I think Slashdot did something similar in 1999, but I haven’t heard of them making any changes since them. They didn’t try to crowdsource a simulation of a designated moderator, just some kind of crowd’s opinion, but they did (1) not vote often; (2) impose jury duty; (3) compare moderators; and (4) allow multiple axes of judgement.
Why did no one copy them? Why did they not go further?
Perhaps many sites are doing this, secretly. Many sites publish karma for items, determined by transparent algorithms, but use secret algorithms for deciding which items to show. Indeed, it is well-known that Facebook shows posts to a random subset of subscribers to decide whether to show it to more.
But algorithms for discussion are always simpler and more transparent than algorithms for top-level items. Many sites just don’t care about discussion. It wasn’t Reddit’s original purpose, but it is a big part of the site now, so if anyone were to do something interesting, it would be Reddit. But they don’t.
As people have observed, there are possible concerns with manipulation. I think these can be addressed, but they might be a serious problem or might require strong theoretical machinery.
It also seems like it requires solving a non-trivial ML problem (to do sufficiently efficient semi-supervised learning in this particular setting); I think this problem looks tractable, but in general most people won’t do something that has that kind of technical risk.
I don’t think that’s much of an answer. Maybe that’s the answer to why people have don’t all of this, but why haven’t people done some of this? Why does no one even copy what slashdot did in 1999? Reddit’s main adversary is manipulation, so the possibility that a new system would be manipulable isn’t any worse than the status quo. But it may be that they don’t explain their algorithms because they are afraid that this would make them more manipulable.
Most social media sites make money with ads. Savvy users block ads, so there’s more money in appealing to the lowest common denominator. Quality online discussion is a public good that no one is incentivized to provide.
Why don’t people do this already?
I think Slashdot did something similar in 1999, but I haven’t heard of them making any changes since them. They didn’t try to crowdsource a simulation of a designated moderator, just some kind of crowd’s opinion, but they did (1) not vote often; (2) impose jury duty; (3) compare moderators; and (4) allow multiple axes of judgement. Why did no one copy them? Why did they not go further?
Perhaps many sites are doing this, secretly. Many sites publish karma for items, determined by transparent algorithms, but use secret algorithms for deciding which items to show. Indeed, it is well-known that Facebook shows posts to a random subset of subscribers to decide whether to show it to more.
But algorithms for discussion are always simpler and more transparent than algorithms for top-level items. Many sites just don’t care about discussion. It wasn’t Reddit’s original purpose, but it is a big part of the site now, so if anyone were to do something interesting, it would be Reddit. But they don’t.
As people have observed, there are possible concerns with manipulation. I think these can be addressed, but they might be a serious problem or might require strong theoretical machinery.
It also seems like it requires solving a non-trivial ML problem (to do sufficiently efficient semi-supervised learning in this particular setting); I think this problem looks tractable, but in general most people won’t do something that has that kind of technical risk.
I don’t think that’s much of an answer. Maybe that’s the answer to why people have don’t all of this, but why haven’t people done some of this? Why does no one even copy what slashdot did in 1999? Reddit’s main adversary is manipulation, so the possibility that a new system would be manipulable isn’t any worse than the status quo. But it may be that they don’t explain their algorithms because they are afraid that this would make them more manipulable.
Most social media sites make money with ads. Savvy users block ads, so there’s more money in appealing to the lowest common denominator. Quality online discussion is a public good that no one is incentivized to provide.