. I understand that it's already happening with deep threads and the first time I stumbled across it I was so mad I was ready to just throw in the towel on HN.

Not exactly a happy user experience, but yes, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Just a better job of communicating would salve a lot of these hurt feelings, in my opinion.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Apparently submissions with text as opposed to URLs don't get ranked as highly. Two items submitted at the same time and with the same votes, one with URL, the other as text, the text one will rank significantly lower.

That might explain your observation.

[pg]

The ranking algorithm treats t0 as if it were actually 2 hours. Without this damping, you get too much volatility on the frontpage.

[andrew1]

If you haven't done so already, why don't you email Paul Graham privately and ask him what you have done to cause your comments to be discounted. If it is for a reason that he wants to keep private then it might be more constructive than raising the issue in public.

[Tichy]

Not that I disagree, however, I found it interesting to hear about this issue. I wasn't aware it exists before this submission.

[RyanMcGreal]

> I understand that you need to stay on top of the problem of people gaming the system, and that being too open just makes it easier for people to screw around and make the voting system less valuable.

Is security through obscurity really a good idea in this day and age?

[wizard_2]

Its another brick in the wall. As long as you're not fooling yourself into thinking it's all you need, it aids in not making things easier for people to figure out and slightly raises the bar against intrusion. "Defense in Depth" is the only situation where I could consider obscurity a security layer.

Just because I keep my ssh servers up to date (disable passwords, root login, etc), doesn't mean I don't gain anything by having them listen a high port. The moment a 0-Day exploit is found (or maybe another Debian key generation bug) the security of not showing up on every script kiddies initial scans looking for unpatched ssh servers is worth something.

[romland]

Works for Google and their pagerank. And I would argue that in that case it IS a good idea. :)

[tokenadult]

Thanks to everyone for their interesting comments. Some of the forms of site behavior mentioned here I don't think I have ever observed. I don't read the code for the site software, so I just use the site empirically. The discussion of trade-offs involved in different kinds of site voting behavior defaults has been very helpful to me.

My overall perspective on any online forum's forum rules is that I just deal with them. I don't take any set of rules personally. I don't assume any kind of enforcement action or limitation on my own forum participation is directed at me as an individual, but rather is a forum management response to forum issues. If I enjoy a forum, I keep right on participating. If I don't enjoy a forum, I take my participation elsewhere without feeling offended. I happen to like HN a lot. To each their own.

As to specific observations of voting behavior, to the best of my knowledge and belief, when I upvote a comment or submission, and when I downvote a comment, my votes immediately change the score of the item I have just voted on. I try in my own mind to upvote more often than downvote, but I have no way to keep track of my actual count of votes up or down. I do like to clean up the comments, so I definitely downvote from time to time, and sometimes in bursts of downvotes in one thread. Unless I am wholly mistaken in my observation, my votes count as ups or downs on those items, in real time. It has been my observation that my own personal karma score will sometimes be stable for hours at a time, even if I have made new comments or submitted new articles, and it may be (I don't know) that I am running into some automated response of the site software such that my karma score is frozen if I have just been downvoting repeatedly. But it often seems that overnight, or after a while, my personal karma score becomes unstuck, and anyway I don't worry about this too much. I look at my threads view from time to time both to see if anyone has replied to any of my comments and to see what the aggregate votes are on those comments. If I am below 1 in aggregate score on some comment I have made, I try to think why readers would decide to downvote it. If I see someone else get a conspicuously high net score on a comment in a thread where I have also commented, I try to figure out what he or she did right to achieve commendation from other participants. As long as the site in general is worth reading and interesting to me, I don't especially worry about how its voting behavior is implemented. It's fun for me to learn from other participants here what kind of rules are visible in the source code and what kind of incentives may be designed by management to keep the conversation worthwhile. Since 1992, I have been a moderator on one or another of a variety of online forums, and I'm always deeply curious about what makes online communities successful and valuable to participants. I think HN is doing a good job.

P.S. I like many of RiderOfGiraffes's submissions and comments, and have certainly upvoted more than a few (and perhaps downvoted none of them). I too recall some thread in which pg mentioned RiderOfGiraffes favorably, although I don't have the link at hand. I would regret seeing RiderOfGiraffes leaving the site or changing his username, because I like to see familiar usernames as a clue that a comment or submission will be worth a read.

[elblanco]

I've noticed this same effect as well. I thought that it wasn't counted for some period of time + it wasn't counted unless there was a reply to the comment or some such.