As I understand it, the rating system gives more "voting power" to people who consistently receive "upvotes" on this site, and much less to new users, regardless of the substance of their posts. Thought of in this sense, it becomes obviously ridiculous, an even more flawed offshoot of reddit. It inevitably dooms this site to slide even FASTER towards the death-by-mass-appeal than the mainstream social mediums! The only stopgap has been a near-accidental curation of users through the network effect of the creator, but this is like Katrina floodwalls in strength. Apparently the "X" was never meant to be a "I disagree" button, but it is clearly being used in this sense already. Apparently the power-law-voting was meant to give more strength to intelligent and discerning users, but instead it only gives power to... power-users, of course. How was this not foreseen? It's meant to function like the weight of an esteemed philosopher in the coffeehouse, but instead it's like giving Gallowboob a -1,000,000 social credit button.
Yeah it's absolutely terrible. I originally put a lot of thought and effort into my posts here because this place seemed like a promising forum created by people who seem genuine in their desire to create a place for high-brow discussion. But it's actually just a goofy bay area circle jerk and it's pointless to put any effort into your posts when you'll just get Reddit "downvoted" into being "hidden" if whatever you say isn't crafted to conform to the biases of the prevailing hivemind here
Hey, at least it's not Literally Reddit. Not yet, at least
>>4816 If the admin refuses to change this, I'll likely never use this site again with the exception of reading every thread that @xenophon and @phaedrus posted in. There's a noticeable decline in quality already from two years ago to now.
I just tried to post a reply to your latest post, OP, but you either deleted it or a mod did. Was just going to say that I read both those threads and agree with your frustrations completely
All we can do is vote with our feet. Take it or leave it
>>4820 deleted since while I like being honest, my impression of this site has faded enough that I don't trust the userbase to rationally vote anymore, and so I don't want to distract the message with my anecdotal experiences which prompted this thread.
Generally small forums like these are only useful when you read a small selection of "elite" users and the conversations they engage in, no more. For an example, I would read Rdrama just for two people who posted historical summaries and one guy who posted economic analyses. Completely garbage noise to signal ratio otherwise. Looking at earlier threads on this site, it was once full of good threads, but that was basically an accident and the structure of the site actively discourages and destroys this (contrary to what the admin thinks, according to other meta threads).
This experience has been so disappointing that after I finish reading all of picrel tomorrow I'll turn off my PC for the next six months. Better things to do for a strapping young stud like me (lol)
>>4821 case in point: checked thread one last time and found one random guy with 1.1 voting score downvoted everyone in the thread without replying, clearly using it as a "disagree" button. Does the site owner seriously not see a problem with this sort of behavior? Does he not understand how easy it is to make "rightthink" accounts that accrue "karma" without controversy and then just nuke every post they don't like? This entire structure only gets more retarded the more I consider it. Somehow you made something even worse than fucking reddit.
See also: >>4432 3 months ago, in which this was discussed, agreement was reached that X was being used as a disagree button when it shouldn't be, and then nothing happened.
Admin has grand visions for voting as decentralized monarchical court making -- we can safely say these fruits are not being seen. Thread sorting based on voting for the front page is also not helping. >>4801 Is an interesting thread that has already disappeared off the front page, thus killing discussion. Bump order is the right way to order threads.
A reversion to the original imageboard format would be welcome.
I think the bigger problem is that there is relatively little incentive to devote to high-effort poasting on an anonymous forum. The benefit of anonymity is truthfulness, not comprehensiveness or depth of novel insight. 4chan can slaughter sacred cows with a single shitpost. The old blogosphere would slaughter bigger sacred cows with thousands of words, but it allowed writers to actually build a reputation and gain something out of it. Anonymous long-form just doesn't really make a lot of sense except in very rare and specific instances.
This place is anon so I don't know which posts you're alluding to. That said, on other forums when I've seen a poster complain about being illegitimately downvoted and silenced by the hivemind, if I check their history then like 90% of the time I'll find their stuff is indeed below the site's standard. The archetypal case is a poster who responds to losing an argument by getting tilted and restating their original claims more and more heatedly without providing any new substance.
Could be you're one of the exceptions. It happens sometimes. But if subpar posters *were* being justly gatekept, it would look something like this.
>>4827 You should be able to consider the problems I have raised with the system, which has much higher aspirations than hobby forums, without reducing it to moral/intellectual failings of the messenger. It is fundamentally completely ridiculous for a handful of people chosen only through their ability to widely appeal to have full control over what gets viewed. I think it's also ridiculous that 4 people can find my post insightful, giving it a 0.6 rating, and then some untraceable heavyweight is too miffed to do anything but nuke it with -2 without even bothering to reply. There is literally no stopgap to prevent heavyweight accounts from abusing this power. There is, OBVIOUSLY, no real connection between broad appeal and intellectual rigor or depth. Theoretically you can always claim their taste is superior, as you are doing now, but it seems obviously subpar to me and the front page today contrasts heavily with the posts of two years ago. For the record, an argument was not involved in my path here. It's the absence of argument with this incredibly-easy-to-abuse function being used in its place that irritates me - blatantly being used differently than intended, as a "dislike" button rather than a "spam" button. Your implications offend me deeply. Fuck you.
(Meant as a statement of ideals - I should be able to say "fuck you" for being an incurious ass without the risk of you happening to have -3 voting power and nuking my ass. Again, voting power fundamentally does not and will never equal intellectual power! There is little causal relationship beyond the trust you apparently have in... groupthink!)
>>4829 Frankly, I was indeed using this site as a testing ground for some controversial ideas, for people to criticize and kick around and add onto. I would have been fine with any kind of reaction, as long as I got actual substantive feedback, because it's so low stakes. I was expecting too much, apparently. This button has completely destroyed the ability for anyone to do anything but post things with broad appeal. Fundamentally ruined the point of this site. If you can't see that, I'll tell you directly that you're a retard.
>>4831 Really, it's just Reddit with extra steps, quite literally Reddit: post -> group consensus vote -> only users selected by consensus are valued Sofiechan post -> group consensus vote -> votes accrue to those who adhere to consensus the most -> powerusers selected by consensus continue to enforce it You managed to combine powerusers and powermods into a single frankenstein abomination. Slow clap
>>4826 I've participated in high-effort poasting on fully anonymous forums for many years. I agree that the format has become largely obsolete due to the much more enticing incentives to semi-anon/facefag poast on larger platforms. But that's the reason why I wanted to give this place a shot: I thought it was cool and admirable that the admin(s) here were trying to keep the old-school anon forum format alive
But when I open a thread that I made an objectively good poast in, and see that some shamelessly biased loser(s) "downvoted" my good poast in bad faith in an attempt to get it hidden from other forum users, it makes me not want to participate in this forum. It's not a place for people like me. And hey, if that's the way it is, that's the way it is. The System Works after all, I guess
>>4834 Really? Which ones? All the forums I'm aware of are pseudonymous rather than totally anonymous. The site will plod along but it's just going to be low-volume. The intersection of anon and long-form is just very slight.
A while ago I told the admin that he ought to have made sofiechan as a traditional Xenforo-style webforum. (I'm sure there are alternatives that are decent on privacy and security.) You need to put names / pseudonyms and faces / avatars to posts if you want an incentive for quality posting, and it's good for social capital and reputation to be tracked across multiple threads. I like the experiment of weighted voting, but I don't think it's worked out to be better than the default forum as a tool of discourse control.
Incentive design in general seems important, and overall this forum isn't doing a bad job compared to other alternatives, particularly through audience selection.
Some comparisons:
- HackerNews: YC alumnin stay for longer in the frontpage, intense moderation by one talented guy who has made this his life's mission to shepherd the site. Works relatively well, but also has a negativity bias, and sacrifices a life. - Reddit: Upvotes/downvotes, moderators depending on the subreddit. Prone to echo chambers. - Facebook: Moderators for groups, varying moderation emphasis for the wider platform based on political headwinds. - TheMotte: One or a few people as sysadmins, posts are nominated to monthly roundups based on community suggestions. Semi-decentralized moderation. - LessWrong: Intense team greatly dedicated to the site, very opinionated - Substack: Network where each author has their own comments section and monetary rewards. - X: Select for virality, public square.
Overall some suggestions for SofieChan: - Make weekly roundups curated manually if they aren't already - Move voting to more of a delegated dictator model than a community aggregation model, since a community aggregation model is subject to Sybil attacks. - Try to codify indicators of quality into something that can be fed into an AI model?
A fundamental problem is that being a Reddit mod isn't particularly nourishing, high status or valued work, and less so for an anonymous forum. but growing this site until someone great wants to sacrifice their life to its moderation might also be an option.
Overall I would give the site an 8/10: fits its niche on the internet, upvotes/downvotes don't really matter, good conversations to be had.
