Common sense versus humor

When using social networks in everyday life, I constantly find myself thinking that this or that mechanism does not quite suit me. The brain sees inconvenience and flagrant injustice and is trying to come up with something there. Sometimes funny thoughts are born in him. I want to share one of the last with the community.

Why is humor harmful to thematic social networks? Is it worth it to fight? How to direct the service development vector? Is it possible to add something new to the long-invented webdvanol mechanisms? How to stick a new idea into the old interface so that there are no casualties?

And, most importantly, what kind of crap is painted on the left?

Aware of the problem

Zealously sitting in my pants on Habré, about two weeks ago I discovered the user rating. That is, I knew about its existence, but to me it was before the lamp, and then suddenly indifference was replaced by interest. As I understand it, nobody needs a rating here, but at the same time it is called upon to fulfill some important tasks. It seems that it displays the usefulness of each specific user for Habr. Seeing myself in a thousand-so-shabby place, I became somewhat indignant and decided to rise somewhat.

Your rating goes up if someone votes for your post or comment. To post is laziness, so slowly but surely you had to earn rating points using comments. I think most habra-people know that a successful sparkling comment is capable of gaining 100 and 200 pluses. Well, I, in the meantime, having seen an interesting post, began to regularly release caustic remarks, although I used to deal with such nonsense quite rarely. In two weeks, the rating increased by 1000 positions, and karma - by 5 votes (all positive). Funny growth made up the main growth.

Now, actually, to the point. It turned out that I became much more useful to Habr (according to the rating), without creating anything of value. If it were Bash, there would be no questions, but Habr is the place where high-quality IT content is generated. But, intensively diluting useful information with a malicious offtopic, you see, I am also encouraged by the system. It’s somewhat strange, don’t you?

Is the described situation a problem for Habr? I think the owners of the site will decide for themselves. I'm worried about developing my own social network, and I would not want to sacrifice useful content in fun.

Theorizing

Let's try to figure out by what criteria we evaluate this or that material.

I could not make a long list, from which I would slowly cross out the excess. Three criteria immediately appeared in the head: usefulness, relevance, and emotions. The peculiarity of the last paragraph is that it prettyly outweighs the previous two.

It is emotions that make us give grades more often. Pluses to laugh, minus to the exclamation: “Here is a moron!” Of course, not everyone does this and not always, but, nevertheless, this is a mass phenomenon. And, it seems to me, this phenomenon should be fought.

The reason for the fight is more than serious. You can recognize it by reading the most rated comments on any topic. It is logical to assume that most sensible add-ons will earn the most sensible comments from adequate people, expanding the view on the problems of the article, and not jokes of humor from all kinds of clowns. There is nothing like this in practice. Explanatory comments are usually searched by volume rather than by plus. To put it mildly, this is inconvenient. The question is, what for generally need a voting system, if it is ineffective?

Is it possible without some radical changes in people's minds to achieve a decrease in the share of emotional voices and shift the focus of attention to information that is really important for the site? How to redirect activities from creating momentary content to generating something that will be useful in a year or two?

The blog topic is actively living for one day, then it falls into the depths and is used only for reading, and not for communication. A person who came from a search engine for something important for himself should see an article with sensible comments, and not a branch of Bashorg. If we correctly identify such comments, we can highlight them with color and make the font larger so that they catch the eye.

So, the task is clear - you need to make a simple voting tool that takes into account the evaluation criteria, but does not break the user's brain.

We are looking for a solution

We decided on three criteria, now we will try to formalize them. We will deal with emotions simply: since usually no one in the comments tries to squeeze a tear, we will replace emotions with humor. It turns out the option of "funny / bad joke." We convert relevance to "to the point / offtopic", and utility - to "interesting / nonsense."

Honestly, it seems tempting to combine relevance with utility in one switch (interest), but it's not so simple. First, leaving interest with humor alone is dangerous. Secondly, sometimes interesting discussions unfold in the comment branches, which have little in common with the topic of the article. So we will work with this trinity.

In general, it turned out three toggle switches, each of which has three positions: “+”, “-” and “neutral”. 26 combinations (three “neutral” are excluded). Forcing the user to deal with such abundance is harmful. So simplify.

Suppose that there can be an assessment of the following nature: "an interesting, relevant remark with a stupid joke." That is, two pluses and minus. But usually emotions do not tear us apart, and we give some definite assessment: “like / dislike / do not care”. We will not consider the last option, since in this case the person does not vote.

Since we can give a very concrete coloring to our assessment, we can eliminate the combination of pluses and minuses in one voice. That is, for the described option, it will be necessary to clearly choose which is more important: a “stupid joke” or “an interesting and relevant replica”. With this approach, 14 different combinations of ratings are obtained. This is already real.

Positive ratings: “interesting”, “to the point”, “funny”, “good addition”, “joke in the subject”, “funny offtopic” and “cool”.

Negative ratings: “bullshit”, “malicious offtopic”, “bad joke”, “inappropriate humor”, “stupid and not funny”, “positive stupidity” and “drink yadu”.

It remains to somehow portray it and screw it to the site.

We come up with a mechanism

We make it very simple and quite convenient. Near the comment, we leave the clickable plus and minus signs that have already become the norm. When clicking on the plus sign, the following interface pops up around it:

Colors indicate grades: blue - “to the point”, purple - “joke to the topic”, red - “funny”, yellow - “funny offtopic”, green - “interesting”, turquoise - "a good addition."

We can easily move the mouse and select the desired rating. And we can make one more click, and a neutral assessment of color will be chosen. That is, users who are accustomed to regular voting can do the same as before, but with a double-click.

Clicking can be counted in different ways. It all depends on the particular developer. For example, the rating “good addition” can be counted as 1 interest + 1 relevance, or as 0.5 interest + 0.5 relevance. The second option is closer to me.

Pros and cons

Let's start with the cons. The system is only suitable for sites on which people live. This mechanism requires a certain habit, although it should not scare inexperienced users. Nevertheless, on a site where people go for a short time, putting such a thing is not worth it. The user votes longer, this can scare people away from the voting process itself. More difficult is the analysis of votes.

Pluses seem to me much more tangible. And the main one is the automatic detection of some user data. We can understand whether a person has a sense of humor, in which area he is well versed, whether he is adequate. How to use this information, the developer can decide for himself. For example, you can organize something like an RPG and reward users with titles like “sullen programmer” or “funny wise guy”. Based on a person’s preferences, one can highlight comments differently or, in general, change the search results. If you look at the question from the mercantile side, then you should think about who and what kind of advertising you want to show.

The second plus is where it all began, thematic content can be moved forward without looking back at frivolous comments. And just the developer gets a new tool in their hands.

I have already made my choice and will definitely introduce something similar on my website when the time comes. And what do the habralum people think about this concept?

PS If it’s not difficult, let's try in the comments to this article to write our attitude to other statements using the terms described here. Experiment for. Only, I ask you, you should not spoil each other's karma, if suddenly the comment rating is negative. This is just a test of ideas, treat the matter with humor and understanding. Thank you in advance.

PPS I repeat the terminology.
Positive ratings: “interesting”, “to the point”, “funny”, “good addition”, “joke in the subject”, “funny offtopic” and “cool”.

Negative ratings: “bullshit”, “malicious offtopic”, “bad joke”, “inappropriate humor”, “stupid and not funny”, “positive stupidity” and “drink yadu”.