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1 to 1 ratio for Sphinn/DeSphinn?
Went Hot: March 8, 2008 - 9:21 pm
Posted By: Gamermk 485 days ago
Topic Type: Discussion
Category: Sphinn Zone
What do you guys think 1 to 1 ratio on Sphinn/DeSphinn or not?
39 Comments
Comments
I agree the conversation is worth having... but I'm not sure the ratio is the answer. I've seen posts, that I feel sure would've been moderated off sphinn if not for Deshpinn... But they had NO Desphinns!! In this situation, a more powerful ratio would not have done the trick.
The desphinn button has shifted the accountability for good content on sphinn from the moderators to the sphinn community and I've seen some examples where that is not working... IMHO.
What will give the Desphinn more power is for more Sphinners to use it appropriately.
Ya, that's a fair point Matt. At the moment though it would appear that DeSphinn only changes the visual number and doesn't affect the 22 sphinns required for it to go hot. Not to mention a lot of comments will cause it to go hot too. So since it's a purely visual aid I'd like to see it be more powerful visually or work properly in a physical sense.
Definitely needs to be a much lower ratio (1:1) at the moment it seems completely impotent. Even with multiple DeSphinns two stories have gone hot now. I think people here are pretty responsible, and having to attach your name and reason to a DeSphinn would seem to cover malicious users.
If DeSphinn doesn't have any effect though, I'm going to stop using it. The function just antagonises the submitter without raising the quality of the site. I'd be better using the comments to express my view.
"What will give the Desphinn more power is for more Sphinners to use it appropriately." not true, the desphinn feature does not work as advertised.
http://sphinn.com/story/32238#c34573
http://sphinn.com/story/32238#c34761
Well maybe we can get a comment from the Sphinn team on this one. Is DeSphinn intended to be a purely visual thing? Is there a fix in the works to make it not purely visual if it's not intended to be?
Once thing to consider too is this idea of it transforming from 2:1 to 5:1 when it goes hot is probably unnecessary as well. (although possibly there so that a story isn't bouncing back and forth between top 10 and hot all day?)
I've been a proponent of 1:1 sphinn:desphinn for quite some time. Responsible negative opinion should be worth as much as knee-jerk i-didnt-even-know-what-i-sphunn kind of votes.
I'm launching a mini-campaign for 1:1. From now on, I'm going to give a desphinn to any post I see that has a responsible (non-personal, non-vindictive) desphinn, in order to make that desphinn be equal to one sphinn.
@JohnWeb - thank you, we're already aware of that. My point remains that there is a lot of junk that gets submitted and no one bothers to use the desphinn button.
Okay so granted we aren't using it as much as we should (partly b/c some people are going bonkers and taking it as a personal attack when we do), but it still would be nice to know if it being a purely visual changes is it working as intended. (perhaps this has been answered elsewhere?)
@MattMcGee - sorry, I don't know what you guys know and don't know, or if there is even a place that tracks those sort of things, if there is I should have checked it first. The rest of your point is valid, not many people use the feature as is. I'd like to see the desphinns get a tab next to the comments tabe under LIVE, as those are quite interesting to read as well. It may draw attention to the feature and make people jump on submissions if they agree/disagree with the desphin.
Maybe DeSphinn comments should simply be intigrated in with these regular comments so that we can maintain a better conversation flow? Possibly outline a DeSphinn comment in red? or give it a little Minus icon?
Desphinn will not work for me on any story with more than 30 to 40 comments.
Attempting to see the Desphinn list at that point totally crashes the browser.
1:1, plz.
I would make the "Report Spam" button stronger, not the DeSphinn button.
g1smd, same for me.
Agree 100%. Equal weight and equal billing.
It's no good just to say 'use it and it will work'. I would hope this website would be a great example of great user experience. If something isn't working because people aren't using it, then it's the website owner's problem not the user's problem. A more user-centric way of looking at things is needed. It's not good enough to say, the product works fine, just read the instructions. That's the lame argument that so many poorly designed products dish out.
1:1 is fine by me.
Yes, please. I want my DeSphinns to have some teeth.
I recommended changing desphinn to 1:1 in a previous comment.
Some more thoughts why I think desphinn SHOULD be 1:1 and how it doesn't make sense to have it any other way.
1. Desphinn is ineffective (we've seen this in several controversial stories).
2. Desphinn is used responsibly by users (largely) since its inception.
3. Desphinn is transparent, so its easy to monitor who is desphinning what and why.
4. Given the ease of voting a weak story to the frontpage through vote-begging, desphinn needs to have an equal editorial effect. It's far too easy to get a story into a safe zone. No story that's gone hot will be desphunn into un-HOT with a 5:1 ratio.
5. People may not use desphinn not because they are lazy but because they know it is ineffective. 2:1 has failed to stop many poor stories from reaching the frontpage.
I honestly think its time for a change. People have grown accustomed to using desphinn and I don't see a point in maintaining the old ratios. Try 1:1 for Hot and Upcoming and see how it works for a few weeks. If it doesn't turn out well, switch to another ratio. It's that simple.
1:1 vote here.
At this point, I'm inclined to agree with going 1:1 and seeing what happens. For What's New anyway - not so sure about What's Hot - I think the potential for things to hop back and forth all day between the two pages needs to be considered. And if something is heading up, with a 1:1 ratio on the What's New page, it could be kept from going hot much more easily - if people will actually use the Desphinn button.
I've passed this thread to Rob and Danny to review and consider the ratio flip. I expect we'll hear from one or both shortly.
Ya this submission definitely was inspired by your comment DoshDosh. Glad to see a lot of folks agree as well.
If 1:1 is accepted, I guess the only other point is whether you just show the net of (Sphinns - DeSphinns), which means that many controversial items may never surface or do you show both. I think we'll have much more interesting and useful discussion if we still base Hot Topic evaluation on the number of Sphinns, but record the number of DeSphinns as well with equal prominence. Also combine all comments in a single thread.
After all, we're not trying to run an election here. There are no golden globe awards at the end of all this. This is one of the social media so let's have a little innocent fun with all this.
I'll toss my vote in for 1:1.
DoshDosh nailed it perfectly with this one:
"Given the ease of voting a weak story to the frontpage through vote-begging, desphinn needs to have an equal editorial effect. It's far too easy to get a story into a safe zone. No story that's gone hot will be desphunn into un-HOT with a 5:1 ratio."
Sphinning something is basically saying "I think this is a quality submission. More people should see this." It makes sense that a DeSphinn should have the opposite effect, as it is saying "I don't think this is a particularly useful submission." After all, the purpose of having Hot Topics is to highlight the best submissions (in theory), and giving equal weight to a DeSphinn will result in a Hot Topics section that better represents the collective opinion of the community.
"I guess the only other point is whether you just show the net of (Sphinns - DeSphinns)"
By lowering the total Sphinns, you're making a submit less visible, which is exactly what DeSphinn should do. Less people seeing the post means lower chance of other people Sphinning it.
Actually I'm more concerned with the 1:5 once it goes hot. Once it goes hot the chances of it being desphunn off are pretty slim, once you hit 30 you'll need 40 depshins to drop it down to 22 (40 votes X 1/5 weighting = 8 negative sphinns) never going to happen.
Maybe we could go back down the road of a dumb-ass buttun...
Haven't been ignoring things -- just weekend, so I tend not to be online. Michelle sent Rob and me an email if we should change it up. Sure, let's see how it goes at 1:1 for what's new items and 1:2 for things already hot.
We set the ratios up because people were concerned that desphinning might be abusive, etc. It's been about a month, and I still think it is rarely used, but when it is, I can understand people want it to have more teeth.
Keep in mind that in any thread, if there are a lot of comments, that contributes to overall scores. We had one story go hot despite a lot of desphinns, but then we also had a lot of useful discussion go on and on in it. So sometimes, the discussion can be worth something going hot.
Anyway, it's always been a work in progress, so let's progress a bit more.
Is there a definition somewhere of what desphinn means and when you're supposed to use it?
My feeling is that it should be for stuff that never should have been sphunn, like perhaps because it's already been discussed or it's just plain bad.
However, I've seen it used when someone simply disagrees with an article, and I'm not sure that's the correct usage. (Thinking about the article Shari T. wrote for SEL on nofollow...just because you disagree, are your really supposed to desphinn it?)
There's no hard and fast about it, Jill. There was a long discussion when it launched, and I got into some of the issues that you might disagree with a story but still sphinn for the discussion.
Personally, I'd desphinn stuff that I think does not deserve wide attention you get on the home page. So some bad article that maybe I think a bunch of people are just sphinning to backslap, maybe. Or some snarky thing that you might think nahhh, this really doesn't need to be out there.
Shari's article is one of the few real tests of desphinn we've had. Some people just didn't like her tone so wanted to desphinn. Some thought her advice was bad or wrong and wanted to do the same. Some both and maybe more. But others agreed with her, and the discussion starts to take a life of its own. I think at some point, you're sphinning an item on Sphinn itself, not the article. Was the discusison off the article worth attention? If you don't like the article but like the debate, then maybe a sphinn makes sense.
Let's throw the Germans out like in WWII! We need a Digg like bury brigade to determine what the majority can view. It's like in real democracy, one person one vote and then comes someone and makes your vote worthless ;-)
Putting more teeth into the Desphinn sounds reasonable.
The only thing I would add is a question: will it be possible to monitor the desphinning activity and deal with any obvious abuses, such as Digg-like bury brigades as the previous commenter mentioned?
Maybe an abuse couldn't ever happen here (hooray!). Forgive me for asking -- I'm kinda new here, although I know many of the regulars through their blogs, conferences and networking. But the two things that I find so useful in this site are:
(1) that it feels inviting and not like some high school clique,
and (2) that it has tons of helpful and reliable information for businesspeople.
I like this site and would hate to see those two things go out the window if a few people managed to abuse the desphinn, that's all.
I have to admit I have swayed away from using the feature myself for the lack of visual response to the total sphinn vote. That and also it gives the impression that it doesn't mean anything to use it. I don't know about anyone else but I haven't seen any type of abuse with the button so giving it extra weight like 1:1 or greater wouldn't be a detriment to the sites integrity.
"It's like in real democracy, one person one vote and then comes someone and makes your vote worthless"
Perhaps you haven't realized yet, but in real democracy, your vote for a party/candidate will usually be made "worthless" by a vote for the other party/candidate. Life is hard.
@Danny: Kudos for not being afraid to test. When DeSphinn moves to 1:1 ratio (if it hasn't already) will it affect past stories Sphinn count?
That seemed to work very effectively for this story just now - http://sphinn.com/story/34000
However I noticed when it got to -1 - all the comments dissapeared? It's since come back to 0 but the comments are still nowhere to be seen (maybe they reappear at 1?)
Well Nick that link is no longer valid, so clearly DeSphinn won that round ;)
Danny said:
Agreed. Which is why it was disheartening to see people desphinning Shari's article, as the thought behind it was more of a matter of opinion, and it did indeed spur a great debate. (One of the few in which I actually learned something too!)
Disagree, that's fine. Post comments to that affect. Or don't Sphinn it at all. But I personally would prefer desphinn to be reserved for really bad/inaccurate crap.
Desphinn ratio for What's New items is now 1:1 - so a Sphinn and a Desphinn have an equal effect on an upcoming story. Just remember folks, with great power comes great responsibility ;-)