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Improving the Quality of Kuro5hin.org's Front Page (Meta)

By pb
Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 03:30:03 PM EST

As time has gone on, more stories have made it to kuro5hin.org's Front Page.  This may be due to more stories being submitted total, or to a change in the voting habits of the people of kuro5hin.org.  In any case, I have a proposal to increase the overall quality of the stories on the Front Page and to make the voting system more reasonable.

The actual change to the Scoop code is trivial, and it has been proposed before, by Talez. However, not many people noticed his proposal at the time, but perhaps it is more relevant now.  So the question isn't whether this can be done, but whether you want it done.

 

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To the best of my knowledge, the current voting algorithm is this: people vote (+1, FP), (+1, Section), 0, or -1.  When the story comes up for voting, if the ratio of (+1 FP) votes to total votes is greater than some user-defined threshold, the story gets posted.  In Scoop, this ratio defaults to 0.5, which means that there must be at least as many (+1, FP) votes as there are (+1, Section).  This value may be closer to 0.45 at kuro5hin.org.

However, this does not entirely make sense to me, because when I vote -1, I don't want that story to appear on the Front Page at all.  In this case, if I'm worried that a story might get posted that I don't like, it's actually to my benefit to vote (+1, Section) instead of 0 or -1.  Therefore, I would prefer it if my 0 or -1 vote counted as a (+1, Section) vote in case the story does get posted to kuro5hin.org.  If other people don't want this behavior, or actually want their 0 vote to not count, maybe this could be a user-specified preference.  Personally, I'd prefer it if at least a -1 vote was also a vote against the story appearing on the Front Page.

Now this might take a lot of otherwise decent stories off of the Front Page.  I realize this, and therefore propose a threshold.  If a story is up for consideration, and the number of FP votes is some percentage (say 30% to 40%) of the total number of votes, the story should go to the Front Page.  Obviously this threshold would be a system-tweakable parameter, determined by the admins much as the voting thresholds are.

Here are some examples of the sorts of stories that might be affected by a proposal like this, provided by TON:

So you've decided to lose your mind?


For: 226 FP: 128 Against: 131 Abstain: 82

Firearms And Self-Defense

For: 255 FP: 152 Against: 160 Abstain: 80

I leave it for you to decide. Will this improve the quality of kuro5hin's Front Page, and do you want your -1 votes to count when a story is being considered for posting?

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Poll
Most desirable K5 feature:
o This feature 9%
o A working search feature 44%
o Comment pagination 2%
o A "Finished" vote for the Edit Queue 13%
o Themes 4%
o Killfile 7%
o Images 4%
o Mu 13%

Votes: 141
Results | Other Polls

Related Links
o it has been proposed before
o More on Kuro5hin.org
o Also by pb

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Improving the Quality of Kuro5hin.org's Front Page | 86 comments (70 topical, 16 editorial, 0 hidden)
or how about (none / 0) (#86)
by Jim Tour on Fri Sep 13th, 2002 at 12:37:23 PM EST

Every ten -1 votes convert one FP vote to a section vote.
how about (4.00 / 1) (#76)
by Phantros on Tue Aug 27th, 2002 at 04:47:33 PM EST
http://www.4literature.net

A compromise: How about if you vote -1 on a story, the story is hidden from you and you don't have to see it. (but with an option where you can unhide stories) So, if you vote -1 on two stories about sprockets because you hate sprockets, the sprocket stories won't be cluttering up your front/section page.


4Literature - 2,000 books online and Scoop to discuss them with
my favorite alternative (3.00 / 1) (#74)
by Shren on Tue Aug 27th, 2002 at 10:41:33 AM EST

Double all thresholds (190 post, -40 dump)
  • +1 Front Page
  • +2 Section
  • 0 Abstain
  • -2 Dump



--
Yes, American schools are ineffective. And you know what? Good! Modern schools are designed to teach obedience and acceptance. If your school worked, you'd be happy with the misbegotten world around you, and can you imagine living like that?
other needed voting options (4.50 / 4) (#67)
by speek on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 10:54:14 PM EST

  • +1/2 - this is vital for shared accounts. In fact, what we really need is a write-in text area so that arbitrary decimals can be written in.
  • -1 Don't Care - should be obvious.
  • 0 Don't Care - equally obvious.
  • 0 I have no idea what you're talking about
  • -1 I have no idea what you're talking about
  • -1 Troll
  • +1 Troll
  • -1 I'm in a bad mood, so don't take it personally.
  • +1 FP, but -1 dump if only makes section
  • +1 section, but -1 dump if makes front page
  • +1 if will post today, -1 otherwise
  • Textarea for user to write in own algorithm in Perl.
  • -1 needs editing
  • +1 section, but would've been +1FP if better written

    and that's just for starters!
    • Several Rounds and Ordering Alternatives (4.83 / 6) (#57)
    by murklamannen on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 05:02:37 PM EST

    The most logical and simple voting system is a majority vote with several rounds (viritual rounds in our case) and ordering different alternatives in order of preference instead of just voting for one.
    So +1 FP would mean, in order of preference:
    1. Post it to the front page
    2. If it isn't posted to the front page, post it to the section
    -1 means
    1. Drop it
    2. If it isn't dropped, post it to the section page
    +1 Section:
    1. Post it to the section
    2. If it isn't posted to the section, drop it*


    There are three alternatives: -1, +1 section and +1 FP (0s are not counted).
    You count the votes, and the alternative with the least votes is removed. Now you have a second "virtual round" with the two remaining alternatives. Everyone who voted for the removed alternative are now counted as voting for their second alternative. The winning alternaive in this "second round" decides what will happen with the story.


    This way a maximal number of people will be happy with the decision.


    BTW, why must everyone have the same voting algo? Why can't it be configurable for each user?




    * This is open for discussion. You might rather have the story posted to the front page than not posted at all or you might not want to soil the front page with a moderatly good article. There should probably be two +1 section votes, one for each of the opinions above.
    i dont even care for the FP concept (4.50 / 2) (#51)
    by zzzeek on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 02:36:24 PM EST

    personally id prefer every story that gets published on K5 be treated as having equal  importance.   But thats just me.  I dont even read the "front page", I just navigate to the "browse by section" page immediately to see whats there. I find stories equally or more interesting in the non-FP as in FP.

    Id be more interested to see how a story made its way to the front page, how long it took to get voted up, and even numerical statistics of why people voted it up or down (such as, "I agree with its premise", "I disagree with its premise but was interesting", "Its poorly written but I liked the discussion it generated", etc.  if there is some way of quantifying these things.)
    simplicity first (4.20 / 5) (#42)
    by speek on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 12:07:43 PM EST

    How about just one voting option: +1. You either want the story posted, or not. Section posting has one threshhold, front page has a higher threshhold. All these voting options are superfluous.
    quality and quantity (4.85 / 7) (#38)
    by Kellnerin on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 11:15:43 AM EST
    (sabeth-at-amergin-dot-org)

    Nothing I see in this proposal necessarily improves the quality of the front page. All I see is that it will probably lead to fewer stories on the FP, and more complaints about the FP not changing enough, and the community looking stagnant to outsiders, and what can we do to post more stories to FP?

    There's only one sure way to improve the quality of the front page, and that is better stories.

    --sometimes you pick your gods, sometimes the gods pick you -odin--
    +1 FP (1.42 / 7) (#36)
    by Nine Eleven on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 10:34:42 AM EST

    Peter D. Baylies just wants to fuckin' rock, man.
    Abandon the article voting altogether (3.00 / 6) (#34)
    by krek on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 10:22:18 AM EST

    Auto-post to section page after 100 comments.
    Auto-post to front page after 200 comments.
    If, after 24 hours, auto-post has not occured, evaluate comment ratings, if statistically above some threshold, post, else, dump.

    Very much not in favour of a "Dump It" button.
    My 2c (3.50 / 2) (#32)
    by bob6 on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 09:02:33 AM EST

    My default k5 homepage is set to "Everyhing": there's no such thing as Front Page.
    Ironically section stories get more focus because FP titles aren't listed on the left table.

    Cheers.
    How do you define quality? (3.00 / 1) (#31)
    by j1mmy on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 08:57:08 AM EST
    (boo!)

    Quality of stories? Quality of the mix of stories? I think the only thing that can improve quality is better stories, and there have been more than a few good ones lately. I'm not seeing any quality problems here.

    Ben and Jim: Reloaded
    How ironic (3.00 / 1) (#30)
    by notcarlos on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 08:24:55 AM EST
    (alvin@hatrack.rvr) http://comp.uark.edu/~jcl08/

    That at the end of reading that story, I had to vote on it...

    He will destroy you like an academic ninja.
    -- Rating on Rate My Professors.com
    So add a voting option (-1: not front page) (4.00 / 3) (#28)
    by mozmozmoz on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 06:59:50 AM EST
    http://www.moz.net.nz

    So we get
    • +1 FP
    • +1 Section
    • 0 Abstain
    • -1 Not FP
    • -1 Dump It



    There's lots of comedy on TV too. Does that make children funnier?
    Threshold should be raised (3.00 / 1) (#26)
    by TheophileEscargot on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 04:34:03 AM EST
    (snailman100@yahoo.co.uk) http://www.radiofreetomorrow.org

    I believe the proportion of votes needed was lowered relatively recently, from 50% to 45% or so. I agree it should be raised: lots of trivial MLP and Meta stories are making the front page right now. I don't think it's worth changing the algorithm tho.
    ----
    What to do if the news upsets you
    Poll: Write in option (4.66 / 6) (#24)
    by sticky on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 02:36:56 AM EST

    Flash intro.

    -
    "it's time for Americans to shut their yapping-they have become tiresome fucking retards, no one discusses the weather anymore, it's always evil this evil that.Mr Hogan
    Thing is (4.33 / 3) (#23)
    by DranoK 420 on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 02:21:14 AM EST
    (chaos@entropy.org) http://dranok.liquid-x.net

    Many of the greatest stories that spurred the greatest debates have been so-split (ie, tons of +1FP and tons of -1). By your system all of these stories would go straight to section.

    When a story is highly controversial, it tends to garner a dragon's horde of both FP and -1 votes. IMHO, these are exactly the stories I want to see on the FP.

    Section stories are rarely contested. They're good, relevant, and informative, but lack that quality which makes me want to post back.

    DranoK


    Poetry is simply a convenient excuse for incoherence.
    Don't know how well a change would work... (4.00 / 4) (#19)
    by wrinkledshirt on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 01:44:08 AM EST
    (wrinkledshirt[at]hotmail[dot]com) http://wrinkledshirt.envy.nu/

    I get the feeling that, no matter how arbitrary the current system seems, any change we make will seem just as arbitrary to someone else down the road.
    Incorrect Premise (5.00 / 6) (#15)
    by leviramsey on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 01:22:10 AM EST
    (lramsey.student@umass.edu (swap @,.)) http://tatiana.cygnetnet.net

    My understanding of the current voting algorithm is this: people vote +1, FP, +1, Section, 0, or -1. When the story comes up for voting, if the +1 FP votes are greater than the +1 Section votes, the story gets posted. This is the current method.


    That was the old algorithim. However, I have reason to believe that it has either been changed or there is something extra that you have missed.

    Consider: Microsoft - Undeserving of Libertarian Praise, posted to the front page on Wed Aug 21, 2002. The voting was as follows:
    • 153 votes for -1.
    • 127 abstentions.
    • 125 votes for +1, Section.
    • 123 votes for +1, FP.


    Now, if your understanding of the algorithm was valid, this would not have made the front page. However, it did get FP. Either there is a bug in the code, or your understanding of the algorithm is off.

    ISTR talk of a changed algorithm a while back. I think it assigned 5 points to +1 FP, 4 points to +1, Section, 2 points for abstention, and 1 point for -1. If the total points divided by the number of votes was greater than a certain threshold (I think 2.5, but I could be mistaken), it gets FP. Applying that algorithm to the above story, we get a total of 1522 points in 528 votes, which is 2.88, which is over the threshold.
    --
    Who am I?
    "I'm about to eat theantix." -- rusty
    More Section Stories Is Cool (4.00 / 4) (#13)
    by Carnage4Life on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 12:55:45 AM EST
    http://www.25hoursaday.com

    I haven't read the K5 Front Page in months ever since I found out how to make the Technology Section my front page. The only thing I regret about doing this is that on some rare occassions I miss some really good Tech articles.

    Thus I am in favor of any proposal that will increase the number of section stories.

    Carnage4Life voted +1 for this Idea

    --
    K5 USER INFORMATION PAGE

    Click here to find out more about your fellow K5 readers. 842 entries. Last updated April 7th 2002.
    +1 vs 0 (4.80 / 5) (#3)
    by Pseudonym on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 12:14:09 AM EST
    (ajb@spamcop.net)

    [...] when I vote -1 or 0, I don't want that story to appear on the Front Page at all.

    Hrm. When I vote 0, I am abstaining, and implicitly leaving it up to everyone else, so I would prefer not to have my 0 votes count as +1 Section.

    I take your point about -1, however, I suspect it's open to abuse. All it takes is a few people dedicated to voting everything -1 and all of a sudden nothing gets posted to the front page.

    Perhaps using a fraction of the -1 votes (say half) as "-1 FP" votes is better? I don't know. Only an analysis of existing FP articles will tell.

    Personally, I don't bother with the front page. I simply use the RSS feed as my united "front page".

    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    K5 (3.00 / 4) (#2)
    by medham on Mon Aug 26th, 2002 at 12:04:30 AM EST

    Should stop operation until the search is fixed. No posts, no stories, no diaries, no polls. Let's put that "hive-mind" to work, people!




    The real 'medham' has userid 6831.
    Preemptive finicky asshole counter attack (3.75 / 4) (#1)
    by BinaryTree on Sun Aug 25th, 2002 at 11:55:27 PM EST

    (About this article)

    <BinaryTree> pb: People are going to be finicky assholes and suggest that you take it to scoop.kuro5hin.org
    <pb> BinaryTree: I'll be a finicky asshole and explain to them that (a) there's already a link there and (b) this is a K5 problem, not a Scoop problem.

    -- "Notice how I keep switching from present to past tense. It's a writing style I've been experimenting with. It's called fuck you." - TRASG0
    Improving the Quality of Kuro5hin.org's Front Page | 86 comments (70 topical, 16 editorial, 0 hidden)
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