I noticed a couple of behaviors in myself that I exhibit when browsing social media sites like
Digg or
reddit. (Let's leave the relative quality of articles and discussions out of this for now.
At least for the programming, reddit wins, hands down.)
The first one is that I tend to be more interested in seeing what's hidden behind the "comment below threshold." Usually, it's asinine, but sometimes it's not.
Then I noticed myself voting with
my opinion - up for things I agree with, and down for things I don't. The problem with doing that is if enough people disagree with a comment, soon enough no one else will see it.
So I'm going to start upmodding any comment that has merit, even if I don't agree with it. I'll reserve downvotes for the comments with no value. Anything else is slight encouragement to the poster to change his view to match the group.
Do you think the voting structure is subtly training commenters* to think like the group? If not that powerful, do you think it influences them to share only those opinions and articles they think the group will agree with?
* I know it's spelled wrong, but they aren't really commentators in the common sense of the word, are they?
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