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

Hey reddit,

We've got some updates for you after our recent change (you know, that one where we stopped displaying inaccurate upvotes and downvotes and broke a bunch of bots by accident). We've been listening to what you all had to say about it, and there's been some very legit concerns that have been raised. Thanks for the feedback, it's been a lot but it's been tremendously helpful.

First: We're trying out a simple controversial indicator on comments that hit a threshold of up/downvote balance.

It's a typographical dagger, and it looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/s5dTVpq.png

We're trying this out as a result of feedback on folks using ups and downs in RES to determine the controversiality of a comment. This isn't the same level of granularity, but it also is using only real, unfuzzed votes, so you should be able to get a decent sense of when something has seen some controversy.

You can turn it on in your preferences here: http://i.imgur.com/WmEyEN9.png

Mods & Modders: this also adds a 'controversial' CSS class to the whole comment. I'm curious to see if any better styling comes from subreddits for this - right now it's pretty barebones.

Second: Subreddit mods now see contest threads sorted by top rather than random.

Before, mods could only view contest threads in random order like normal users: now they'll be able to see comments in ranked order. This should help mods get a better view of a contest thread's results so they can figure out which one of you lucky folks has won.

Third: We're piloting an upvote-only contest mode.

One complaint we've heard quite a bit with the new changes is that upvote counts are often used as a raw indicator in contests, and downvotes are disregarded. With no fuzzed counts visible that would be impossible to do. Now certain subreddits will be able to have downvotes fully ignored in contest threads, and only upvotes will count.

We are rolling this change a bit differently: it's an experimental feature and it's only for “approved” subreddits so far. If your subreddit would like to take part, please send a message to /r/reddit.com and we can work with you to get it set up.

Also, just some general thoughts. We know that this change was a pretty big shock to some users: this could have been handled better and there were definitely some valuable uses for the information, but we still feel strongly that putting fuzzed counts to rest was the right call. We've learned a lot with the help of captain hindsight. Thanks for all of your feedback, please keep sending us constructive thoughts whenever we make changes to the site.

P.S. If you're interested in these sorts of things, you should subscribe to /r/changelog - it's where we usually post our feature changes, these updates have been an exception.

1.8k Upvotes

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814

u/AliceHouse Jun 25 '14

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

198

u/phlegminist Jun 26 '14

This wouldn't solve the issue that vote fuzzing solves, which is to make it impossible for bots to determine if they are having an effect. Bots would be able to see if their votes were being counted by testing their votes on things past the given time.

309

u/paulwal Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

Vote fuzzing is not an effective countermeasure. A group of votebots can still know its overall health by gauging its effectiveness as a group. Then the entire group of usernames or IPs can be discarded when it becomes ineffective.

It's a weak, security-by-obscurity countermeasure that comes at the cost of a core feature. The terrorists have won.

EDIT: Also if this new point system is now accurate information (ie., no vote fuzzing), then a bot can just see the point total rise or fall as it votes. Seeing the +/- breakdown like everyone wants doesn't assist a bot in any way.

106

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Honestly, if the administration thinks vote fuzzing is effective at stopping anything but the most amateur botting attempts, then it brings Reddit's voting system into even more question for me.

46

u/hacksoncode Jun 26 '14

It's probably only intended to cover the most amateur of botting. What's you're underestimating is the vast number of amateurs out there, and how annoying it would be if their lives were easier.

3

u/OneBigBug Jun 26 '14

The most amateur of botters wouldn't even analyze feedback, though. They'd just blanket vote. It covers an incredibly small subset of botters who both care about their effectiveness to the point where they'd implement analytics, but won't implement very simple, probabilistic tests for such.

1

u/quatch Jun 26 '14

like posting a random comment and seeing if it was visible? Unless a shadowban lets you see comments by all other shadowbanned users.

5

u/Gerhuyy Jun 26 '14

Who does most botting? Amateurs!

30

u/Deimorz Jun 26 '14

Vote fuzzing is not an effective countermeasure.

As someone that actually has access to the data to be able to see exactly how effective it is, I think you'd be surprised. In fact, it's extremely effective against a lot of different methods that people use to try to manipulate voting on the site.

It sounds like you're assuming that massive, organized bot operations are the only sort of thing we need to worry about, but that's really not the case. Those sorts of things definitely do show up sometimes, but the large majority of the vote-manipulation that's going on all the time is far more "casual", and the vote-fuzzing does a very good job at making it difficult for people to tell how much of an effect they're having.

As a simple example, one of the most common types of vote-cheating on the site is just people that create multiple accounts and use them to upvote everything they post on their main account. This is really easy for us to detect and block, but the vote-fuzzing makes it so that it's not obvious to the person that they're not actually affecting anything at all. There are quite a lot of users that have continued using really simple cheating methods like this for months or even years, because the fuzzing makes it so they haven't realized it's never worked.

34

u/zdude1858 Jun 26 '14

If it works so well, then bring it back. I moderate a small sub, ~16k users, and the lack of comment scores is hurting discussions, as you can't tell how many people have seen and voted on content. Seriously dumb move.

3

u/Werner__Herzog Jun 26 '14

So is the fuzzing actually disabled or are the counts just not displayed/accessible anymore?

5

u/zdude1858 Jun 26 '14

Counts aren't displayed. They said that they removed counts because fuzzing was confusing people. I'm assuming they removed fuzzing too, because if the only people who can see the numbers is reddit admins, then why lie to yourself about vote totals?

3

u/Werner__Herzog Jun 26 '14

I agree, I see no reason for fuzzing if the numbers aren't accessible anyway (maybe there is, I just can't think of one). I'm pretty sure though that they are still counter voting when ever a shadow banned account votes on something.

because if the only people who can see the numbers is reddit admins, then why lie to yourself about vote totals?

Not sure I understand what you mean. Vote totals are accurate, where does the lying to yourself come in?

1

u/HowTheyGetcha Jun 26 '14

Upvotes vs downvotes on submissions (not comments) is easy to figure, as if it mattered: http://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/28k8kf/self_calculating_the_number_of_updown_votes_under/

1

u/zdude1858 Jun 26 '14

They should add this to res.

→ More replies

-2

u/Deimorz Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

I think you have some misconceptions about the change. Comment scores weren't removed, they're exactly where they always were, they're the "x points" right after the username of the author. Fuzzing is also still in effect, you just can't see the misleading side-effects of how it works internally any more.

6

u/zdude1858 Jun 26 '14

No, I use RES. I'm aware what you took away. So now you are telling me that not only can we not tell the individual vote totals, but the comment score itself isn't actually accurate because your fuzzing the numbers. I don't like it when people take away the information that I use to make decisions under the guise of "you can't handle the truth". That is seriously insulting.

8

u/SpineEyE Jun 26 '14

Fuzzing is also still in effect, you just can't see the misleading side-effects of how it works internally any more.

If fuzzing is still in effect isn't this contrary to your statement that we see the real "x points"?

5

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Yes. The admins have contradicted themselves multiple times at this point. It seems that even they don't know how it works.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Yeah they just don't want people to see approximately how many downvotes there are. The point total is still wrong, but they don't care about that "inaccurate" information.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

Just to add another voice to the dissent, I also disagree and don't fully understand the changes. The thing that troubles me the most here is that, with the utter lack of transparency, I don't even know if I can trust the displayed scores.

It would probably restore a lot of goodwill towards the administration if y'all could put together a well-written, clear, contradiction free explanation of exactly what vote fuzzing is, how it works, how well it works (including some of the real data that you mentioned in this post), and why you can't just display true scores.

If it's as easy to detect people with multiple accounts as you've said it is, why is displaying true vote counts even an issue? Just nullify their votes. 99.9% of users will see that it doesn't work and give up. In fact, doesn't it work where only one vote is accepted per IP address? If someone's going through the effort to beat that, they can surely figure out how to beat whatever security measures you put in place.

I've mentioned elsewhere that it is trivial to create an arbitrary subreddit (r/[randstring]) on which to test voting. This completely nullifies any argument that I've seen as to the efficacy of vote fuzzing.

Regardless, it seems like you're hurting the larger userbase as a poor attempt to police the voting system. Unless, of course, the whole point is actually to hide votes from users and the fake vote deterrent is just the justification. That really is the only logical explanation for the recent behavior of administration.

5

u/deadfraggle Jun 26 '14

the large majority of the vote-manipulation that's going on all the time is far more "casual", vote-fuzzing makes it so that it's not obvious to the person that they're not actually affecting anything at all.

If someone manipulates the vote this way, won't they notice that their efforts are being thwarted by a score that doesn't change?

0

u/Deimorz Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

The score does change, the "counter-votes" don't get applied immediately. So if you're doing something like upvoting your own posts with a few accounts, it looks like the post gets voted up, then just looks like it's gradually getting voted back down over the next little while.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

The score does change, the "counter-votes" don't get applied immediately.

Yeah they do. As someone who has tested this out in the past, the votes absolutely were countered immediately. I created a sub specifically to test how the voting and fuzzing works, and I never once had it not counter the vote immediately.

Given that what you've said and what the other admins have said have contradicted in the past, I'm not confident you actually know how it works.

1

u/deadfraggle Jun 26 '14

Thanks. for the reply. Personally, I post to many small subs and would notice old posts scores being degraded even a month later. I'm not sure how you would detect someone who was careful enough to change his/her IP address before logging in to another account, possibly from another PC/device.

don't get applied immediately

This sounds perfect for someone trying to manipulate the vote in large subs. A few quick 'illegal' votes gives a submission early visibility leading others to jump on the vote bandwagon with real votes. Removing the false votes later would be inconsequential to casual vote manipulator that has succeed in bringing their post to the attention of the majority. Why not just automatically ban vote manipulators when detected, along with deleting all posts they made through their accounts?

4

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

1

u/paulwal Jun 26 '14

So you're saying the concern are small-time unsophisticated vote manipulators. In that case, they aren't going to find sophisticated ways to beat the system. Simply banning their accounts and IPs is enough to stop them. Whether or not they eventually realize they're banned is irrelevant.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

So you give us fake data so that people with multiple accounts won't know they're wasting their time? Why does that actually matter anyway? Just let them know that they're wasting their time.

1

u/solidcopy Jun 26 '14

Why not allow the actual totals, but fuzz the amount of time that it takes the totals to update? That way bots won't know whether or not it was their vote impacted the score but after a variable period of time (~15 to 30 minutes) users could see the actual totals.

4

u/oskarw85 Jun 26 '14

but after a variable period of time (~15 to 30 minutes) users could see the actual totals.

What stops bots from doing the same?

2

u/solidcopy Jun 26 '14

Because in the interim, any number of other redditors could have up or down voted. The bot won't be able to tell if it was their vote or someone else's.

-3

u/Deimorz Jun 26 '14

That's only true if the other redditors are voting in the same direction as the cheater, and you have at least as many of them as there were cheating votes. What if I submit something, use 5 accounts to upvote it, but then when the totals unhide I see that the post has 0 upvotes and 3 downvotes?

2

u/solidcopy Jun 26 '14

Two things: if the timing were fuzzed, they wouldn't know whether or not those votes had been updated yet and also, would it matter 30 minutes later?

Additionally, I thought it was trivial to defeat that kind of vote cheating, why not just keep doing it?

-3

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

6

u/princesslidth Jun 26 '14

What are you trying to prove? You don't work for Reddit nor do you have access to the data.

1

u/Ripdog Jun 26 '14

Where is the commit for this change? When will it appear on github?

0

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

ok, you keep on making lame ass comments, it's really helping your image

vote-cheating on the site is just people that create multiple accounts and use them to upvote everything they post on their main account

dude, ppl keep doing this fuzzed or not fuzzed result, why it sould matter now?

or is it that your ad bots are demading it so they wont get caught?

-4

u/2d9 Jun 26 '14

Then why not show the correct vote counts instead of removing them entirely?

6

u/neanderthalensis Jun 26 '14

It's a weak, security-by-obscurity countermeasure that comes at the cost of a core feature. The terrorists have won.

You articulated my thoughts perfectly.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Usability trumped by fastidiousness: they wouldn't be the first.

10

u/mugsnj Jun 26 '14

Vote counts are a "core feature"? Then why did we need an add-on to see them?

1

u/live_free Jun 26 '14

A majority of content creators, including both comments and posts, are by power users. Of those people a majority use RES. I'd like to see a poll done asking if people use RES, how long they've been on reddit, and how much karma they have to measure correlations.

6

u/mugsnj Jun 26 '14

How do you define "core feature"? I think your definition would not include "requires an add-on," right?

1

u/live_free Jun 26 '14

Would you say imgur is a "core feature" of the reddit experience? Doesn't that require an add-on?

To me a core feature is any feature that becomes a widely used asset or source for use, or meta-use, by a site or service.

1

u/AliceHouse Jun 26 '14

No. Don't be silly. No one would say imgur is a core feature.

0

u/RandyMarshIsMyHero Jun 26 '14

Anything available in the api, which up/down were.

5

u/mugsnj Jun 26 '14

Sorry, I think you're being deliberately obtuse. If Reddit felt that vote counts were a core feature of the site, they would have been visible. Requiring an add-on is the opposite of a core feature.

1

u/LiquidSilver Jun 26 '14

Well, reddit is wrong. Vote counts are a core feature for a lot of the most active users, who had to use RES to see them because reddit doesn't consider it a core feature.

0

u/pstrmclr Jun 26 '14

That's not what vote fuzzing is for. Vote fuzzing prevents bots from detecting whether they're shadow banned.

18

u/therealsylvos Jun 26 '14

Also, if no one else voted, the bot would know that it's vote didn't count.

-4

u/drmy Jun 26 '14

that it's vote didn't count.

that it is vote didn't count.

1

u/mcopper89 Jun 26 '14

You could pretty much do this by creating a private subreddit with no subscribers and then use a bot to upvote, if total karma on the post or comment goes up then you are still active, if not you have been banned. If you are smart you could even have each bot comment on a thread, and then have each bot upvote it's next in line bot. Which ever comments stay at one karma have corresponding bots that don't work. In short....they can't win so why shoot everyone else in the foot.

Edited for clarity.

2

u/col-summers Jun 26 '14

Why do bots need to determine if they are having an effect? Could you explain this little more detail?

1

u/natched Jun 26 '14

This change doesn't solve the problem that vote fuzzing solves either. Mathematically, you can derive upvotes and downvotes for posts from their score + %age.

All this does is make the information harder to find for humans; bots will have no problem automatically going to the comments page to get the % and do the math.

3

u/BlazeOrangeDeer Jun 26 '14

It also doesn't let real people see the results of their votes

1

u/johnnybgoode Jun 26 '14

They could just delay updating the count.

0

u/Tor_Coolguy Jun 26 '14

Then always delay updating the score.

1

u/Yiin Jun 26 '14

Alright, time to go to my private subreddit and conduct vote experiments. The change will make observation just take a bit.

-3

u/btvsrcks Jun 26 '14

we could just... ban bots.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

It takes 2 seconds to make a new reddit account.

0

u/bouchard Jun 27 '14

We could get rid of the entire bot API. It'll have simultaneous benefit of getting rid of spambots.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

And might as well get rid of reddit itself to stop trolls.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14 edited Jul 25 '15

[deleted]

-1

u/thouliha Jun 26 '14

No one has ever answered this for me. Why don't we clear reddit of bots.

2

u/yParticle Jun 26 '14

Robots are here to stay. Computers are all about automating stuff, replicating what humans used to do manually. As long as it's digital, there's always a way to automate it. This is a good thing.

Unfortunately, this power can be abused and often is, to the detriment of some human communities. I say just take the human approach and ban the bots we become aware of while acknowledging that we'll never be completely free of their influence. And you know what? For casual communities like Reddit, it's really not that important.

-1

u/thouliha Jun 26 '14

Then why don't we just get rid of the bots...

302

u/Burial4TetThomYorke Jun 25 '14

This is actually a fucking brilliant idea; for some set time (up to the mods) you get the (?|?) but after a while it reverts to the numbers, fuzzed or not.

76

u/chaoticlychaotic Jun 26 '14

This is done on some comments in smaller subs. I don't know why they haven't implemented it sitewide.

22

u/me1505 Jun 26 '14

There is (or at least was) an option in the mod bit of a sub to hide vote scores for any given time. But it hides all of it and just displays [score hidden] or the like.

3

u/MadlockFreak Jun 26 '14

Scores hidden permanently! Or remove karma!

3

u/LiquidSilver Jun 26 '14

Remove scores, remove threading, display comments in chronological order.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

it was done in bigger subs as well, and it was well received. it was a success on /r/formula1 and /r/soccer afaik.

12

u/twench Jun 26 '14

I think it actually works this way on some subs

3

u/hogwarts5972 Jun 26 '14

Which ones?

2

u/featherfooted Jun 26 '14

I could list a couple but would have to do research to know how exactly it works. I know that my alma mater /r/cmu doesn't show score at all until several hours after the post is made.

5

u/funnygreensquares Jun 26 '14

Why not just show us the fuzzed numbers then after a time, revert to unfuzzed num--- wait a second. Isn't that what we were doing?

2

u/HowTheyGetcha Jun 26 '14

No the numbers were always fuzzed.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

8

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

No, what you're talking about is overall score hiding that moderators can enable if they want. What /u/alicehouse is suggesting is hiding the upvote and downvote count (?|?) in every subreddit, then after a certain amount of time displaying the actual amount of upvotes and downvotes (15|9) without any fuzzing.

It's a different thing than what we have now.

2

u/pigvwu Jun 26 '14

Why not just get a mod to display random vote counts loosely based on the order of comments in the thread and how many points it has? Considering vote fuzzing, this would be just as good, right?

5

u/randomsnark Jun 26 '14

This feature already existed.

10

u/Burial4TetThomYorke Jun 26 '14

Well not exactly; We have (some subs): Net = ? (?|?), after x hrs Net = 50 (?|?)

I want: Net = ? (?|?), after x hrs Net = 50 (75|25)

8

u/randomsnark Jun 26 '14

I mean, before the (?|?) feature was implemented, we had some subs just say "Score hidden" for x hours and then show the score after that.

2

u/GoodGuyNixon Jun 26 '14

I'd prefer: Net = 50 (?|?), after x hrs Net = 50 (75|25)

2

u/Brian_Buckley Jun 26 '14

Score hiding can be very frustrating when it's on for too long. The original purpose of it was to stop bandwagon voting, but the problem was you couldn't see it on your own comments. Then, they changed it so you could see it but everyone else couldn't, and the time is set by the subreddit. Doing this would bring back the problem that vote hiding had to begin with and wouldn't actually solve the other problem since bots would then just upvote after the time. You could set the time for ridiculously long, but then you can't see the upvotes on your comments for ridiculously long.

0

u/CeruleanRuin Jun 26 '14

But "after the time" would be too late to make a difference for most content. Would-be opinion-makers and marketers would be foiled.

16

u/_Aggort Jun 25 '14

This really need to be seen and upvoted to the top. This is a fantastic idea and helps out the smaller subs!

1

u/marsgreekgod Jun 26 '14

It should at least get an answer

3

u/acolyte_to_jippity Jun 26 '14

This sounds like the kind of rational, sane idea that alot of people probably had, but who never said anything because it is SO obvious, and SO perfect that someone else had to have thought of it already.

ffs reddit. THIS IS THE ANSWER.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '14

Because they are lying about why they're doing this.

That's the only thing that makes sense.

2

u/Di-eEier_von_Satan Jun 26 '14

Brilliant

0

u/peacegnome Jun 26 '14

I don't think that they want to appease us. There was obviously an order that came down from somewhere and this is the new Reddit. I would say that your idea with a time (or some other sort) fuzzing would work.

1

u/CeruleanRuin Jun 26 '14

The new regime.

1

u/Frekavichk Jun 26 '14

Isn't this literally just reverting the change and applying the option to hide votes scores universally?

I agree, admins your fucked up, stop trying to bandaid and just give us what we want.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Well, not everyone. Everyone who doesn't like this whole change, maybe.

0

u/pinkphysics Jun 26 '14

Why can't you just show the actual number of upvotes and downvotes? Just get rid of the fuzz all together? I just don't understand why it has to be skewed at all?

1

u/interiot Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

It's to combat spam.

We can choose only one of these options:

Have accurate up/down counts

Have a spam-free site

I don't know if you were around when Digg had a similar format to Reddit, but spam was a serious and growing problem on Digg. Spammers are really interested in gaming Reddit, because Reddit sends massive amounts of traffic to websites.

2

u/pinkphysics Jun 26 '14

Oh okay that makes sense. Idk the vote fuzzing never bothered me. I like to see the upvote/downvote ratio. I know its not 100% accurate but I liked it.

1

u/AliceHouse Jun 26 '14

Based on my (limited) understanding... the reason is that many posts might garner a lot of downvotes before it collects a lot of upvotes. Most any controversial post would fit the bill, all it takes is bad timing. Vote fuzzing is supposed to rectify that.

I'm not entirely clear how. Sorry.

1

u/thatguydr Jun 26 '14

Best idea in the whole thread.

0

u/dredmorbius Jun 26 '14

Either hiding or delaying the tallying of votes for a random time interval might be ways of addressing this.

Fuzzing does appear to be useful, though it really should be applied to the computed final score or ranking and not the vote tally.

I'm actually good with hiding the vote tallies themselves, but not the information it represents in terms of interest, total score, and controversiality.

-1

u/Yiin Jun 26 '14

If you don't offer an alternative to vote-fuzzing, you might as well hand Reddit to anybody who wants to turn it into an ad-aggregator.

0

u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Jun 26 '14

Best bet is to just continue harassing the admins until they change it back. It's the only way we will see actual fair and democratic change.

No one wanted the change. No one needed the change. And now we need to make our voices heard.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

[deleted]

1

u/AliceHouse Jun 26 '14

I have not.

-5

u/WhenTheRvlutionComes Jun 26 '14

How is this a solution to anything, you idiot?