Want my guess at what will be "popular"?

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Ok, I think I have a pretty good understanding on how people's use patterns here will trend, and here's my guess at what kind of topics you will see voted up or down.

1) Starting a topic about a member will likely be a lightning rod, especially if it's negative but even if it's just not positive enough. When it's a death, marriage, divorce, a kid or something like that I think it will be hugely popular. If it's "I don't like so and so" or "Craven took the trash out today..." I expect it will be pretty unpopular.

Even in the last site, there were very strong negative reactions to almost all negative topics started about members, even only mildly negative ones. I once started a thread to criticize a member's arguments on a bunch of other threads and (deservedly) got a very negative response. Had I said the same as posts instead of a new thread it would have been very different. Trust me, members don't like threads about members with very few exceptions.

2) Naval gazing. All these topics about the site are going to get annoying once most people don't need them anymore and would prefer to discuss with the community and not just about the community. So this will ebb and flow. This thread qualifies and could go either way. I am sick of talking about the voting for example, and would rather see people use it more than talk about it but the "voting fatigue" in the general community might be a bit further off.

3) Topics without much substance or with too much volume. Post a thread to use one smiley and maybe people don't want it in their way. Post a bunch of threads with substance that is at a volume people don't like they'll do the same. So even if I wrote 100 great technology tutorials, if I posted them all in the same day you'd see them voted down. And if I posted one really pointless thread you'd see the same.

4) Unpopular opinions. Popularity will involve many things, and sure, unpopular opinions may well be voted down. If you are thoughtful and engaging you can mitigate this, and some members will engage you but that won't prevent others from being negative. I don't think it should matter to you that they can express this popularity through a number, because it was there all the time anyway and the number shouldn't get in your way but it is what it is. You make a controversial political post and you'll attract negative attention and it's always been that way even if voting is a new way to express it. If you weren't deterred by people telling you what they think you shouldn't be deterred by the -1 they can add to your post.

5) Huge ass threads. These will be a mixed bag. Threads with few participants who use the thread a lot will likely draw negative votes from people who don't want to see it. Hell I started the biggest thread here (word association game) and I don't even want to see it anymore. I voted it down so that it's not always on my topic grid. Other such threads will likely have a core of users who vote it up and a larger general audience that doesn't want to see it anymore. Don't get hung up on the negative votes, if you vote it up it will always be visible for you and you can ignore that there's more people who don't want to join the topic than who do. That's normal with this many different interests and you shouldn't take it personally.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 6 • Views: 3,078 • Replies: 37

@Craven de Kere,

i think all the kids are gonna be into hula hoops next year

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@Craven de Kere,

This makes sense. Wink

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@Craven de Kere,

those who disturb the public peace and those who argue against conventional wisdom are almost always unpopular, are we supposed to forget that? Discussion is about sharing information and the group coming to a consensus that is supported by the facts, if you have a social structure that highlights the importance of the initial bias of the individuals (before sharing and rational exploration have taken place) then you have a social structure that impedes a good outcome for the discussion.

The discussion format should support those who are right, not those who are popular or who hold the popular opinion. We all know what has to be sacrificed in order to be popular, it is no different at a2k than it is in real life... humans are humans and group dynamics don't change much in virtual space from real life.

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@Craven de Kere,

spot on mate! spot on!

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It certainly is interesting to observe what's happening and how the
dynamics of a2k is/will be changing. I am not into the goody-two-shoes
scene, so I do hope the sugar coated postings will subside eventually.

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@CalamityJane,

I agree with Craven. I agree with Hawkeye. And I agree with Jane. All to a point. What some members see as trolling in a member, I often see as a unique personality that simply takes more effort to decipher and understand and sometimes it is worth it to take the trouble to do that. I hope we won't fall into the pit of the 'acceptable ways to express ourselves' police that accept one manner of expression and not another.

At the same time there are manners of expression that should be unacceptable in any society, polite or otherwise.

I agree that diversity of opinion is the steam that drives the engine here and threads with no conflict or difficulty built into them rarely last long because they're as interesting as watching grass grow.

Inserting a diverse point of view just to introduce one or to stir the pot or be cantakerous, however, will more often reduce a thread to a schoolyard brawl and make an adult exchange of ideas almost impossible.

Sugar coating can also certainly be overdone and it also becomes tedious and reredundant after awhile as everybody tries to think of something nice and different to say. But even that is preferable to those who are just plain hateful and who try to wound another member and who pile on to drive the 'black sheep' away who is unacceptable simply because he or she dared to step outside the declared 'correct' point of view.

I am seeing a bit more civility and at least tolerance in our new home and I do hope that trend continues even if we do go back to raising our voices in empassioned discussions again.

The new thing, like a new house, is nice for awhile. But pretty soon you want to get back to a more normal routine.

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@CalamityJane,

The only way the popularity contest will not destroy the value of a2k is if we are given the option of opting out....if the hands and numbers can be removed from our user experience, and then we can rely on the latest post function to get posts and threads irregardless of the popularity nonsense.....then something can be salvaged. All the talk about being able to define our own user experience rings mightly hollow when we are all forced to have our noses rubbed into a personal popularity number.

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@hawkeye10,

That's basically what you can do. Or rather, not remove the hands and numbers, but make them irrelevant for how you're using the website.

Set the sorting of the threads to "Sort By: New Posts". Set your personal preferences (in your profile -> "My Preferences" -> "General Preferences") to "topic_threshold: no_collapsing" and "post_threshold: no_collapsing".

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

The discussion format should support those who are right

Oh, duh! Just make a format that automatically supports those who are right! I'm sure Craven wishes he'd thought of implementing that-- it's so obvious now that you've brought it up Laughing

...uh, just to clarify: those who are right = me, cyphercat. I believe there may have been some confusion on this point when it was raised earlier (i.e., hawkeye thought that "those who are right" meant him).

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@hawkeye10,

Hey, I already get that you feel that the lack of negative attention from people who'd rather just ignore you will hurt your notion of being this fortress of reason in a sea of emotion but that's your problem. You already know your views are unpopular and a number on the screen telling you that shouldn't be this big of a deal to you.

See, you like to portray this as you being right and everyone else emotional. I for one think you are often mistaken in this assessment. So whine away about how people are emotionally voting your "rightness" down but I don't even agree with you on that fundamental evaluation of what's happening, and even if I did I'd tell you to grow some balls and get over the number if it's stupid.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

The only way the popularity contest will not destroy the value of a2k is if we are given the option of opting out....if the hands and numbers can be removed from our user experience, and then we can rely on the latest post function to get posts and threads irregardless of the popularity nonsense.....then something can be salvaged.

You can already change your sorting to new posts and do this, and turn off the effect of the other people's votes. You can't make the number go away but you can make it have no other effect on your experience and I don't think the number is that big of a deal for you to have to see and ignore.

Quote:

All the talk about being able to define our own user experience rings mightly hollow when we are all forced to have our noses rubbed into a personal popularity number.

The irony is that using you and agrote's arguments you guys shouldn't have a right to ignore the number because you guys argued that other members had no right to ignore your opinions. In any case it's a frickin' number on the screen. I thought of making a preference just to make that cosmetic change if people wanted it but it sounded like an awful lot of work for a level of sensitivity that isn't well served on an internet message board anyway.

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@cyphercat,

If you had been paying attention you would know that my argument is that right has nothing to do with me or you. The personalizing of everything is one of the great flaws of modern culture, it is a big part of the reason why discourse in the wider culture has become so shallow ( a subject pondered by many over the last generation). a2k was an anomaly, it was a place where great debates could still accure, where people from many walks of life and experiences could meet and vigorously argue their points of view in spite of many in the community being predisposed to feeling personally insulted and also resorting to making personal insults. It could not support a discussion on sensitive emotional subjects like rape and child abuse, but it did far better at supporting enlightened discourse than the most any place else does, including the new a2k.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

a2k was an anomaly, it was a place where great debates could still accure, where people from many walks of life and experiences could meet and vigorously argue their points of view in spite of many in the community being predisposed to feeling personally insulted and also resorting to making personal insults.

So you're not saying that those discussions were better because many people felt insulted, or resorted to making insults, right? You're just saying that those debates were great because "people from many walks of life and experiences could meet and vigorously argue their points of view", right?

How do you think that will change with the current system? People who hated your threads were probably not inclined to post there in the first place. People who discussed the topic with you, without insulting or ignoring you - they should respond to you now, too.

So that leaves people who opened your threads, and felt inclined to personally insult you - and who now will simply vote a thread down.

Do you think your threads depend on those people - that without them, you can't have any kind of discussion evolving?

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@old europe,

I agree with old europe. Hawkeye, how the hell is the -1 next to your post that they give any worse than the horrible things they've already been saying to you? If you weren't deterred from posting your unpopular opinions on rape when people started calling you names like "rapist" how the hell can you argue that a little number next to your post destroys all your chances of debate?

It only works that way if you continue to have this inordinate attachment to the number and ignore that you are demanding not to be ignored while also demanding to be able to ignore the popular voting. Worse yet is that you can never do the former and can already do the latter.

Then again, you can always just whine about it all, that will make you right and you'll never have those debates you purport to crave.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Discussion is about sharing information and the group coming to a consensus that is supported by the facts, if you have a social structure that highlights the importance of the initial bias of the individuals (before sharing and rational exploration have taken place) then you have a social structure that impedes a good outcome for the discussion.

When you start with a faulty premise you end up with a faulty conculsion...

Reaching some sort of imagined concensus might be YOUR personal desire in these discussions but that doesn't make it anyone elses. Reaching concensus was never a stated or implied goal or objective of A2K. People are, and always have been, free to discuss what they choose to discuss (within a few limits) for whatever reason they choose to discuss them.

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A Post-it note is the perfect thing to solve the problem. For those that don't like seeing the numbers, just place a post-it in the spot on your monitor. As you scroll down a thread you won't see the numbers under the post-it.

Since we don't have to deal with stretched screens anymore you'll be able to keep the post-it in place for as long as you wish to not see the numbers.

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@Butrflynet,

How would that work?

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

and then we can rely on the latest post function to get posts and threads irregardless of the popularity nonsense

Doh.

As you have already been told countless times you can already do this.

Hell, that's how I am doing it, and I abhor most of your and Agrote's contributions to this site. Doubtless many others are doing the same.

One of the most annoying things about your posts is that this is a constant behaviour of yours...you are given information countering your whines, but you consistently ignore it, and continue to post the same refuted nonsense which you are so emotionally attached to, while complaining that nobody else is capable of responding except emotionally.

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@Ticomaya,

It wouldn't on individual threads...cos the number obtrudes into the post space....it MIGHT on the list of threads page, if the post-it didn't then intrude as you opened threads.

It'd need to be a thin strip, I think, Laughing

And then we're human.....we'd wanna peep into Pandora's Box.

1 Reply

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