Loading...
  OR  Zero-K Name:    Password:   

Study finds online commentards easily duped, manipulated

9 posts, 1946 views
Post comment
Filter:    Player:  
sort

10 years ago
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/09/online_forum_comment_study/
+4 / -0


10 years ago
Fascinating :)

I wonder how the fact that our votes are non-anonymous (not only can you see who voted, you also see what their overall ratings are) would affect the patterns seen here. Any social scientists here want to do a study on the ZK community?
+1 / -0
10 years ago
It would be like studying Brownian motion @KingRaptor
+0 / -0
quote:
It would be like studying Brownian motion

So, surprisingly useful? :)

quote:
I wonder how the fact that our votes are non-anonymous (...) would affect the patterns seen here

quote:
(...) you are often exposed to others' ratings (either aggregated or listed individually)
+0 / -0
quote:
So, surprisingly useful? :)


[insert QM/particle physics technobable here]

its only usefull if you can actualy understand what is being said, no?
+0 / -0
Hm, the research results appear a bit strange to me. Other source links:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/09/online_forum_comment_study/
http://seanjtaylor.com/post/57714926977/science-paper-on-social-influence-bias

First off, there's an average of 3 votes per comment, they also claimed to have moderated (up, down or nothing) each of the over 100,000 comments, while other users provided around 300,000 votes. That's a massive intervention.

Now, i don't think they were that stupid, but if the average comment gets 3 votes, you upvote a random subset and then look at the final score (it explicitely says so) of those upvoted comments, what would you expect? Around 25% increase, right? Did they just measure their own votes?

That aside, i find it hard to see the 25% increase from control to up-treated in this graphic:
I mean, the density of the deep black areas is hard to estimate, but 25% should definitely look a bit more pronounced.

Assuming they did their homework and didn't count their own votes in final scores, then this study wants to tell me that upvoting something gives it, on average, 25% more votes compared to not upvoting it. If i were to run another "random vote bot" on the same studied group, would the effect stack (i'm aware the double-upvoted sample will become smaller each time)? Would a comment that receives 2 random upvotes get, on average, 56% more final score?

Granted, the fact that other people's opinions (massively) affects your own opinion is nothing new.

http://xkcd.com/185/

PS: Is there a way to have image alt texts? Edit: Thanks mojjj. It's not producing erroneous results, however i don't get an alt-text while mousing over either. Image info shows me it's there, but...
+0 / -0

10 years ago
The effect actually seems pretty small. It is no surprise to me that a +1 and a -1 get more attention than a 0. People will see the -1 and go 'downvote fairy, that's unfair' and they will see the 0 and probably not think to click, while a +1 is more visible (certainly is on this forum, with the green +1).

If the average post had 3 votes, I don't think 25% is much of an effect, and I doubt it made a huge difference at the high end (Didn't seem to) of highly rated comments.

Data does not seem to support such a strong conclusion, but it's always that way isn't it.
+1 / -0
quote:
@MauranKilom PS: Is there a way to have image alt texts?


http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/2424


quote:
however i don't get an alt-text while mousing over


'alt text' is not the same as 'mouseover tooltip'. 'alt text' is shown instead, if the image could not be loaded.

btw, science!

+0 / -0
10 years ago
quote:
In other words, when people see that a comment has been up-voted, they tend to go along with the moderation in a "herd-like" fashion. When a comment has been down-voted, on the other hand, they tend to want to "correct" the moderation, producing an asymmetrically skewed snapshot of opinion.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/09/online_forum_comment_study/

I think if the peoples which vote up/down are seen by everybody, you will make more upvotes to increase the favor of others to you.

You also would downvote posts of peoples where the community doesn't care about them (because you have the feeling that the community doesn't mind a downvote here)

Maybe you will decide to upvote or downvote something just because of 1 idea in a bunch of 3 or because you follow the vote of a "famous" poster (admin, top10-player, friend).

The result would be more representative if you can see exact votes only after you voted yourself.
+2 / -0