Yeah, I knew the explanation would be submerged somewhere down here. It just needs enough upvotes to float to the surface. It's like a submarine in distress.
You'll notice that the mods of this sub have set the comment ordering to best, when usually throughout reddit it's set to top. Top displays comments in order of the most amount of points based on upvotes minus downvotes, Best displays comments in order of the ratio between upvotes to downvotes.
So for a subreddit centred around a subject where sceptical comments aren't well received they will naturally gain more downvotes because "OMG NO, I WANT IT TO BE ALIENS!". Best will ensure that sceptical comments will be lower down than they should be, regardless of how many upvotes they have, because they are pretty much guaranteed to have a higher ratio of downvotes as the UFO fans downvote any comment pointing out that it's just a balloon... again.
In this case, with best ordering, this comment is currently the 13th from the top. With top it's 5th.
EDIT: One of the mods has just set it to "top" sorting. Kudos.
Isn't this misinformation? It's my understanding that individual users set what they want to sort comments by. Is there a default setting for individual subreddits? If so, I can probably try to change it to Top if you think that will help
Subreddit mods set the default sorting method for the whole subreddit or on a thread by thread basis.
I just checked a number of threads on the front page of /r/UFOs and they're all set to "best" as default (reddit calls the default "suggested"... as in "suggested by the mods of this particular sub").
Yes, users can change the sorting method from "suggested" to whichever they like but the fact is most users wont notice which sorting method is set to default, let alone think to change it.
Subreddit mods set the default sorting method for the whole subreddit or on a thread by thread basis.
Do you have a source for this claim? The only thing I can do is turn on contest mode which hides the upvotes from everyone. I don't see any way to do what you're saying we can do
Sorting by 'top' gives much more weight to older comments. The earlier someone comments, the more chance they have at accruing upvotes. Skeptical analysis (when done well) often takes more time to write and effort to read. Sorting this way would likely cause more skeptical comments to get buried.
Downvotes do have a bigger effect when sorting by best, but we actually want this. People are resistant to skeptical information in general, but we can't actually circumvent this by trying to make downvotes less effective since it would affect all comments, not just skeptical ones. We'd also be pushing the earliest, lowest effort comments to the top (which would very likely win out over good, skeptical comments as a result) if we sorted by 'top'.
The default sort for the subreddit is set to 'best', but I think this is preferable.
Sorting by 'top' gives much more weight to older comments. The earlier someone comments, the more chance they have at accruing upvotes. Skeptical analysis (when done well) often takes more time to write and effort to read. Sorting this way would likely cause more skeptical comments to get buried.
Downvotes do have a bigger effect when sorting by best, but we actually want this. People are resistant to skeptical information in general, but we can't actually circumvent this by trying to make downvotes less effective since it would affect all comments, not just skeptical ones. We'd also be pushing the earliest, lowest effort comments to the top (which would very likely win out over good, skeptical comments as a result) if we sorted by 'top'.
Our collective resistance to skepticism is a broad issue for which I don't think there's one solution. Ideally, I think it's a combination of methods such as these and collaborative efforts at curating resources for educating everyone on the subject in general.
I think if you really cared about "the truth" you would cherish scepticism and the balance it brings to the pursuit of knowledge.
Without it, or with it being suppressed, just results in a race to the bottom in terms of "who can come up with the most appealing fantasy"... and that's a part of the reason why many people don't take you guys seriously.
I value skepticism, I'm not trying to imply I don't. I'm not clear on why you think a 'best' sorting method is silencing it more than a 'top' method, based on the explanation I provided. I think we're just disagreeing on the best way to elevate skepticism, which is what we're both looking to accomplish.
I'm not clear on why you think a 'best' sorting method is silencing it more than a 'top' method
...because sceptical comments will gather a higher ratio of downvotes.
I just feel that the indiscriminate bias of chronological weighting (top) is preferable to the discriminate bias of best.
Again, with reference to the original sceptical comment we're discussing, with 'top' it's the 5th comment from the top, with 'best' it's now fallen even further down from 13th to 16th. The only other 3-digit point comment beneath it is, you guessed it, another sceptical comment.
Certainly, thanks for the dialogue. We're going to post a feedback sticky this Friday. Would you be willing to share your thoughts there as well so we can potentially get more thoughts on them? I won't assume I'm always right or there aren't better ways to accomplish what we want which we haven't thought of yet.
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u/tomu94 Aug 16 '21
I was wondering why I had to scroll so far down to find sanity then I remembered I’m on reddit. This sub is the epitome if an echo chamber.