ArsTechnica

Staff / From the minds of Ars

Introducing comment voting on news articles and features

Learn about our new experimental system for reader comments.

In our continuing effort to promote the best and brightest discussion on news articles and features, we are testing a new voting system on comments. It's an experiment—we built the system with the minimum number of features to launch with, and if readers take to it, we may very well expand it to do more. Here is how it works:

Users who are logged in will see a vote count on each post, in parentheses, with up/down buttons for voting. The arrows will change colors based on whether or not you have voted (at present you are able to change your vote). Eventually, posts that cross a certain threshold will receive special treatment. We have yet to determine what those thresholds will be, but we envision highlighting posts with a good number of upvotes, and minimizing and ultimately collapsing posts with an excessive number of downvotes. We also hope to eventually use this to enable readers to quickly see the best comments (by vote).

We go into this knowing it will be a controversial move. Ultimately, this is more about highlighting great posts rather than punishing crappy posts. This is one reason why we introduced the "ignore" feature before rolling this out. In an ideal world, the trolls and the whiners would just be ignored, and everyone would move on. But we hope that the voting system will help improve the overall quality of comments. We have considered at length the rather typical rejoinder to voting systems such as this, namely that it creates an echo chamber. We are willing to take that risk.

We believe most of our readers are highly intelligent (and very passionate) technologists. The overwhelming majority are able to disagree and criticize one another, and our work, without resorting to insults, hyperbole, or other childish behavior. This move is not about the small number of recalcitrant trolls who inhabit our comment system. It's about the discussion, and our strong desire to see it grow in quality for you, and to grow in usefulness for us. On this latter point, I will simply say the following: each and every one of our writers and editors deeply desires intelligent and useful feedback and criticism.

It is our hope that the voting system will lead commenters to consider how others might receive their feedback, and that this should lead to stronger comments overall. It should also greatly cut down on the number of "me too" posts, since it is now possible to simply vote up a comment that you agree with. In the end, we decided to move forward with this experiment because we thought some degree of inter-commenter responsibility would improve our discussions.

We know some readers will absolutely hate this, while others will find it a long-overdue improvement. As with most changes, we will give it some time before assessing, and we will likely have a poll in the coming weeks to try to quantify some of your responses. In the meantime, we encourage you to try it out, make suggestions, and have patience. We will keep you updated on significant changes and tweaks we make to the system.

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294 Reader Comments

  1. FoO wrote:
    May want to think about making the votes be weighted based on seniority and rank as well - otherwise people will just create a bunch of fake accounts to upvote their dogma.

    Edit: Also - is there anyway to make them visible in the standard forum interface? As a sub I have all comments resort to standard interface vs. front page style.


    This.

    (no, really...I'd like this too...and whatever I did to make the standard forum interface my default, I can't figure out how to go back to the new comments format)
    69520 posts | registered
  2. Frennzy wrote:
    This.

    (no, really...I'd like this too...and whatever I did to make the standard forum interface my default, I can't figure out how to go back to the new comments format)

    That is set in a difficult to find profile preferences page. We have plans to overhaul it:

    ucp.php?i=profile&mode=profile_info
    954 posts | registered
  3. Wow. I really never thought this would happen.

    But what happens is just what you see above. The first handful of posts gets up/down voted, and the rest are ignored (mostly) in the voting. Because "Hey I already voted, I'm not reading 80 other posts, and I need to get my opinion out there right away" or some other similar thought process.

    As long as the comments themselves are not taken out of chronological order due to up/down voting (e.g., they just aggregate pluses/minuses), it should be easy to ignore.

    Since we can't up/down vote actual articles, yet: :(
    39359 posts | registered
  4. Nevermind, found it.
    69520 posts | registered
  5. Eriden wrote:
    xorloser wrote:
    Those upvote/downvote arrows look a lot like Reddit ... would hate to see another IP lawsuit over shapes and sizes. =P (it's a joke)


    I know you're being facetious, but Conde Nast owns both Reddit and Ars. That would make things really interesting if an intra-company lawsuit broke out though.


    Actually, that isn't quite true any more. Reddit is owned by Advance Publications who also own Conde Nast who own Ars. Reddit used to be owned by Conde Nast, but split off. So Reddit is more like an Uncle, or Aunt to Ars, than a sibling. Though "Uncle Site" just sounds weird...

    Just a minor correction, your point is still sound.
    309 posts | registered
  6. Great. First it was the pet battle game (gotta catch 'em all!) distracting me from the serious business of leveling to 90 in World of Warcraft, now it's the arrow game (gotta rate 'em all!) distracting me from the serious business of writing pithy comments on Ars Technica articles. I'll never accomplish anything meaningful.
    4189 posts | registered
  7. Why is the up vote arrow red and the down vote one blue? It seems that these colors should be reversed I would think.
    49 posts | registered
  8. oblib__ wrote:
    If you really wanted to make this influence people, aggregate their up/down votes across all comments they've made, and display that next to their post count in the corner. Then you can see just how popular or unpopular a person is. It could be like high school all over again!


    *Shudder*

    If you really wanted it to be like high school, you'd need a system for forming groups. With a clear included/excluded dynamic. (No Homers club)
    38 posts | registered
  9. Could you also make the ignore button static? Kind of annoying and inconsistent to have it floating around unlike every other comment icon.
    174 posts | registered
  10. BMR-777 wrote:
    Why is the up vote arrow red and the down vote one blue? It seems that these colors should be reversed I would think.

    Ars secret ploy to get Mitt Romney elected president?
    1892 posts | registered
  11. Valere wrote:
    I've never been a fan of comment voting. In my experience, it seems to reinforce group-think more than it highlights genuinely interesting posts.

    I totally disagree with you, but I find your comment interesting. How should I vote ? A "plus" would be seen as approval, a "minus" as censorship... Neither is ok !
    14 posts | registered
  12. BMR-777 wrote:
    Why is the up vote arrow red and the down vote one blue? It seems that these colors should be reversed I would think.

    Out of curiosity, why?
    22568 posts | registered
  13. princeashitaka wrote:
    Could you also make the ignore button static? Kind of annoying and inconsistent to have it floating around unlike every other comment icon.


    Agreed, I'd like the top right corner to be my one-stop shop for doing things with comments.

    From left to right: Time of post, Ignore, Upvote, Downvote, Reply.
    1892 posts | registered
  14. Aatch wrote:
    I always have mixed feelings about comment voting systems.

    I see the advantages: The community decides what is and isn't good, it encourages good posts because they get more upvotes, etc.

    I also see the disadvantages: You get an echo-chamber/clique effect, where dissenting opinions are crushed and conforming ones lifted.

    I think that Ars should take a look at the general ideas behind StackExchange, who I consider to be leaders in online community management. While their model obviously doesn't carry over to Ars exactly, there are definitely some good general ideas. For example, downvoting causes a penalty for the downvoter, and downvoters are expected to explain why they downvoted.

    A good idea would be to limit downvotes, but not upvotes, if each downvote is a precious resource, then hopefully it would stop people from going "I disagree! - <downvote>", while still going "This is complete tripe - <downvote>". Basically, we should allow "I don't like Apple because of <coherent, reasoned argument>" but not allow "Apple sucks because <ad hominem on Jobs/Cook/Ive>". While not trolling, the last one isn't helpful, and I don't welcome it here.


    I agree quite a lot with this. One problem on Reddit (sorry to keep bringing them into this discussion) is that you get people who literally downvote all comments that don't agree with their point of view. For example - in political discussions you might have the most intelligent back and forth argument, but you will find Republican aligned individuals downvoting ANYONE that holds the viewpoint of a Democrat, regardless if they're citing sources and posting mature, on-topic information, and vice-versa. On here the same could easily apply. All it takes is a few individuals with an array of novelty accounts to abuse and ruin the system. IMO the downvotes should not be used to punish people for holding an opposing viewpoint, it should be reserved for people who post completely off-topic or invalid information (almost like a warning shot before the ignore button is used); the upvotes to those who bring something of value to the table (even if it is from an opposing viewpoint). Perhaps we should all vote on the best voting system =P.
    51 posts | registered
  15. Even if I'm not in the "absolutely hate this" camp, I'm definitely in the "extremely sceptical" camp.

    Before comment voting, Ars comments got judged mostly on merit (though maybe a bit of bias comes in from user handles, post count and registration date). There are plenty of hot topics where you can expect to be voted up/down if you take certain positions, even if you're objectively, demonstrably wrong/correct. The problem is it's not exactly unusual for large numbers of people to be flat out wrong about some things and/or way too eager to assume a comment they want to agree with is correct. That innocent-looking tally then becomes an estimate of a comment's credibility, reinforcing groupthink.

    I think it shuts down discussions too. One of the things I hate about The Register (one of the many, many things that led me to stop visiting the site) was going to a thread, seeing ridiculous comments getting upvotes everywhere and realising there would be no point in venturing a contrary opinion since it would just get downvoted to oblivion. I'm expecting to read plenty of arguments along the lines of "oh, yeah? Says you and your 42 downvotes!" in the future.

    Ars comments are almost the primary reason I read Ars so perhaps I'm overly sensitive towards this change (then again, I could be representative of plenty of readers). Although this is hardly the death of Ars, it would have been nice if voting was being trialled with a view to continuing or abandoning it based on user feedback but it sounds like a done deal with feedback only affecting how it gets developed in future.

    Ah, well. Better get used to it...
    698 posts | registered
  16. I'd prefer the up & down vote tallies to be separate.

    One with many upvotes may inspire passionate disagreement as well (downvotes) making the post seem "meh" to everybody.

    It would be more illuminating to see +197 -173 than simply (+24)

    Perhaps put the up arrow on the left of the number, down on the right?
    779 posts | registered
  17. It may also be useful to see the number of up votes and down votes, eg 4 (+6 / -2) , maybe on mouse over or tap. It helps to get a sense of the ratio of likes to dislikes, but may clutter or over complicate.. I quite liked it on digg though.

    Last edited by crackedCRT on Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:18 pm

    198 posts | registered
  18. Not a fan at all, this is just going to result in anyone who doesn't agree with the hivemind getting their post effectively deleted just like on Reddit.
    98 posts | registered
  19. Green for up, orange or red for downvote? I also think the location is wrong, perhaps to the left of the time and quote button? Edit: better order would be: arrow up, counter, arrow down for us mobile and tablet users.

    Last edited by cc bcc on Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:18 pm

    2875 posts | registered
  20. Quote:
    Eventually, posts that cross a certain threshold will receive special treatment.


    Will there be cake?

    Anyway my two cents is I hope it doesn't apply to the technical forums. They're relatively noise free to begin with.
    26261 posts | registered
  21. I just hope this doesn't bring engadget trolls to arstechnica. The discussion level there is usually so low because people are fighting for upvotes all the time.
    371 posts | registered
  22. Aatch wrote:
    Actually, that isn't quite true any more. Reddit is owned by Advance Publications who also own Conde Nast who own Ars. Reddit used to be owned by Conde Nast, but split off. So Reddit is more like an Uncle, or Aunt to Ars, than a sibling. Though "Uncle Site" just sounds weird...

    Just a minor correction, your point is still sound.


    I wasn't aware of that, thanks. It's especially strange because it's still listed as a Conde Nast site on the footer of Ars.
    64 posts | registered
  23. It would be nice to be able to see the vote count when not logged in - right now if I am not logged in all I see is (0) on every post - only once I logged in could I see the actual voting score on each post.
    1 post | registered
  24. I don't see any vote buttons (or ignore buttons). I tried in Firefox as well, what gives?
    14556 posts | registered
  25. Hinton, scroll up and look for the link to the profile setting link.

    Interesting sidenote: If I click through the front page article comments link, I now get the inline version. However, when I go back to the regular forum format, and lick on "view my own posts", I'll see this thread since I've commented in it. If I click on it from *there*, I get the old format.

    Works for me.
    69520 posts | registered
  26. How do you prevent fraud? Reset counter after edit?
    2875 posts | registered
  27. Not a fan. Although if it continues I would suggest that there be a minimum requirement before one is allowed to post. Whether it be number-of-posts, or time-since-registration I think there should be some method to restrict who gets the power of the Upvote. (At present, this would effect me negatively but I a fine with that. I think it is better in the long run for Ars and their commenting system.)
    36 posts | registered
  28. ARgh.

    Every place I have ever seen do this quickly degenerates to everyone voting down anything they disagree with, followed by the churlish signing up for multiple accounts so they can "win".

    So unlimited voting is horrid IMO.

    For the love of FSM, limit votes to a few per day, so people think about only rewarding the very good, and punishing the very bad. And as others suggested, require a post count, or membership time before you can vote, to limit multiple-account issues.

    Last edited by ScifiGeek on Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:25 pm

    5169 posts | registered
  29. xorloser wrote:
    IMO the downvotes should not be used to punish people for holding an opposing viewpoint, it should be reserved for people who post completely off-topic or invalid information (almost like a warning shot before the ignore button is used); the upvotes to those who bring something of value to the table (even if it is from an opposing viewpoint). Perhaps we should all vote on the best voting system =P.


    And that's where I disagree with you. I see upvoting as agree/like (for whatever reason) and downvoting as disagree/dislike (for whatever reason), but not strong enough of a feeling to post a direct response to it, not as a tool for moderation (we really need a report button for that, to go along with the ignore button).
    450 posts | registered
  30. I'd like to have an easy way to view replies to my comments. If there is a way now I've not been able to find it. Comment sections in most other websites I use have this feature.
    210 posts | registered
  31. BMR-777 wrote:
    Why is the up vote arrow red and the down vote one blue? It seems that these colors should be reversed I would think.

    One votes Republican, and the other votes Democratic of course.
    50 posts | registered
  32. Concerned a little that visible scores pre-seed post judgement. The eyes are drawn first to the bottom left corner, and even a plus or minus one can send a skim impulse.

    The desired effect may be gained with hidden scoring, promotion of highly rated posts, and hiding/greying of catastrophically low rated posts.
    203 posts | registered
  33. Hoos wrote:
    Since we can't up/down vote actual articles, yet: :(

    This!

    This is what we need, the ability to rate articles and NOT the comments on articles.

    Registered users could be given an option in their profile to sort the front page by time (current pattern) or by Upvotes. All the articles would still appear on the front page but their placement could/would be influenced by the response received* by the article.
    (*Yes. Fanbois of every flavor will still vote up their favorite fetish but the aggregate number of "grades" received by an article should better reflect the sentiment of the readers.)
    36 posts | registered
  34. It sounds like Ken's stated hopes, that this would be used to indicate more-useful posts and less-useful posts, may already be dashed.

    If you don't want it to be "agree and disagree" … then maybe don't use it for that?

    This sort of thing will be what we make of it.

    Personally, I'd love it if this meant commenters deliberately avoided unnecessarily one-sided positions.

    Maybe I'm too much nerd though, in my assumption that a vote of '0' is best.
    2773 posts | registered
  35. This idea has been tried by other sites I frequent. Go to Engadget, go to any story with over 100 comments, and then sort by rating and take a look at the top 5 rated comments.

    I hope the higher quality of the Ars community prevents the same thing from happening. I'll be keeping my eye on top rated comments next time an article about Apple or Android is published.

    As someone else suggested, there are elements to Stack Exchange that would work well here, such as requiring a certain amount of community reputation to be able to vote.

    Last edited by geniekid on Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:34 pm

    313 posts | registered
  36. jweller13 wrote:
    I'd like to have an easy way to view replies to my comments. If there is a way now I've not been able to find it. Comment sections in most other websites I use have this feature.

    This has been discussed at some length throughout Arsian history. The idea is to keep everyone on the same track, to avoid spinning off into tangents, and to avoid burying interesting discussion in deeply-nested threads. For this I remain in full support.

    Honestly, single-threaded could work much better if the noise could be squelched a bit, which I'm hoping the voting system may do for us.
    2773 posts | registered
  37. Small edge case complaint, but here goes anyway -- when browsing with noscript (yes, I'm aware that's frowned upon) and not logged in, I see a little (0) under each post. When logged in I see an actual vote count.

    Not that I find it hugely distracting and even if I did I'd probably rapidly begin tuning it out, but it looks strange. Wouldn't it be possible to just hide that element by default and show it if there's script and I'm logged in?

    Last edited by badfrog on Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:37 pm

    1099 posts | registered
  38. geniekid wrote:
    This idea has been tried by other sites I frequent. Go to Engadget, go to any story with over 100 comments, and then sort by rating and take a look at the top 5 rated comments.

    I hope the higher quality of the Ars community prevents the same thing from happening. I'll be keeping my eye on top rated comments next time an article about Apple or Android is published.

    As someone else suggested, there are elements to Stack Exchange that would work well here, such as requiring a certain amount of community reputation to be able to vote.


    Do what some countries are doing and get rid of anonymity.
    26261 posts | registered
  39. If the only thing this feature accomplishes is a reduction in the number of ++ posts, it will be well worth it. Hopefully it will be expanded to the fora at large, and can help improve the s/n ratio there as well.
    21816 posts | registered
  40. We don't need another reddit where ratings are publicly visible so that people can go on vote sprees.

    Maybe make it so that once you cast your vote, you've got 30s to change, and then after that it is fixed - and then the overall score shows.
    94 posts | registered

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