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"We believe this has made the comment scores and rankings better reflect the community." Is that desirable? A better debate surely entails more than one opini

"We believe this has made the comment scores and rankings better reflect the community." Is that desirable? A better debate surely entails more than one opinion. I also don't know what a 'jerk' is, someone that disagrees with the group think? I just don't think its that big a problem. But thats just one opinion that might differ from the collective and therefore must have no merit? An odd place. Over engineering! To be expected I suppose.

dang 12y ago
The issue isn't community opinion. The community doesn't have an opinion. It's divided. What we're talking about here is the community's sense of basic good conduct: for example, that it's bad to be personally aggressive to other users. On this, fortunately, we're not nearly so divided. I don't think "groupthink" is the right word for that, because there are few views, if any, that cannot be expressed in a substantive and civil way. Minority opinion, reasonably and politely expressed, doesn't do too badly here. Some negatively scored comments do fall into this category—not much more than 1-2%, if that many. That's something we care about and watch for, and may try to do something systematic about, though in practice it's usually enough for a few fair-minded users to upvote those comments back to par. Far more common is that people post comments which aren't substantive and civil, and then, upon getting downvoted, complain that groupthink is suppressing them.
onmydesk 12y ago
Downvoted already! hilarious!
- olivier1664 12y ago
  IMO, this downvote show you are right.
cbhl 12y ago
Users can turn on "showdead", which will allow them to see all comments (and upvote them, if necessary). In general, disagreeing is just fine; one can do so in a polite way. Being a 'jerk' usually entails disagreeing and being vitriolic about it. (An example of this is insulting the person rather than addressing why one disagrees with the arguments in the comment itself.)
- jaredsohn 12y ago
  There is no karma requirement for 'showdead'; it just requires being logged into an account.
  - cbhl 12y ago
    Thank you, I have corrected my original post.

dang 12y ago

The issue isn't community opinion. The community doesn't have an opinion. It's divided. What we're talking about here is the community's sense of basic good conduct: for example, that it's bad to be personally aggressive to other users. On this, fortunately, we're not nearly so divided. I don't think "groupthink" is the right word for that, because there are few views, if any, that cannot be expressed in a substantive and civil way. Minority opinion, reasonably and politely expressed, doesn't do too badly here. Some negatively scored comments do fall into this category—not much more than 1-2%, if that many. That's something we care about and watch for, and may try to do something systematic about, though in practice it's usually enough for a few fair-minded users to upvote those comments back to par. Far more common is that people post comments which aren't substantive and civil, and then, upon getting downvoted, complain that groupthink is suppressing them.

onmydesk 12y ago

Downvoted already! hilarious!

olivier1664 12y ago
IMO, this downvote show you are right.

cbhl 12y ago

Users can turn on "showdead", which will allow them to see all comments (and upvote them, if necessary). In general, disagreeing is just fine; one can do so in a polite way. Being a 'jerk' usually entails disagreeing and being vitriolic about it. (An example of this is insulting the person rather than addressing why one disagrees with the arguments in the comment itself.)

jaredsohn 12y ago
There is no karma requirement for 'showdead'; it just requires being logged into an account.
- cbhl 12y ago
  Thank you, I have corrected my original post.