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Prior discussions with comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25908439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906775

An article arguing for a different UI:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935407

Discussion from yesterday on a thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474196

In that final discussion SilasX noted:

> Interesting, I remember someone on /r/slatestarcodex having the idea to rate/sort reddit comments by that metric, which I dub "sort by should-be-uncontroversial" (because normally-disagreeing people all think it's correct).

Honestly, that sorting mechanism sounds sane to me? It certainly sounds a lot saner than optimizing for engaging content (which seems to result in arguments), but I would guess is a lot less profitable (and so likely won't happen).

But like, in a world where informative comments actually were sorted highly, wouldn't that mostly obviate the need for this notes / fact checking system in the first place?

Put differently, isn't the very existence of and interest in this second system for voting on content attached to a tweet a demonstration that the primary system (for sorting replies, which are merely content attached to a tweet) sucks?



Such a scoring mechanism sounds useful at first but on websites like Reddit it would likely cause puns, cultural references and such to be even more dominant than they already are, as those are most likely to be similarly appreciated by "normally-disagreeing people".

I could only see it add much value on heavily moderated/high-effort sites like HN, where there's much less need for it in the first place.


Puns and cultural references being more dominant than extremist bickering would be an improvement to Reddit.


This might be the one real value proposition to come out of all of this (if there is one).

Part of the scoring metric is awarding more weight to historically diaposed views. Bold strategy, let’s see if it pans out for them Cotton etc.

At worst it stays a cesspool, but maybe we find a way to (shock horror) promote actual civil discourse on the Internet.




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