A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted Apr 30, 2014 21:29 UTC (Wed) by viro (subscriber, #7872)
In reply to: A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface by johannbg
Parent article: A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

As in "implemented at all"? Like button: because there are those for whom even "me too" is too taxing, let alone the effort needed to contribute something to conversation...

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted Apr 30, 2014 22:47 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (13 responses)

It means "I don't have anything additionally valuable to contribute to this conversation, but I value this post someone else made". This is significantly better than "me too" posts, because those are mixed in with the actual discussion and mostly just add noise.

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 1, 2014 2:54 UTC (Thu) by liam (guest, #84133) [Link]

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 1, 2014 11:43 UTC (Thu) by andyp (subscriber, #48701) [Link] (3 responses)

The problem with upvote/downvote/karma systems is that they allow a majority mindset to establish and stay established. Just look at the circle-jerks on Hacker News and Reddit (where clever algorithms have had to be tacked on especially to try to reduce the effects of group-think). Everyone with a slightly different point of view to the established clique gets downvoted, and downvoted messages are more likely to attract more downvotes. People don't click anonymous upvote/downvote buttons because of reasoned, civil thought, they do it as a deep, primal, emotional, self-centred reaction. They might do it because $famous_person or $alpha_person did. They don't think "does this add objective value to the conversation?" they think "do I agree with this? Does this person's literacy meet my standards? Do they use C or C++? Do they use emacs or vim? Down with their opinions!" People are awful. Giving them downvote buttons only enables their awfulness.

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 1, 2014 12:05 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

Yeah, so don't rely on them exclusively. I also like Stack Exchange's model of having a cost for downvotes. (That's a different system than a discussion list, though, so not all of the same things apply.)

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 6, 2014 1:25 UTC (Tue) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link] (1 responses)

The point behind having like/dislike in the system was as others have said - basically, to try to eliminate 'me too' or negative posts that only serve to voice disagreement without productive suggestions for improvement.

That being said, I think there may be some merit into the personal like/dislike system that Johann mentioned and the advogato system, so we could look into those and see if it'd be possible to switch mechanisms.

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 6, 2014 13:35 UTC (Tue) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]

PS here's an RFE I filed for looking into this:
https://fedorahosted.org/hyperkitty/ticket/68

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 1, 2014 17:26 UTC (Thu) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link] (7 responses)

Pardon my bluntness, what is the value of information that $N wankers with nothing to contribute had found $POSTING gratifying? If somebody can't be arsed to back their opinion by evidence, or at least by some attempt at arguments, that opinion is worthless by definition. AFAICS, the only possible use for such information is data mining for some kind of spam...

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 1, 2014 17:41 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

Like, maybe, highlighting an interesting post in a lengthy discussion?

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 2, 2014 9:51 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (1 responses)

Interesting for whom? Do we have a useful notion of "average taste"?

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 5, 2014 8:38 UTC (Mon) by Tjebbe (guest, #34055) [Link]

When asking about which one direction member is prettier, this may not be the most important feature.

But when asking, say, a technical question, there may be a number of wrong answers, a number of right ones that simply explain it badly, a number of unrelated answers, a number of rude ones, and a number of correct ones that happen to be well-written and generally more useful than all the others. Those are the ones you might want to have bubble up among all the others.

And the same for other types of discussions; there may be knee-jerk reactions, ad-hominems, offtopics, etc. In any busy discussion group, it helps if it is easy to see which ones are generally thought of as better-written/throught-out than the others.

Of course you don't want to hide them or move them to some bin where you never look, but +/- on comment definitely has its uses.

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 2, 2014 9:52 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (2 responses)

Moreover, if it's really that interesting, there must be replies.

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 2, 2014 12:51 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

> Interesting for whom? Do we have a useful notion of "average taste"?

For the people who are part of the project for which the mailing list exists.

"Average"? I don't think that applies. A more interesting question is: Do we have a useful notion of the _collective_ taste of the contributors to a project? This is specifically a way to get a sense of that.

> Moreover, if it's really that interesting, there must be replies.

This.... seems like a comment from someone who doesn't use mailing lists very much. It's true that most interesting comments will get replies, but the problem is that so will very many others.

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 6, 2014 1:31 UTC (Tue) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]

s/interesting/provocative and you're right. :-/

A preview of HyperKitty's reimagined mailing list interface

Posted May 6, 2014 23:11 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

You forget that many people like to know which way the herd is going in order that they can follow. :)

(Of course I have to link to <https://xkcd.com/1013/> at this point.)