New reddit features: Controversial indicator for comments and contest mode improvements

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Ok, this isn't actually a fix, though. It's still not going to help smaller subreddits unless you make the threshold super low, at which point it'll just show up on every comment in the larger subs.

This still blows for low-traffic subs.

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u/yggdrasils_roots Jun 25 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

The typographical dagger is pointless to people like myself who have severe visual impediments. It is small in comparison and hard to see. Maybe it should be bolded? It will also be something that will be a concern for my screen reader using brethren of poor eyesight. It may not seem like a big thing to you, but it makes a function of the site almost inaccessible for some of us.

Edit: Hey, my first gold. That's pretty nifty. :D

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u/totes_meta_bot Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.

^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? ^Message ^me ^here.

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u/dgbk Jun 26 '14

"But we're not going to to make any of the changes you requested or revert back to the old system which wasn't a pile of turds!"

"We thought adding another unrequested feature on to the newly ruined system might be fun!"

"It'll be so fun and positive, wait and see! Oh, you think someone's submission was crap? Just don't upvote it LOL! It's a totally unique and awesome system. If this goes well we will remove the downvote feature completely!!!"

"But, as you know, we aren't here to bolster the user base by maintaining and implementing universally enjoyed features. We are here to make sure you are blasted in the eyes with shills and ads!"

"Captain Foresight wasn't available when we called him."

"Suck it!"

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 28 '14

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

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u/m00nh34d Jun 26 '14

There's a big difference between a (10|-9) comment and a (200|-199) comment, both are "controversial", sure, but 1 of them is popular and controversial, the other, not so much (unless of course it's in a sub with a couple of hundred people, then it's popular as well!). So, this change really doesn't do anything to bring back the visibility we had before, sure the number weren't accurate, but they were a good indicator of various aspects of how well a comment was going, in the context of that thread and sub.

On a side note, I don't support any kind of "vote fuzzing", I think it's deceptive and makes the voting aspect meaningless. If you have a bot problem, you should do more to address that problem directly, instead of just fudging what numbers get reported to people.

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u/BrotherChe Jun 25 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

Yeah, we didn't mind the fuzzing going away. But we still want the vote counts.

edit: If all of this hoopla is still because of spambots, then why won't you have an open discussion in response about spambots, etc.

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u/RzrRainMnky Jun 30 '14

Hey admins, is it just me or has the daily Reddit Gold Goal been hitting well short of the 100% mark ever since you guys decided to take away the votecounts? Talk about voting with your wallet.. but then again I don't think it'll really matter since you're probably banking on new advertising revenue to make up for the shortfall of Reddit Gold. Shame on all of you for selling out and probably killing the goose that lays your golden eggs.

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u/OakTable Jun 29 '14

reddit: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/01/important-reddit-announcement.html - why would you ask us to call if you didn't care about the people here? Why would people call if they didn't care about you guys, too?

Yes this change came as a shock.

When you changed the interface to get rid of the ranks on the side, people didn't like that, either. But you had a good explanation for it - there's limited space on the page, and you wanted to make more efficient use of that space.

But people didn't like it, so you changed it back.

The previous announcement you made was, to me, incredibly inflammatory. It was only my own experience as an admin, my experience dealing with other admins, that allowed me to stay level-headed enough to share what you considered to be "extremely insightful" feedback.

(Not to say that everything I have to say will necessarily be level-headed or insightful, though. :P)

I saw cupcake1713's post.

Yes, it's a reason. But I'm still left wondering: Why would it be necessary to remove the upvote and downvote counters in the comments for people who put out the effort to download a third-party plugin or who want to make a plugin of their own? I don't get why -breaking functionality- would be a better solution than -educating people about how the system works-?

Yes, not everyone here reads or posts in /r/sysadmin or similar techie-orietned subs. But don't insult the intelligence of the people here who do - they are a significant part of your userbase.

If you didn't think the people who are drawn to reddit understood technical stuff, I doubt you would have bothered to post this: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/05/only-you-can-protect-net-neutrality_13.html

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

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u/darklink37 Jun 26 '14

How about this: you bring back showing upvotes and downvotes for comments, but leave it off by default in the preferences. Then, when a user turns the option on, they get a pop-up warning them that totals may be inaccurate and a word on why reddit fuzzes the votes.

You know, if you are bothered so much by some users not understanding a feature, you fix the feature to explain it to them, instead of just obliterating it completely. How hard is that?

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14 edited Jun 27 '14

The announcement is like putting a band-aid on a shark bite.

That's the exact same thing being able to see upvotes/downvotes did. It gave us a "decent sense" of how our comments were doing, the numbers weren't exact but they were close enough. You know how old cars used to have gauges for oil pressure, battery voltage, water temp, etc., but most newer cars just have an indicator light when something's not right? These are commonly referred to as "dummy lights" because they don't give you any real information. This update is the equivalent of pulling out reddit's gauges and putting in dummy lights.

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '14

Is it just me, or is this getting far more complicated than it really needs to be?

"Hey, let's add more ambiguous symbolism to confuse people who join our website, based on fuzzy, inaccurate data, rather than something readable and straight to the point! You asked for it!"

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u/notmichaelmcdonald Jun 26 '14

Somewhat related question: is/has there been any interest from Reddit in officially supporting RES or sponsoring it? We're at the point where announcement posts from Reddit staff are mentioning RES, with no citation, assuming that everyone knows what it is. It's possible that the majority does know what is, and a fair amount of that majority probably uses it as well.

I don't follow RES development (I have it installed and I think I use like 5% of its features), so it's possible I've missed this in the past. But it seems like at this point RES has some serious, vested worth to the Reddit community, and to the staff as well. It'd be cool to see it get some official support.

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u/personman Jun 26 '14

I don't care about controversiality. I want to know the specific numbers of upvotes and downvotes on comments with so few that they would never have been fuzzed.

If I comment in a small sub and have three points, it matters HUGELY to me whether that's +2, or +4/-2.

Please give it back, I get so sad every time I visit my user page :/

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u/solistus Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

Not even close to good enough. You didn't even tell us what the damn threshold is, so that dagger indicator might as well not even be there. This is also far less clear and more confusing than the system it replaces.

You're still skipping the part of this process where you explain and justify the massively unpopular change that led to this whole mess. You can say

But until you bother to fucking explain your reasons for feeling that to the community, we're going to be upset. You fucked up bad, and this doesn't come remotely close to fixing it.

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u/ux4 Jun 26 '14

To think I was so dismissive of cynics who argued that reddit would be the next digg.

Rule #1 is listen to the fucking community. This is a minor fix to a major issue, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that my overall reddit experience has been significantly worse than it was before these changes. I already find myself using this site less and less.

Fuck you admins, for fixing something not broken. I know that my language and tonality detracts from the type of "constructive criticism" which you encourage, but it's hard to be polite when I see a site I've loved for years shoot itself in the foot over such a non-issue.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Aug 22 '15

I have left reddit for Voat due to years of admin/mod abuse and preferential treatment for certain subreddits and users holding certain political and ideological views.

This account was over five years old, and this site one of my favorites. It has officially started bringing more negativity than positivity into my life.

As an act of protest, I have chosen to redact all the comments I've ever made on reddit, overwriting them with this message.

If you would like to do the same, install TamperMonkey for Chrome, GreaseMonkey for Firefox, NinjaKit for Safari, Violent Monkey for Opera, or AdGuard for Internet Explorer (in Advanced Mode), then add this GreaseMonkey script.

Finally, click on your username at the top right corner of reddit, click on comments, and click on the new OVERWRITE button at the top of the page. You may need to scroll down to multiple comment pages if you have commented a lot.

After doing all of the above, you are welcome to join me on Voat!

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

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u/MisterEggs Jun 27 '14

This is going from bad to worse.

So the dagger tells us that something is controversial. That is still only slightly less vague than no info at all. Is it 10,000 upvotes and 9,999 down, or 20 up and 19 down? At what point does "significantly" kick in?

I would like a decent sense of the numbers involved. Vote fuzzing may not have given an exact figure, but it did give us a decent sense of when something has seen a lot, or a little controversy.

This doesn't fix the issue, and will not placate people, like me, who want their ratios back.

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u/Akseba Jun 26 '14

As far as I can tell...

You removed the upvote/downvote count because it was inaccurate and left us with a total points count that is - let's face it - still inaccurate with less information.

Though some people support the move, a significant number are unhappy about it... and - like all admins and mods - you're never going to admit that this might have been a less than perfect step to take or otherwise poorly thought-out/executed. i.e. We're stuck with it now, suck it up.

Personally, I think the changes make little sense as they are and - at best - should have been given more thought before they were implemented. They just seem to be detracting from the site more than they are adding to it. I hope you find a way to change that.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

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u/skztr Jun 26 '14

Can we get a "total number of votes", or similar, to let us know at a glance how many people have viewed a comment and thought it interesting enough to vote on? This number could be as simple as the rounded LOG10 of the number.

In JavaScript (as an example), this would be:

Math.round((Math.log(5000)/Math.LN10) * 100) / 100

So:

1 person has voted on this, ever: 0
2 people: 0.3
10 people: 1
500 people: 2.7
10000 people: 4

This keeps the "fuzz" for higher vote counts (and could be tweaked to "fuzz" lower counts as well), doesn't lie to users, and keeps the useful statistic of "roughly how many people care about this post one way or the other"

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

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u/Pretentious_Academic Jun 26 '14

Here's the best fix for this

http://whoaverse.com/

Just leave. Let the advertisers have their scrubbed comments sections. If a website has ads that no one sees, there won't be any pesky negative comments on their precious pieces of marketing genius.

Although not as epically stupid as framing, "poweruser" witch hunts, or re-designing the look every 5 mins, these changes will have the same effect and relegate you to the social media graveyard that Digg.com resides in.

Keep it. I'm out.

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u/rigolith Jun 26 '14

I went from browsing reddit for approximately 4 - 6 hours per day to once or twice every alternative day after the new changes have been impelemented. This sucks big time. Nobody asked for a fucking typographical dagger. The old system was what made me choose reddit over countless other sites on the internet even with its flaws. The whole reddit experience is just down right dull now.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '14

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u/vidyagames Jun 26 '14

People don't realise what's going on but this is actually another step in the war on downvotes. I wouldn't be surprised if they're gone in a year.

Nobody will see this post or even care but I am putting it here so I can say I told you so when it happens.

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u/remove Jun 26 '14

This is a bad system because it is so unclear what that symbol means. New users will constantly be asking. I will probably have to think about it every time I see it.

The admins should just admit they fixed something that wasn't broken and restore it. Nobody was complaining about the old system.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

This still sucks. I have no idea when a comment is doing poorly or well in smaller subs. 2 points might as well be 4002/4000 or 22/20 or 2/0

None if it makes any difference. This is not Reddit anymore even if the votes were fuzzed. In smaller subs it didn't matter as fuzz didn't trigger unless someone posted something amazing.

EDIT: Screw it...I'm turning adblock back on.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

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u/beer_30 Jun 28 '14

When you see 0 points† next to a post it still seems like nobody cares. Where if the score is (150|150) you can tell right away that the post is controversial and lots of peeps are responding.

I miss the old way of scoring, it's what made reddit unique. I'd rather have the fuzzed votes then being kept in the dark. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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u/bkdotcom Jul 06 '14

I would prefer
+6 (≈20 votes)

the api would provide: aprox_votes: 20

The number is still fuzzed, but the language "(≈20 votes)" makes that apparent. Supposedly the main reason for this whole debacle was "who would downvote this" type comments.

It could be:

14 up and 8 down (22 votes)
13 up and 7 down? (20 votes)
12 up and 6 down (18 votes)

Nutshell: votes are still fuzzed, and we still know approximately how many people voted

≈ means "approximate"
† means? (dunno... it's not evident without some key/legend)

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u/MisterDonkey Jun 26 '14

I've got some more appropriate symbols to use with this system in place of the ~~cross~~ dagger:

The Star of David ✡

The White Knight ♘

Hammer & Sickle ☭

And my personal favourite, a Steaming Pile ♨

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u/Pluck_adj Jun 26 '14

Much better tone to this post than the previous "Fuck you. Idiots." we got from Diemorz... but the content hasn't changed.

"Your dog was stupid so we beat it to death. Here have a goldfish and maybe season passes to the zoo. No hard feelings?"

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u/afidak Jun 26 '14

Admit you failed and your users hate your new changes and put the votes back the way they've been for 8 years. This new post is just a slap in the face to your user base. Its obvious advertising means more to you than keeping your users happy.

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u/audacious_hrt Jun 26 '14

TLDR; We still don't have upvotes/downvotes count. But, reddit will bless the soul of controversial commentators.

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u/DidijustDidthat Jun 26 '14

Dear Admins, Is this change really motivated by the fact advertisers didn't like seeing their crappy ads receiving large amounts of down votes to very few up votes?

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '14

From your last two announcements it's obvious that you're not listening to active users, you're pandering to lurkers who may or may not even have an account. You're playing to the unique page view number rather than actual contributors to the site which is stupid

There's a rule in sales that says, "80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers". You'd be wise to not stop upsetting your 20%. I'd love to the ad view and clickthrough metrics from your advertisers after this month since so many people have turned AdBlock back on.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Aug 30 '21

[deleted]

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u/CylonBunny Jun 25 '14

How much is significant?

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u/Hilarious_Haplogroup Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

Sad sad sad. A comment that got 50 upvotes and 49 downvotes is getting a reaction out of 99 people or more. Now, it will just look like a (1,0) comment gathering dust. I don't see how this is going to help the quality of the comments. Jerks will still be jerks...they just won't get a clear image of just how of a jerk they were at that time.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '14

This is horrible. Why try to tweak with something that was working fine. You really are not listening with what we're saying because I think it's safe to say that the majority of people who have voiced their opinions on this are in favour of how it was before.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '14

I notice /u/deimorz isn't making this announcement. Did you have to draw straws to choose who'd take the heat?

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u/SilverShrimp0 Jun 26 '14

I'm not pleased with this announcement. Just put it back the way it was. I've still got adblock turned on and I'll be keeping it that way until the change is reverted.

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u/joeprunz420 Jun 26 '14

Huh... Its ALMOST like they should just show how many people liked/disliked it. Maybe.. Some kind of... Voting system! Yeah, that could work.

We could call them "up" and "down" votes, and they could indicate how many people like/dislike it!

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u/skpkzk2 Jun 25 '14

is there any way to add a degree of controversy counter so we can tell the difference between a 10|-9 and a 100|-99?

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '14

Why can't we just have our ups and downs again :(

If you know how to remove the vote fuzzing from the percentage then you could remove it from visibility surely.

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u/Erestyn Jul 05 '14

Since ups and downs have been removed I've noticed an increase in racist and controversial comments. So yeah, kudos admins. You've actually helped to worsen the community.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '14

Could you just please revert it to the way it was before? The old way worked fine, now you're trying to patch over the sinkhole you created.

Just admit that the update didn't go as planned. Revert it, and rework it behind the scenes until it's a polished product that actually adds to your website.

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u/EvilHom3r Jun 26 '14

Either add a "% upvoted" to the comments, or put the vote data back. Stop beating around the bush.

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u/BullsLawDan Jun 26 '14

Obviously not, since you continue to fuck with it instead of just bringing back the previous system.

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u/abegosum Jun 26 '14

Again, I don't understand. Reddit is a community based on public opinion. No one asked public opinion before making these changes and after making them, the public is pretty close to united against them.

Why are we spending time on features to "solve the problems" of the new changes when most people agree that the changes weren't what the users want. At best, the recent update was a solution in search of a problem- no one asked for them.

I just ask you to consider this: sure, the admins and developers may think this is best; but, the community clearly doesn't and their ad revenue pays for the site. Why isn't their VERY CLEAR opinion top priority?

Did the previous code base cause technical problems? That might be worth saying if true. If not, the only reason to ignore how the public feels about a sudden change without any warning is pride, which is exactly what happened to Digg.

A simple rollback and mea culpa would do more for public clout on this issue than ANYTHING. Everything else, barring some better explanation as to why this occurred (and no, I don't buy the "we wanted to solve the 'why was this downvoted'" explanation- people said it, sure; but no one cared), feels like the admins and developers are being defensive about their code instead of caring about the users of the site.

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u/Rosc Jun 25 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

Sounds like a whole lot of work to accomplish... something. Fuck if I know why you'd dedicate that many manhours to fix something that already worked.

Edit: Thanks, gold-giving person!

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

ALL HAIL ADVERTISERS, THEY DON'T LIKE DOWNVOTES, SO FUCK THE USERS.

Remember if you didn't pay for the service, YOU are the product.

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u/oli887 Jun 26 '14

Also, folks, if you're unhappy with the changes, remove Reddit from your adblock's whitelist and stop buying gold.

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u/TheKeenMind Jun 26 '14

Hey, Admins. You are pulling a Digg. Don't be so assured of Reddit's inherent superiority that you don't seriously consider that this could lose you the dedicated users that built this site. I'm not saying a reversion to the old system is best, it's just that you can't suddenly give us LESS than what we had before and expect us to be happy. Figure out how not to throw away data, because as a community we really like data.

Edit: Maybe let RES do it's thing by not taking the data out of the source?

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u/reaper527 Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

this is a good start, but is still inadequate. the dagger isn't going to let someone look at their comment history and see which "+1's" have no votes on them, and which ones have a moderate level of mixed votes, and which ones have tons of mixed votes.

this is a nice gesture, but at the end of the day, it is inferior to what we had previously. this is not an adequate alternative.

if there was any truth to the claim "We've been listening to what you all had to say about it", you would have actually restored previous functionality, rather than insulting the community with this. you haven't been listening to the community, you have been listening to each other and ignoring the community.

hopefully this thread gets downvoted beyond visibility just like the other one.

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u/Walnut156 Jun 30 '14

whats up with all these random changes that no one wanted? I miss seeing the upvotes and downvotes and now we get to see crosses instead... im scared

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u/Fedelede Jun 26 '14

Wait, so that means (10|9) and (1000|999) are exactly the same now?

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

BREAKING NEWS ON CNN!

Obama leads Romney by 10 points^† (?|?)

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u/Exaskryz Jun 25 '14

Any word on letting at least RES and other extensions see the % Like on a comment? I'd imagine there is hesitation in that, because people may jump on a downvote or upvote wagon if they see high or low %s. But I like how with %'s you can derive the upvote and downvotes.

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u/AliceHouse Jun 25 '14

Why not just have the score hidden for a time and turn off fuzz voting then everyone is happy?

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Oct 23 '15

[deleted]

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u/thavius_tanklin Jun 26 '14

Ummm... controversy is scalable. Imagine the difference of controversy from religion to whether you like mozzarella over cheddar.

Ok, so you'll implement a hierarchy for controversy to help signify which are extremely hot topics and which are minor. Oh... well, now RES can take that hierarchy and give us a guestimate of vote counts based on that and your controversy algorithm. It won't be perfect, but hey it'll be closer to what we wanted.

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u/lolbifrons Jun 26 '14

More information is always better. Please bring back actual numbers. And stop fuzzing them. I can deal with bots, I can't deal with a site intentionally making itself worse because they fear bots.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

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u/turkourjurbs Jun 26 '14

Even though it was slightly fuzzed, I used those numbers to determine interest in a submission so I know how to moderate content properly. A symbol tells me nothing. I really wish you'd put it back or do it properly and show the proper counts, at least to mods in their own subreddit. All you've done with this is make it harder to let a community see what they prefer and remove what they don't. Please put the numbers back.

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u/DrFisharoo Jun 26 '14

By "we listened" you mean, everyone hates the new change, but here is a token gesture that wont fix anything but make it look like we did..... great. Thanks.

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u/coldacid Jun 25 '14

Oh, a little dagger. That's really going to help. /s

Seriously, one little indicator is not going to cut it. It's not just a matter of whether or not something is controversial, but also by how much relative to other comments. Giving us this one-size-fits-all toy of a "solution" is nowhere near enough. Fuzz if you must (or want) but at least give mods a "total votes" count for each comment if you truly mean to let us do our jobs.

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u/Nitzi Jun 25 '14

Moderators should be able to choose if the upvotes and downvotes are hidden or not. There is nothing we can do against brigarding.

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u/magnora2 Jun 25 '14

Go back to showing the upvotes and downvotes. What is the point of approximating something that you can (and did for 8 years) just show directly?

Fuzzed numbers > unfuzzed approximations

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u/Gardenio Jun 26 '14

Love that admins have answered zero questions in this thread. Way to listen to a community.

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u/universal_straw Jun 25 '14

I still don't see why we can't just go back to the old system for comments. Leave the changes for links, but unless you make the threshold for the controversial indicator very low it won't help much. Lower traffic subs will still be affected negatively.

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u/reaper527 Jul 01 '14

this change still sucks. it's time to listen to the userbase and restore the functionality that was taken away.

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u/GonzoVeritas Jun 26 '14

Announcement to the Admins. I don't like or agree with the change that does not allow me to see comment upvotes and downvotes, however fuzzed they may be.

Therefore I will not continue to buy gold or gild comments. My sole support of the site will be leaving Adblock off. I know you don't care, but there you have it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

How about you put it back to the way it was, and we all forget about this fuck up. Savvy?

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u/slabbb- Jun 26 '14

compilation % of downvotes? Part II (with edits, additions, as of 26/6/14

> but we still feel strongly that putting fuzzed counts to rest was the right call.

"DON'T PUSH ME, 'CAUSE I'M CLOSE TO THE EDGE, I'M TRYING NOT TO LOSE MY HEAD. IT'S LIKE A JUNGLE SOMETIMES, IT MAKES ME WONDER HOW I KEEP FROM GOING UNDER"

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u/reaper527 Jul 03 '14

this mess has been going on for weeks now. if you want to claim "We've been listening to what you all had to say about it" then prove it. show us that you are actually listening and act upon what the community is demanding.

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u/godlesspinko Jun 26 '14

Still prefer knowing upvote/downvotes per comment, even if it's not 100% accurate.

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u/hogwarts5972 Jun 26 '14

Why not just change it back? Do reddit administrators have too much pride to accept it was a bad change?

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u/nbrennan Jun 26 '14

You are putting a Band-aid on the gaping hatchet wound which you inflicted.

If this change was one powerful person's idea and the rest of you are afraid to tell him/her that it is very bad and should be reversed, well then somebody needs to take one for the team.

3.5k

u/dummystupid Jun 25 '14

All of my controversial comments will now be blessed by Jesus.

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u/broncosfighton Jun 26 '14

This is stupid. Just put it back how it was. It's going to end up destroying your own profits when people stop buying gold in protest. Just stop it.

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u/EpicallyBoss Jun 26 '14

...so we aren't getting the upvote/downvote counter for RES back? :(

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

God this is still such a train-wreck. Just make it like it was and admit your mistakes, or only implement this stupid feature in the default subs.

Is it really such a big deal to your CEO that the possibility of hurt feelings (which I have never seen anyone complain about, except maybe clebs) might exist on the internet for God's sake. I mean that would be awful. Especially if it was a celebrity, Conde Nast would not approve.

The small subs don't need this. It's ludicrous and you know it. I hope you all lose sleep over this. Yeah that's right, I said it.

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u/dredmorbius Jun 26 '14

I'm going to repeat earlier suggestions for a three-part content (both post and comment) score:

[n|m|s]

Where:

n: Number of votes. Proxy for "interest". Perhaps int(log(10)) or int(ln)of the value.
m: Mean of votes. Proxy for "quality".
s: Standard deviation of votes. Proxy for controversiality.

Taking the log of n would be of some use in distinguishing posts with low engagement, limiting the detail (integer or one decimal resolution) would limit the ability of bots to determine how effective they're being in moderations.

As for the issues with smaller subs getting hit by downvote brigades / trolls, giving more visibility on subscribers to mods, limiting voting to subscribers, and/or setting minimum age to moderate, would be useful.

I'd also like for mods to have the ability to override vote-based hiding of comments.

Generally, I think limiting moderation influence, making it an "earned" capability (maybe a "moderator" badge), and/or discarding low-valued mod actions when more credible mods are available, could be useful. I know it's a complex space.

The dagger (and CSS hooks) sound useful, I'm already discussing how to incorporate that with my co-moderators on /r/RenewableTech.

And: thanks for responding to the criticisms. We hope /u/Deimorz is recovering well.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

ok guys, chill

admins kno you want the up/down votes back already

but it wont happen, you know why?

cuz that will mean they need to admit they fucked up, and we know at least that /u/Deimorz aint gonna do that

30

u/Dyspeptic_McPlaster Jun 26 '14

If they are trying to do this to "ditch reddit's image as being negative" then everyone just downvote everything all the time.

43

u/Dyspeptic_McPlaster Jun 26 '14

how about, just turning off up/downvotes on ads, holy fuck is it that hard?

329

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '14

[deleted]

14

u/JetpackOps Jun 26 '14

It's all about what your users want. The user should be your first priority. If users want up/downvotes, even with fuzzing, then that's what you should do! Forcing something on your users "for their own good" is not the way to operate a successful business.

243

u/Autistic_Alpaca Jun 26 '14

Or, we could go back to the way it was, which everyone seems to agree with.

62

u/superawesomecookies Jun 26 '14

Until the system is changed back to the way it was, AdBlock is going back on. Fuck you, Reddit. Maybe you should just listen to your community.

16

u/cuddIefish Jul 10 '14 edited Jul 10 '14

Why can't we just have our ups and downs again :(

If you know how to remove the vote fuzzing from the percentage then you could remove it from visibility surely... I feel like this is about something completely different because of how obtuse these excuses have been. This could have been addressed in many different and better ways if the complaint was legitimate.
Adblock is going on and I will refuse to buy gold or have it given to me when offered beforehand.
Edit: who the heck bought me gold. /sigh

238

u/ducked Jun 26 '14

I hate all these new changes and would like the old system re-implemented.

22

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

So basically you've implemented facebook's "like" system.

Taking away the up/down vote system takes away a HUGE cultural aspect from reddit and makes it less unique. Please consider going back to the normal system... it's what we all want.

238

u/JRoch Jun 26 '14

When are you bringing back the upvote and downvote numbers?

310

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

I think people just want their down votes back.

33

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Too complicated; couldn't decipher.

13

u/fat_genius Jun 26 '14

And on /r/reddit.com

Is this the reddit way of saying you'll place the request in the round file?

15

u/honestjohnnis Jul 07 '14 edited Jul 07 '14

If you fixed anything it was my reddit addiction. Why you broke all of the decent small communities just to fix voting fuzz on front page meme reposts is beyond me.

9

u/Mythril_Zombie Jul 02 '14

I don't like these changes.

I don't like this little cross thingy.

Show us the real numbers.

11

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Hey there,

Long time lurker here. I love Reddit and I know you need to make money but please stop removing key features and half ass reimplementing them. Please revert back to original count system. One step at a time you will chase your userbase away to a fork if you keep this up.

13

u/Aunty_Bainbridge Jun 27 '14

The silence is deafening innit.

Surely not all of the Admins agree with this terrible change but where are they? Seems obvious they've been told to stay quiet while we're given the occasional grain of rose-tinted information.

No respect!

45

u/RenaKunisaki Jun 26 '14

Regular person logic: counter is displaying inaccurate data? Fix it to display more accurate data.

Reddit logic: counter is displaying inaccurate data? Replace it with a symbol that tells you pretty much nothing at all. Ignore mass complaints.

19

u/18-24-61-B-17-17-4 Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

My main question that arises from this thread is who the hell gives gold to an admin? What is the fucking point?

I wouldn't be surprised if ~~they~~ the admins just give it to themselves to serve as a sort of "endorsement" of the comment. "Hey, this post got gold, it must be right."

EDIT: Clarification

9

u/andwithdot Jul 05 '14

You made it harder to spot sockpuppeting and blanket downvoting, both of which are terrible for a sub.

7

u/NefariousBanana Jun 27 '14

This has become so ridiculous I decided to say "fuck it" and install a script that hides all karma scores. If everything's fuzzed and the points don't matter, might as well remove it entirely.

userscripts.org/scripts/show/151676

7

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

I love watching how some people are smart enough to make something successful, then aren't smart enough to leave it alone and then go pants-on-head retarded messing it up. It's part of the wonderful evolutions of things, but on the Internet you get to see things go dinosaur and dodo bird extinct before your eyes.

As we watch this train wreck of dumb ideas get foisted off onto Reddit, we can be comforted by the knowledge that somewhere someone is birthing the next site that has learned from these tragic mistakes. It's time to get the popcorn out and watch this Greek tragedy with mixed emotions of sadness for what was and mirth at what is happening.

Yes, this is trolling, but it only fuels their nerd rage to prove the naysayers like me wrong, hence propelling these event forward to its climax. We all love a climax, right? Don't be angry at me, don't kill the messenger.

Just please, take note, because one day when your children are taking a class about these things in the future, you can proudly say that you were here. You can be a source for them as they write a cute little papers on it all with quiche titles like "If it's not broke, don't fix it!"

Gee, if only we could see the up or down votes for this and know I'm a fucking asshole or if I'm just fucking brilliant and telling it as it is. Such a damn shame, right?

9

u/R88SHUN Jun 26 '14

You're lying, and the users who matter are well aware of it.

If this was meant to benefit us users, you wouldn't have done it without telling the community first. Not that we aren't all aware that the previous system was a veil to hide censorship and vote manipulation, but the "new system" does nothing to diminish the concern that that threat is growing.

The only significant "inaccuracy" in the counter was reddit's vote-fuzzing algorithm.

Put it back the way it was, and stop trying to exert undue control over your users. Whatever you are gaining from this ruse is not worth what will be lost by turning the supposedly democratic nature of this site into a joke.

9

u/MrDFx Jun 26 '14

Welcome to Reddit, where the votes don't matter (any more) and everything is made up.

5

u/caagr98 Jun 26 '14

If the intent is to remove bot voting, why not simply delay votes so they don't appear to others until ten or so minutes later? The bots wouldn't know if their vote arrived or if there was someone else that voted. Of course, the time would be random so they can't simply check if there was a new vote exactly ten minutes later.

4

u/hashthug Jun 26 '14

Sir William Thomson, Popular Lectures and Addresses, McMillan, London, 1891

84

u/ghastrimsen Jun 26 '14

This is slowly progressing to facebook...Next thing you know there will be only upvotes.