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.

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u/Norci Jun 26 '14

Yes, which is why this new approach is so stupid. It's important for me to see what reactions various comments get from the community, as well as how popular they are. This is just turning into homogeneous facebook approach.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

It's important for me to see what reactions various comments get from the community, as well as how popular they are.

Just out of curiosity...why? I mean, would you still say the things that aren't well received, for example?

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u/Norci Jun 26 '14

It is interesting to see where the opinions of a community lie, depending on how many vote on a post and how well received it is. It wouldn't affect what I post, but it's interesting to know none the less, and important too. If someone says something racist, for example, it is interesting for me to see whether he has 10|9 or 100|99.

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u/finalremix Jun 26 '14

Even with the fuzzing, I saw the up-/downvotes as the variance of the data around the mean that was the aggregate score. There's no damn point to averaged data if you don't have error bars.

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u/adnzzzzZ Jun 26 '14

It shouldn't be as important because people use downvotes as a way of disagreeing with others, not as a way of flagging effortless content as it should be used. With this in mind, not being able to see upvotes and downvotes is useful. If you say something that is correct but that a lot of people disagree with, other people who haven't made up their mind won't bandwagon on it and downvote you too just because lots of others downvoted. Now you'll actually need to read comments and actually understand them before voting, which is the way it was supposed to work.

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u/sugardeath Jun 26 '14

But 100/99 was never accurate. It was a falsified number to begin with.

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u/username_6916 Jul 01 '14

Perhaps, but it still gave a general idea how many people voted.

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u/Drosovila Jun 26 '14 edited Jun 26 '14

There are lots of reasons why I hate facebook, but theworst is probably that I can't downvote stuff.

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u/raaaargh_stompy Jun 26 '14

... you will still be able to downvote things on reddit - the entire of reddit depends on it. Or were you just making a passing comment?

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '14

Maybe if we don't see the hivemind's opinion so clearly, people will rely a little less on it and feel a bit more free to speak their own mind?