Flayrah adds rating-based comment visibility
Today I enabled a feature that I've been toying with for a while: rating-based comment visibility.
The aim is to discount poor comments and mediocre replies while promoting good comments. You can see it at work in recent popular stories.
The algorithm is still subject to tweaks, but here's how it works now . . .
Each comment starts out with a three-star vote, or the effective rating of its parent if it is lower, plus another three-star vote. These hidden votes are added to the displayed votes to determine the effective rating. This dampens the impact of the parental and initial votes (so one 1-star > five 2-star).
The rating is then decreased by 0.8 and divided by 2.2 to determine the post opacity. In short, comments rated below three will become less visible, encouraging readers to skip them. Replies to poorly-rated posts are also discouraged, because they inherit the parent's rating as a vote.
I've spent a few weeks tweaking the system, and I think it works reasonably well. However, if you don't like the effect, you're welcome to disable it. Simply go to your user page, click Edit, scroll down to "Block configuration", and de-select "Rating-based comment visibility", then save.
You can also hover over a comment to temporarily make it fully visible, or click it to make it visible until you refresh.
I'm aware of the potential for "groupthink". It's up to you to make this work. Please rate comments on their quality and relevance to the original topic, not your agreement with the opinion expressed.
Also, remember that there are five levels to choose from. I don't want to look in the database and find every vote is for either five stars or one. :-)
About the author
GreenReaper (Laurence Parry) — read stories — contact (login required)a software developer and Norn from Irving, Texas, interested in wikis and computers
Small fuzzy creature who likes cheese and carrots. Founder of WikiFur, and Editor-in-Chief of Flayrah.
Comments
Reminded me of an XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/810/
I think the mouse-over might be more relevant than the actual strip.
A few of them are getting pretty good at that.
Hey there GreenReaper. I would post this comment in that news article where you were asking for ideas for the site, but I'll post it here. Perhaps add a Flattr button for each news article. I know I would happily Flattr a couple of the well written ones, though seeing how I generally Flattr a lot of stuff you'd probably only make €0.05 off me. Plus to receive Flattr, the account holder must be willing to spend €2 a month himself, so perhaps a bad idea. Nevermind.
If they provide a submission method that I can integrate into AddToAny, without any upfront costs, I'd be glad to do so. Otherwise . . . yeah, it's a neat idea, but it seems like the return would be negative.
If there were things I wanted to support, it might be different, but they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot with the "give to get" requirement - they don't have enough people signed up. You also need to reach €10 to withdraw anything.
People wishing to give money can donate to WikiFur; Flayrah uses the same server. A great option for spare PayPal balances!
I would very much prefer rating-based article visibility :)
Strangely, very few stories seem to be rated below three stars . . .
High-rated articles are featured on the front page. However, they tend to suffer from people rating them based on the topic, rather than the quality of writing, unless it is clearly of very high quality. In addition, many stories are never rated.
With more lower-rated stories, I'm giving this a go. Let's see what happens.
Ratings now include karma. For most users, this will be beneficial. The implementation owes much to Giza's work on fivestarstats.
The effect of the change is that each comment now has an initial vote corresponding to the poster's average comment rating. Think carefully before getting into an argument that nobody else cares about, as it may affect your past and future comments.
How does this affect those posting as visitors or under generic names?
While karma based systems work well for some sites, I think there is a readership threshold below which its effectiveness degrades significantly. Too many people rate based on whether or not they agree with a comment, and not the quality of the comment. While this can be a problem on sites like Slashdot too, usually they have enough people that seem to fix that except when for very minority opinions. As opposed to here, where it seems many comments get rated by one person, often some nasty patterns (or potential patterns, hard to do much more than guess original intentions), like low rating for the other person in a two person argument that might just be from the other person, or some people getting "stalked" by negative reviewers regardless of what they post. I suppose the former example is eliminated by Slashdot's style of blocking ratings from people who have posted in a particular comment, but that would further limit the number of ratings.
That and it'd promote people being a guest rather then themselves when making comments that they feel should be made but might be controversial, which is not a good idea.
Those posting anonymously are currently not affected by karma. They also gain no benefit from it. I considered applying it, and I may still do so, but their current average ranking is 2.79 and I'm not sure I want to fade visitors' posts by default.
For comparison, the overall average is 3.10; the registered user average is 3.35 and the vast majority have 2.9 or more.
People can already choose to remain visitors, or to post anonymously on occasion (Slashdot offers a checkbox for this). However, what they have to say may be less read. Part of the point of karma is that it protects your expression of opinion. Not much, but enough that one or two dissenters cannot easily take you down.
In my experience, posters who occasionally say something controversial but worthwhile tend to attract more supporters than detractors. Those who say it in an obnoxious manner, or who consider themselves on a mission to convert the unbelievers, less so.
As of April 2012, anonymous posters are also subject to a karma bonus/penalty.
IP based or just all under an umbrella? Doesn't effect me as I never post anonymously, but I'm just curious.
Yes, it's IP based. While anonymous users are on average less highly-rated than registered users, we have many anonymous users who contribute positively, and they will be rewarded for it.
Is there a way to view my own karma rating?
Sure! I've added ratings to the user profile. All the votes are public anyway.
I included submission ratings as well; sadly, they should be considered "for amusement purposes only", as people tend to down-vote 'bad news' and up-vote 'feel-good' stories.
Comment folding has been implemented for very low-rated comments. You can click a comment header to unfold it.
I may tweak the sensitivity, but it seems to provide the right balance. It takes at least two "poor" votes to hide a comment unless your karma is severely negative. For most registered users it will take three, unless the thread is already low-rated.
Replying to a folded comment may be bad for your karma as others seek to remove the thread. Don't feed the trolls.
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