Staff —

Comment voting now shows the vote split!

And some more thoughts on opinions versus trolling.

The top-voted post this past week was a user requesting that we show the voting split on posts. So we just pushed out an update about 30 minutes ago that does exactly that. Now, when you see a score of zero, you can easily tell if it has received no votes, if it has received +10/-10 votes, or whatever the split may be.

We decided to rush this out because interest was so high. We're still not exactly sure how this might look in a more permanent form, including where it might be located on posts. Right now we're focused mostly on building confidence in the system, and we think exposing this data will ultimately increase that confidence.

At present, the current thresholds of -15 for graying a post, and -20 for collapsing the posts, will remain. We will continue to collect data on voting trends and consider various approaches to preserving unpopular opinions which are nonetheless worthy of protection against collapse.

But I did want to take a brief second to explain that there is a difference between unpopular opinion and out-of-context trolling. In a discussion, whether in real life or online, context is important. Popping into a NASA thread to decry the exploration of space in favor of feeding the world's hungry is almost always going to be viewed as a troll instead of a worthwhile opinion to express. Those that want to express such an opinion will have to work extra hard not to come off as trolls. This could mean laying off the hyperbole, sarcasm, and holier than thou attitude, but even then, it's going to be a major challenge. Such a poster should hardly be surprised to find themselves voted down. A person who is eager to discuss such matters would be better off taking it to The Soap Box, where freeform political discussion happens every day.

Context matters, but it's not the only thing. Substance counts too. Although we are each taught in kindergarten that we are unique snowflakes, the reality is that on a site with 8 million readers, what you personally think probably doesn't really matter to many people… not unless you can explain why, and what's relevant about your opinion. Popping into a thread about a new Android phone and saying "I will never buy one of these Android phones" is going to get voted down, because this has nothing of merit to it at all. No one cares whether or not you're going to buy an Android phone. The only way such a post is going to survive down votes is if it adds some meaningful substance to the discussion, and that takes more work than just dropping some rage or haterism on a thread.

In all honesty, we continue to look for examples of collapsed posts that were expressing meaningful opinions or arguments without engaging in otherwise trollish behavior. Please point us to them. It's our number one priority to build a system that does not stifle unpopular opinion. But what we cannot do is build a system that supports unpopular opinion laced with trolling, sarcasm, and extreme hyperbole at the expense of quality discussion.

425 Reader Comments

  1. effgee wrote:
    And now we've arrived at a "community policing" system that:
    1. Will (in my strictly subjective, personal opinion) turn the discussions into an echo chamber where the majority opinion rules, political correctness will be rewarded, and dissent (or perhaps even critical thinking?) discouraged. Apple mobs are going to "downvote" Android folk in discussions about Apple-related content and vice versa.
    2. Is equipped with a UI for the voting elements (buttons, stats) which has now become the dominant visual element for each single comment. Meta information (functional elements) has become more important than the information (the comment) itself. And *that* (information architecture) is not subjective - it is objectively a bad way of implementing said functionality.
    I realize that article comments have been a problematic area for some time, but I sincerely doubt that this system is going to provide a meaningful solution. Sure, it'll help solve/alleviate the immediate problem - silence the worst trolls with minimum expenditure/staff time. But as a means to make Ars a better place in the long run... I remain convinced it will fail.

    The German term "Verschlimmbessern" comes to mind.


    I'd like the downvoters to explain why they downvoted this. It is clear, well reasoned and in no way inflammatory.

    Come up with good reasons, or prove the point made in the post.

    (My first thought was to upvote it because I agree with effgee. I noticed its objective merit afterwards.)

    Ken Fisher wrote:
    there is a difference between unpopular opinion and out-of-context trolling.


    Not as far as votes go Ken, and comments on this thread should be all the proof you need.

    Last edited by aeberbach on Wed Oct 17, 2012 6:37 pm

    7668 posts | registered
  2. Maybe just display the total, but on mouse over show how it was derived.
    151 posts | registered
  3. I like it alright. The total is in identifiable colors, the numbers took maybe a second to decipher, and after that a quick glance parses everything.

    Generally identifiable colors, at least; being a bit colorblind, the blue and the grey are very similar to my eyes. But I'm used to that, and the only way to make something universally colorblind-friendly is to just make the world high-contrast.

    I don't get the problem with them being the bottom-left; it doesn't seem to interrupt the flow of comments to me.

    I can see the argument for like +1 (-1 / +2) or similar, but I'd much rather have all the data immediately available than have to manually intervene to see the counts. If anything, I'd remove the total and just have ( - / + ).
    8342 posts | registered
  4. Maybe this is just me, but I think there needs to be more visual distinction. Maybe something like:

    2(+4/-2) whereas the 2 is a larger font, the +4 is a superscript, and the -2 is a subscript.
    147 posts | registered
  5. I hope Ars is giving thought to limiting the effectiveness of astroturfers. It seems to me post votes can add to their ability to manipulate the perception of common opinion expressed in the forums.
    693 posts | registered
  6. Guys,

    I am STILL waiting to see examples of echochamber or collapsed posts that are not in some how trolls or asking for it by being crappy discussion partners. A few people talk about this like it's happening, but I don't see it.

    Please link some examples. And let me be clear: I am looking for collapsed posts, not -10 posts. IMO, right now what matters are the posts that get collapsed.

    Thanks for the feedback so far!
    19293 posts | registered
  7. small_furry_spider wrote:
    On a related note, I wonder if I find myself more likely to up vote a comment because others have upvoted it already, not because it is good. On one occasion I did not down vote a comment because it was on -19. It was not a good comment, but I would not have been just down voting it, I would have been hiding it, which seemed worse. Unfortunately, I have no suggestions to get around either of these.


    Yeah, you can end up in a group think sort of situation. There have been many studies that show how the median guesses by many people for any number of things end up amazingly close to the correct answer. For example guessing the number of jelly beans, but it works in a wide variety of situations. Newer versions of these studies have shown however that when individuals are aware of others guesses (or the average of others guesses) the effect no longer works, and breaks down quite badly.

    So following that logic, Ars should still have the buttons to up and down vote, but you don't get to see the totals. It will just get greyed out or promoted all of the sudden. Though I'm sure this idea will get down voted, but that's only because everyone else is piling on ;-)
    174 posts | registered
  8. To anyone at Ars, are you tracking user engagement on this issue? Of the registered users, how many are using the interface? Do you know? I'm curious.

    If you have that data, can you tell when someone is using all down votes, all up votes, majority down votes, majority up votes, or even/near even mix?

    It would be even more interesting if you could coordinate voting habits with posting habits (i.e. someone who always down votes and always has their posts downvoted). Such a system might start pointing to you to people who are traditional tolls.

    Additionally, if you see someone who has an even mix, or mostly positive voting, but seems to be getting a lot of negative comments that would indicate, without any deeper investigation, that the commentor is probably not a troll in the traditional sense (lack of malice), but might be that protected class.

    You could add some conditions and rules to that as well: perhaps an even mix of positive votes with a significant number of negative votes (where the average of positive/negative votes for the thread result in this person being well outside the normal distribution). All kinds of fun ways to look at the data.

    Without access to the data, I have no idea if this would work or not, but it might be a way to start breaking down the data you're getting to identify those who you want to create a protected class out of.
    665 posts | registered
  9. I was thinking mouseover/hover as well for showing vote splits, but then I realised that might not work as well on touch devices.
    2756 posts | registered
  10. effgee wrote:
    And now we've arrived at a "community policing" system that: [list=1]
    [*] Will (in my strictly subjective, personal opinion) turn the discussions into an echo chamber where the majority opinion rules, political correctness will be rewarded, and dissent (or perhaps even critical thinking?) discouraged. Apple mobs are going to "downvote" Android folk in discussions about Apple-related content and vice versa.


    I have to agree. I just recently started reading Ars Technica a couple months ago at the suggestion of a friend. I find the articles to be of generally high quality (good content and well written), but the discussion not quite as good as another tech/science blog I read.

    If up/down voting comes down to "I agree/disagree with your point of view," then it might discourage people from participating. It will likely weed out many trolls, but it could take out innocent bystanders as well. It's a heavy handed solution, in other words.

    This is not to say that I have any great ideas myself, but I'm rooting for the editors to find a system that works.
    37 posts | registered
  11. If you want to solve the problem of ambiguity, you need to use labels instead of arrows:

    likes: 1, flags: 6.

    When presented in gray it will distract less than the current design with arrows and colors. Make the labels clickable so no arrows are needed.
    2080 posts | registered
  12. effgee wrote:
    And now we've arrived at a "community policing" system that:
    1. Will (in my strictly subjective, personal opinion) turn the discussions into an echo chamber where the majority opinion rules, political correctness will be rewarded, and dissent (or perhaps even critical thinking?) discouraged. Apple mobs are going to "downvote" Android folk in discussions about Apple-related content and vice versa.
    2. Is equipped with a UI for the voting elements (buttons, stats) which has now become the dominant visual element for each single comment. Meta information (functional elements) has become more important than the information (the comment) itself. And *that* (information architecture) is not subjective - it is objectively a bad way of implementing said functionality.
    I realize that article comments have been a problematic area for some time, but I sincerely doubt that this system is going to provide a meaningful solution. Sure, it'll help solve/alleviate the immediate problem - silence the worst trolls with minimum expenditure/staff time. But as a means to make Ars a better place in the long run... I remain convinced it will fail.

    The German term "Verschlimmbessern" comes to mind.


    Sigh... I appreciate your concern, however the Ars staff have two things that undermine this sentiment:

    Data. They have actually looked at voting patterns, what gets up-voted and what gets down-voted. They have seen that the majority of heavily down-voted posts are substance free and unpopular opinions are mostly left alone.

    Commitment. They have repeated frequently that this is an experiment and that if it causes deeper problems, especially the problems you mention, it will be removed.

    As for the general idea of an "echo chamber", it only comes up in situations where there is both: an unreasonable majority that is hostile to competing ideas and a method of silencing those ideas. While you can argue that the voting system allows for silencing, it doesn't. It only allows for quieting them, the comments are collapsed, not deleted and I doubt that deleting would ever happen (They don't even delete moderated posts).

    As for a hostile majority, there isn't really one at Ars. In "controversial" threads, there is hostility but no majority (Apple vs Android, MS vs Google etc.), and in other threads there is majority but little hostility (science topics, etc.). My experience in the science threads has shown that the people that go against "popular" opinon are often going against established science and rarely back up their opinions. The ones who do post "evidence" (often shaky at best) tend to lather their posts with vitriol anyway.

    If you get down-voted, you get down-voted, live with it, learn from it. A -3 is nothing but bad luck with the 15 people that read your comment, 2 liked it, 5 didn't and 10 didn't care. It's not like it changes anything anyway.

    As mentioned in the article, there are 8 million readers, and hundreds of thousands of posters. Given that the lowest-scoring comment is about -160 that shows that there isn't much potential for an echo chamber.
    309 posts | registered
  13. harmless wrote:
    About the format.

    Get rid of the pipe and the slash. As well as the leading plus sign.

    (5 +7 -2) is fine,

    and just (0) instead of (0 +0 -0).

    Cuts down on the clutter.


    (+7 -2) would be sufficient as well. If you're going to show all the numbers:
    (7-2=5) is probably the one most people have the easiest time parsing.
    42462 posts | registered
  14. aeberbach wrote:
    Ken Fisher wrote:
    there is a difference between unpopular opinion and out-of-context trolling.


    Not as far as votes go Ken, and comments on this thread should be all the proof you need.


    We will see once the votes come in. It's too early to judge when a discussion just stared.

    That the post you champion ends with an insult is probably not helping, although I don't know how many people know how crappy that comment really is in the German context. It's a bit like "arranging deck chairs on the titanic." A totally unnecessary gloss that colors the entire feedback IMO.

    FWIW, I voted it up.
    19293 posts | registered
  15. Major General Thanatos wrote:
    I'm beginning to think the thoughts behind just hiding the numbers might actually have merit.

    Now look at what your thoughts just got you. ; ) with the split system you can, over time, get an idea of the average posters typical mindset vs yours
    106 posts | registered
  16. dbmarketing wrote:
    To anyone at Ars, are you tracking user engagement on this issue? Of the registered users, how many are using the interface? Do you know? I'm curious.

    If you have that data, can you tell when someone is using all down votes, all up votes, majority down votes, majority up votes, or even/near even mix?


    We track pretty much everything by post, by user, and by vote, and by time. We have a pretty deep insight into the system, but obviously we need more time to get more data.

    Engagement is through the freaking roof.

    One item of interest: based on my math (I need to look into this more) far more votes are cast than posts, meaning that many are voting who are not discussing. I like that.
    19293 posts | registered
  17. I'm also struggling with the distinction between "Dislike" and "Troll / Not worth reading". I admit that when I see an up & down arrow I up-vote what I like/agree with and down-vote what I dislike/disagree with. I think this is an efficient way to participate in the debate without clogging the thread with posts that say essentially the same thing... but that does not work here as currently implemented.

    I'd hate to add more complexity, but maybe we need a third option. Collapsing a post that people dislike is not the goal, a third option to "Flag" a post as off topic, possible trolling, etc. could be used to collapse posts.
    11 posts | registered
  18. Ken Fisher wrote:
    dbmarketing wrote:
    To anyone at Ars, are you tracking user engagement on this issue? Of the registered users, how many are using the interface? Do you know? I'm curious.

    If you have that data, can you tell when someone is using all down votes, all up votes, majority down votes, majority up votes, or even/near even mix?


    We track pretty much everything by post, by user, and by vote, and by time. We have a pretty deep insight into the system, but obviously we need more time to get more data.

    Engagement is through the freaking roof.


    Well that's good then, you'll be able to start assembling some models of typical thread activity and that should really help you get your hands wrapped around the user engagement. I wonder though, if there is any correlation between trolling and voting paterns? I think that would be interesting to see.
    665 posts | registered
  19. While not specifically related to this current change, there is some funkiness that occurs withy the voting system on iOS (or specifically pulse reader). When I up or down vote someone the vote count always goes to (+11|+13/-2). On the old voting system it did the same. Not sure if this is happening to everyone or not but curious to find out why it defaults to those specific numbers.

    More on topic: I greatly appreciate being able to see the vote split to decker the quality of a post and how it has been viewed by the community in a more granular manner. That said, the remarks about making the cumulative count in bold are reasonable. I also concur that if you are going to put a "+" in front of the positive zero, you should also place a "-" in front of the other zero. Or get rid of +/- and use green and red to convey positive vs negative. It will look cleaner.

    Thanks for putting so much time into this new voting system. I, along with many others, was very skeptical of its potential influence on the site.
    post | registered
  20. What irritates me the most about this is that it has become apparent that whether or not the comment voting system exists at all was never really open to debate or dissent. If the hint of "more to come" from the announcement in May of the reintroduction of member ranks is any indication, it's been a done deal for many months and we just didn't know it until now. Mr. Fisher has intimated before that member opinions only matter so much. If the hint from May hasn't been superceded, it may mean there's still more surprises in store, like tying poorly or very well received comments to one's membership rank, etc, and we won't have much say in those changes, either.

    I suppose this is all a marketing effort to distinguish the site and raise its apparent intellectual stature relative to competing science-and-tech news dissemination sites like Slashdot, and to that end attempting to reeducate its readership to "shape up or ship out" so that only the most erudite expressions become most visible when attached to articles. I'm not averse to being "used" in this way, since Google and other businesses try to use me in far more dubious ways, but again it was irritating to realize that the fundamental decision to be used in this fashion was never open to dissent from those being so used.

    Last edited by VulcanTourist on Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:21 pm

    772 posts | registered
  21. Would it maybe make sense to only show the vote count (cumulative as well as total up/down) after I've voted? Or maybe only show the total up/down after I've voted? I guess some readers will want to see the votes without having to vote. But that's just my two cents.
    487 posts | registered
  22. Da Phire wrote:
    How about changing it so that the breakdown only shows up when you hover over the total? So by default you would only see the total, but if you hover over the total you see the numbers of + and - votes. That would make it look more streamlined while still having the information available for those who want it.


    I agree with this

    One of my favorite things about Ars Technica has always been the 'clean' interface in the forums. It is one of the few places left where the bulk of what you see in a discussion forum is actually the discussion vs. 8-line signatures that give hardware specs in three font colors, or animated gifs of cars, or blinking animated avatars. I can see wanting to put the overall score in plain view, but adding the positive and negative vote counts just seem like too much clutter.
    17266 posts | registered
  23. As you can tell by my forum rank, I don't post much. I've noticed that quite a few of the user-suggested improvements to your up/down voting system have been implemented since it was recently made live. Thanks for actually listening to what your users want in the overall user experience. This is hard to find these days.
    81 posts | registered
  24. dbmarketing wrote:
    To anyone at Ars, are you tracking user engagement on this issue? Of the registered users, how many are using the interface? Do you know? I'm curious.

    If you have that data, can you tell when someone is using all down votes, all up votes, majority down votes, majority up votes, or even/near even mix?


    Previous post about this:

    Observations on what's getting downvoted, with some dissected specimens

    There are more up votes than down votes.
    More votes cast than posts made.

    I think those are main points. People seem to be unnecessarily pessimistic about this change. Criticism and concern is valid, but many people seem to be very "the end is nigh" about all this. I doubt that it will be that apocalyptic.
    309 posts | registered
  25. Ken Fisher wrote:
    Major General Thanatos:

    And might you say... why? This is the "substance" I speak of :)

    Seriously, we care what people think, but more important than that... why they think that.


    Kestrel: Front page comments only.

    Now if you could just figure out a way to adjust the weight of votes from page to page, that would be interesting. I've noticed that people tend to vote less and less as they read through posts and from page to page, unless someone posts something that realy strikes a nerve...
    106 posts | registered
  26. I like the idea, though to be clearer, how about greying the up/down numbers (or rather if coloured, partially desaturated and lightened) ? Bolding the total would just serve as a distraction from the content itself, so by reducing the contrast, we can reduce the importance whilst still emphasising that the total is the figure used to determine the state.

    To reduce the clutter against the general minimal look, the ( | ) could be removed. and perhaps the up/down arrows should be positioned next to each other to neaten it up.

    It seems to me that the total is going for the hot/cold scheme (orange positive, blue negative). I remember reading a blog post somewhere else how red and green mean different things in other parts of the world (e.g. positive and negative), so at least the hot/cold scheme is less ambiguous. I'm sure Ars has some other candidate colour schemes in mind though.
    19 posts | registered
  27. I am for changing the format to +1 (+6/-5)

    However, I don't support moving it from the bottom left to top right. Let's remember mobile here. There's plenty of space on a computer, but the current format works across computer and mobile: Name/Rank in top left, tools on top right, votes on bottom left and post count in bottom right.
    15724 posts | registered
  28. VulcanTourist wrote:
    What irritates me the most about this is that it has become apparent that whether or not the comment voting system exists at all was never really open to debate or dissent. If the hint of "more to come" from the announcement in May of the reintroduction of member ranks is any indication, it's been a done deal for many months and we just didn't know it until now.

    Actually, what seems to irritate you is that we're not doing things the way you like. :)

    Then you add in some wild speculation about planning this since May, which has no basis in truth or evidence, like this is a giant conspiracy that we've been sitting on for half a year just waiting to unleash to ... I don't know what. Reap huge rewards and piles of cash somehow evidently?

    I supposed it's too much to think that we're telling the truth, and genuinely want to improve commenting, and that it was going to be impossible to change anything without vocal opposition showing up no matter what we did. Clearly the way we keep asking for feedback and adjusting things is just more evidence that we're not interested in our readers and what they think. So sneaky! :flail:
    23782 posts | registered
  29. dacjames wrote:
    I like the idea, but I don't like the format. Showing the final count is redundant when you're showing the pluses and minuses. I would prefer (0) => (+1) => (+1 | -1), coloring the plus or minus if the post is positive or negative, respectively.

    That this post is voted -3 is a clear demonstration of how badly voting moderates.

    Last edited by Solomonoff's Secret on Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:20 pm

    13300 posts | registered
  30. fusioned wrote:
    To reduce the clutter against the general minimal look, the ( | ) could be removed. and perhaps the up/down arrows should be positioned next to each other to neaten it up.


    While they're at it, they should work on the "New Poster" tags. You're shown as a new poster, even though right under your comment it shows us that you've been coming here since 2007 (at the very least) haha!
    487 posts | registered
  31. thomasfortherage wrote:
    While they're at it, they should work on the "New Poster" tags. You're shown as a new poster, even though right under your comment it shows us that you've been coming here since 2007 (at the very least) haha!

    It says "NEW POSTER" not "NEW READER". You gotta participate to lose the newb tag! :D
    23782 posts | registered
  32. Switching to a ratio system for collapsing/hiding posts makes a lot more sense than having it be a flat limit. Having a ratio would still allow for clearly trollish posts to be collapsed but it would buffer unpopular opinion a bit more from being unfairly collapsed or hidden.
    70 posts | registered
  33. VulcanTourist wrote:
    What irritates me the most about this is that it has become apparent that whether or not the comment voting system exists at all was never really open to debate or dissent. If the hint of "more to come" from the announcement in May of the reintroduction of member ranks is any indication, it's been a done deal for many months and we just didn't know it until now. Mr. Fisher has intimated before that member opinions only matter so much. If the hint from May hasn't been superceded, it may mean there's still more surprises in store, like tying poorly or very well received comments to one's membership rank, etc, and we won't have much say in those changes, either.

    I suppose this is all a marketing effort to distinguish the site and raise its apparent intellectual stature relative to competing science-and-tech news dissemination sites like Slashdot, and to that end attempting to reeducate its readership to "shape up or ship out" so that only the most erudite expressions become most visible when attached to articles. I'm not averse to being "used" in this way, since Google and other businesses try to use me in far more dubious ways, but again it was irritating to realize that being used in this fashion was never open to dissent from those being so used.


    [EDIT: Ninja'd by Aurich. I'm ok with this]

    That's unnecessarily pessimistic. I don't feel particularly used. The ranks don't really mean much, I mostly just notice the "new poster" badge and judge the comment based on that. The ranks aren't exactly obvious, is "Ars Praefectus" higher or lower than "Ars Centurion"? Well without significant prior knowledge (of either the ranks or Roman social/military heirarchy) it is hard to tell.

    "You suppose" isn't really very good evidence. I don't feel that Ars is doing this to "market" itself, that seems awfully cynical. You state that you feel that nothing was open to dissent, despite the fact that I don't remember anybody complaining about the forum ranks, and while there is certainly dissent about the voting system, there are few out-and-out signs that people don't like it.

    Wild speculation is not useful, as has been proven by endless political debates. In fact you haven't just speculated, you have fallen for the Slippery Slope Fallacy.

    Last edited by Aatch on Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:30 pm

    309 posts | registered
  34. Just out of curiosity, even 5 pages in a week old article is getting voters with the new system.
    42462 posts | registered
  35. Ken Fisher wrote:
    dbmarketing wrote:
    One item of interest: based on my math (I need to look into this more) far more votes are cast than posts, meaning that many are voting who are not discussing. I like that.


    I would imagine that this means that posts that are just "agree" or "++" are getting cut down! I know I'm harrasing the crap out of you, but this is really interesting. Can you track character/word count in posts? Though if they quote, and those character/words get counted, that could ruin the test for one word replies.

    You could test body posts that contain quotes flags with body text containg "Agree" with various versions of that word, or the "+", "++", "+++" symbol usage for simple agreement.

    Run the test on threads before commenting and threads after! That would confirm the theory that the votring is letting users agree without posting.

    Is overall posting down?
    665 posts | registered
  36. How about: +14 -9 = 5

    Then it shows all the information while also parsing as a completely accurate equation.
    674 posts | registered
  37. Solomonoff's Secret wrote:
    That this post is voted -3 is a clear demonstration of how badly voting moderates.

    Does it? You use the word "moderates", but I don't see anything moderated. Clearly some people thought it was a bad idea, and used the voting to express that. That's a data point, and it's not the be-all-end-all, but it's actually useful in and of itself. Unless people read my post here and decide to fuck with me I'd be pretty surprised to see that comment hit the -20 threshold. Which is what actually matters when it comes to "moderates".

    As Ken said, for the people saying the system is broken, please link up collapsed posts so we can see them.
    23782 posts | registered
  38. Are you also implementing an easy way for users to see their comments so they can learn what they said was well received or not ? If there already is one I couldn't find it the other day when I tried looking. I can find comments I made on the front page in the forums but they don't show any voting feedback.
    413 posts | registered
  39. Major General Thanatos wrote:
    Ken Fisher wrote:
    Major General Thanatos:

    And might you say... why? This is the "substance" I speak of :)

    Seriously, we care what people think, but more important than that... why they think that.


    Kestrel: Front page comments only.


    TBH, I wanted to just watch the plus and minus numbers in action on my post. :D

    So you also appear to be giving an example of the trolling that the writer was talking about. 10K + posts huh... ; )
    106 posts | registered
  40. EvilJohnius wrote:
    There are two separate reasons that one might downvote a response - trolling vs unpopular opinion - yes?


    Well, if you disagree with the opinion being expressed you really need to post a reply giving the reasons you think it's wrong. Clicking the down button in the hope of getting an unwanted viewpoint hidden is just laziness.

    I have to admit I've upvoted several posts simply because I saw they were being downvoted for unpopularity - is this corrupting the system or trying to fix it?
    3916 posts | registered

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operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-69-73-156.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/