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How Should We Improve Seeking Alpha's Comment Rating System? 70 comments
Eli Hoffmann, the stellar managing editor who oversees Seeking Alpha's news products, points out that our comments ratings system isn't working well:
We've noticed two specific problems with the way comments ratings are being used:
The result is that comment ratings aren't doing a very good job of providing the best commenters with the exposure they deserve.
A quick aside about Followers versus comment rating schemes: The number of Followers you have provides an accurate community measure of your popularity (= how good you are?), because the rating is the result of readers' real preferences and behaviour -- "I want to see what you are writing". In contrast, rating a comment as positive or negative involves no future commitment, and isn't a reflection of actual reading behavior. So ultimately, we think that the number of followers you have is a much better indicator of your popularity/quality than comment ratings. But number of followers has one disadvantage: it measures your popularity/quality as a person, not the popularity/quality of a specific action of yours. When someone follows you on Seeking Alpha, they track your articles, instablogs, StockTalks and comments, and you can't tell which of those they think are particularly worth reading. In contrast, comment ratings have the advantage that they tell you exactly how good readers thought this comment was. For that reason, we think there are advantages to having both schemes -- Followers and comment ratings -- so we don't want to remove comment ratings altogether.
Now back to the key question: How should we fix comment ratings? If we simply remove the negative rating so that you can only rate people positively (think Digg), will that incentivize people to write as many comments as possible regardless of quality, because they can only get positive ratings?
Are there other solutions we should be thinking about?
Instablogs are blogs which are instantly set up and networked within the Seeking Alpha community. Instablog posts are not selected, edited or screened by Seeking Alpha editors, in contrast to contributors' articles.
This post has 70 comments:
The idea of having comments "fade out" as they're voted down has been raised. I'm concerned that opens an even bigger window for ratings abuse, if you can make someone you disagree with disappear by voting them down enough.
OTOH, I have often thought that the ability to "ignore" specific commenters that grate on one's nerves would be an easy solution to allow users to skip comments of other users they find consistently annoying. It does at times make for awkward threads if you've muted someone to whom someone else is responding, but I think the benefits outdo the losses.
Floating top-rated comments to the top of the comment stream is another popular idea. It concerns be because a) it disrupts the chronological order of comments, which is sometimes valuable and b) because it makes newer comments, which haven't yet been rated, less likely to be seen at all. However, as an option ("let me see the top comments on this article") I think it would be good - but I'd prefer to keep the default view as we have it currently.
If you can make 'report abuse' work well (which requires continuous monitoring and battling false reports), then that one is taken care of. You're left with distinguishing between the first two - trying to bubble up the better comments to give them and their author the attention they deserve. These are the comments that really move the discussion further.
My sense is that voting down is hard to implement effectively to this end - it's more prone to abuse than voting up (you can vote down everyone except yours), and as David says some users will always interpret 'vote down' as 'I don't agree with this', while the publisher wants it to be always understood as 'not a helpful comment'. We've also observed that some clearly abusive comments are just voted down, since that's the first thing some users see that expresses negativity. So there are three types of potential false reports on a vote down: abusive voters, 'I don't agree with this (though it's smart)', and 'It's abusive (but I'm voting it down instead)'. That's too much room for error.
So my current thinking is that just 'vote up' (or 'good comment', or 'I like' etc.) would probably be a more effective filter - and we could offer a 'view by most liked' option. This would probably work best if we had nested comments (replies get indented underneath), and the whole thread would effectively be voted up if you vote up even a reply.
One interesting thing, though - our 'Top Commenters' seems to be working well even with the vote-downs0. These are indeed very strong, high volume commenters
seekingalpha.com/leade...
So it would be interesting to see how eliminating all 'vote downs' would impact this list.
Also, note that Digg does have vote up/down on comments - but not main entries. I don't know if vote down really works for them, or if they also run into these difficulties.
This could be a very good idea: When displaying a certain commenter (b) 's comment to a certain author's article, next to the "thum up" and "thumb down" click bottom, you should also display a 3 way statistics of this specific commenter's positive comments on this specific author, negative comments against the author, and total comments on all authors.
For example, if a certain commenter has a statistics of 0/35/36 against me, the readers can interpret the numbers and see the commenter is probably a paid basher: He posted a total of 36 comments on Seeking Alpha, 35 out of 36 are negatives against me, and nothing positive for me.
* This is a really interesting idea(!)
* We can also indicate if the commenter is a follower of the article's/instablog's author. I'd much prefer reading a comment of a follower than of a non-follower...
As far as the number of negative votes are concerned, maybe it's evidence of a widening of the readership to include those with wildly differing opinions - I'd suspect that many people out there are very conflicted as to what the market is going to do next - much more than usual, at least.
I think at a minimum the article itself should have thumbs up and down buttons.
This would raise the standard of articles submitted. What a bummer to read an article and have learned nothing. Some comments are very insightful and others are idiocy. Voting on comments tends to skew towards the first people to post after an article is submitted, while the last comments, even if they are the most insightful, tend to get less read, and less votes.
One suggestion might be a sideways thumb, not up or down, but neutral. However, this requires more data management by SA, and I suspect they are trying to save $, so they will get rid of voting on comments, and only allow voting on articles.
Eli: Love the idea of being able to "mute" or "ignore" someone. Question: should the number of people who have muted you be somehow shown to users, or integrated into a ranking of how many followers they have?
Mick: you make a strong case for getting rid of the "vote down" option. Thank you for laying this out so clearly.
Mark Anthony: You've put your finger on something important: if we keep the negative ratings, we need greater transparency about users' rating history with respect to specific authors. I need to know if someone *always* trashes an author's comments.
dieuwer and daveddawg: The problem with article ratings is that the problems we're seeing with misuse of comment ratings gets magnified with articles. We did have ratings on articles a while back, and we removed them for this reason. We found, for example, that if someone wrote a bearish article on AAPL, a large group of readers who are diehard Apple fans would negatively rate the article. They didn't differentiate between AAPL the stock and Apple the company. That would understandably frustrate the authors, who would suffer from the negative ratings. We concluded that the number of Followers an author has is a better indicator of quality, although it's not granular to the level of the individual article.
Perhaps different voting criteria would be helpful.
possible some of the same people migrate here.SA generally has a much higher class of comments than other sites,by far...
Compare 'Cetin Hakimoglu' to 'John Lounsbury'. If you eliminate negative feedback, Cetin's track record (which, by a 'rotten tomato' standard would barely reach 30%) would become higher than the currently highest rated commenter by an order of two, even though John Lounsbury has an overwhelming percentage of his feedback coming in as positive ~75%.
On May 12 09:06 AM Mick Weinstein wrote:
>
> So my current thinking is that just 'vote up' (or 'good comment',
> or 'I like' etc.) would probably be a more effective filter - and
> we could offer a 'view by most liked' option. This would probably
> work best if we had nested comments (replies get indented underneath),
> and the whole thread would effectively be voted up if you vote up
> even a reply.
>
> One interesting thing, though - our 'Top Commenters' seems to be
> working well even with the vote-downs0. These are indeed very strong,
> high volume commenters
> seekingalpha.com/leade...
>
> So it would be interesting to see how eliminating all 'vote downs'
> would impact this list.
I also like the idea of having two comment rating categories. A. (1)Agree or (2) Do Not Agree and B. (1) Well argued/written or (2) Poorly argued/written.
I have many times disagreed with a well constructed argument. I have written comment responses to comments stating my disagreement after voting thumbs up because of the comment quality of presentation rather than the conclusion or opinion.
Finally, I would recommend closing comments ratings on an article a few days after publication. I have observed occasions (in the comment ratings of others as well as my own) that a commenter has picked up 50-100 negative ratings in a few hours yet there are no significant changes on the first couple of pages of comments. After the time expiration, someone can still post a comment but it would not be open for rating.
I think the discussion participation in the comment streams is a significant positive feature of Seeking Alpha. I sometimes learn more in the comment stream than from the article. I have been prompted a few times to tell commenters on my articles that their comment discussion was done better than my article's discussion or covered an important point that I had not addressed.
What I mean is, frankly, Cetin's votes should have absolutely no effect on a commenter's rating (regardless if he gives positive or negative). Conversely, when John or Prudent or any other high rated commenter gives you a rating it should count for more.
I'm not a webmaster, so I have no idea how difficult it would be to make a program like that. But I think that if the community has made you one of the Top 100 then the market has spoken and it is saying that your opinion is worth more than someone at the bottom of the rankings. So your opinion should be "worth" more.
You could probably just make the weighted system have a pretty general correlation, i.e. Top 10 commenters have double the weighting, top 100 are 1.5, top 500 are 1, and then the lower you get the less weight your ratings have. Cetin's ratings should be discarded.
The idea that I can write a well thought out comment and have John or Prudent give me a thumbs up and then have Cetin give me a thumbs down and cancel it out is very inefficient. Cetin has proven himself beyond worthless and the top commenters, in contrast are very valuable.
I think this would be very executable, but like I said I'm not a web programmer.
MM
Self rating your own comment. This encourages lots of one vote one liners. You know who you are…
Multiple accounts. How do I know these exist? I see a lot of comments that have little to no content, yet those comments get 2 or 3 positive thumbs up. I look at their comment stream, and guess what, most of their comments have plus 2 or 3 thumbs up.
Manipulating ratings:
A good example of that occurred with the SA author Michael Fitzsimmons… One day he was moving up in the ratings. the next day, all of his earlier comments had negative 1 ratings. Another example is to sign on with a spare account and rate all your ratings with a plus, and people higher on the ratings with a negative.
My suggestions are: 1) remove the ability of people to self rate their own comments. 2) Keep a daily count of net positive and negative ratings provided by each commenter. That should quickly identify the people that are manipulating ratings, first strike - they should have their positive ratings set to zero. Second strike, account name is purged.
I also think you should consider changing the scale from its current thumbs up / down format which is being interpreted as agree / disagree. If you want people to rate an article on its relevance ask them to do that. For example:
Relevant, and agree
Relevant but disagree
Irrelevant / Inane comment.
The first two count as relevant, the latter as irrelevant.
With respect to the followers ratings, I believe you have missed a major way the followers feature is being used. I have noted that some readers are just following the top 100 commenter. That way their comments appear in the side bar on the right side of the Home page. For example I have four people following me… three of the four are following 100s of commenter… only one is just following me - so I guess I have one person that is interested in what I have to say, not four. Frankly, I am delighted to have even one, so that's great. In addition, you will find quite a few commenter that are following themselves!!! I presume that is so they have quick access to the comment stream of an article they recently commented on. Of course, if the followers count was interpreted as a measure of value, then I would expect some of those multiple accounts to appear in the group of followers.
The total rating number could be multiplied by the number of individual raters, reducing the weighting of busy raters.
Example: currently 100 positive/200 negative is +26.3/-73.7 %.
If the sum were multiplied by the number of raters, (assume 10 & 50), then the ratio changes to positive*number of raters and negative*number of raters, divided by(100*10 + 200*50), for a positive 9.1% and negative 90.9%.
(Or visa versa for a John Lounsberry.)
The number of people who comment becomes as telling as the rating itself.
1) Having separate ratings for (a) article quality and (b) one's personal agreement / disagreement with the conclusions. (as was described by Shaw and Lounsbury)
2) As was stated by Ergo, I, too, have learned much from some of the comments in various articles.
3) In support of Mikebrah's comment, the ratings from the well-respected commentors and contributors should, perhaps, have more weight.
4) I am intrigued by "31October"s weighted average solution. It appeals to me.
5) This leads me to an idea: I would be very interested in how Geoff Considine might approach the rating question. I hope the staff will seek his input / ideas.
Even though I have been reading this website for many months, this is my first comment on this website. Since, I don't consider myself an "expert" on the various topics covered, I merely read and try to learn. (Incidentally, my favorite contributors are Richard Shaw and Geoff Considine.)
Bryan
I hope you're still checking this. I have to say, enough already with Cetin.
For awhile, it seemed like he just popped up on most articles, advertised for his blog and went on his merry way. But now, an increasing number of articles and comment streams have become consumed by Cetin and the blizzard of "anti-Cetin" posts he always evokes.
For example, one of the news stories tonight was a story about how dividend reductions are going to be an additional burden for the market to overcome. In the piece, Eric Roseman contrasted the current paltry dividend rate of the Dow to the 10%+ in 1929. He went on to explain how a portfolio that had its dividends reinvested actually recovered in 7.5 years. It was an interesting piece, and one of the great features of SA is the link to outside material.
Anyway, I read the piece and I saw their was a comment stream with 20 comments. I was looking forward to an insightful user dialogue about what I just read.
But no. Literally EVERY comment of the 20 comments was either Cetin's nonsense or a malicious response to Cetin's worthless drivel. He is cancerous to the entire SA community and is running the risk of turning SA into just another Yahoo message board where people just bicker mindlessly.
This has got to stop. For your sake, and ours.
MM
But a community should be able to exile the village idiot.
MM
Good that you raise the issue. It's your ceaseless drive to improve the site that has made it so valuable to so many of us. I constantly here people tell me they learn more at SA than anywhere else, including the paid services.
A few points to consider:
1. I've had experiences in which every comment I made, no matter how innocuous, complementary, or popular (as per + votes) got exactly 1 negative vote -every comment. Someone had a vendetta, but unless you've software to pick out that pattern and invalidate these, I don't see how you stop them otherwise.
2. I get my share of criticism, and some of it is very valuable. Don't want to discourage that under any circumstances. The stupid criticism is more of an embarassment to the commenters than me. I ignore them in principle unless there is moral issue involved (equating certain countries defending themselves with Nazis (can you guess which one?)) etc. I believe it was Edmund Burke who said that all evil needs to triumph is for enough good people to do nothing.
3. In addition to the current comment stream, you may wish to offer readers an option to rank articles for usefulness or have some other simple way for readers to give you a more precise idea of what they like and why they like it.
4. What I'd LOVE to see is a spell check option for the comments. Yes, I could first write comments in Word, check them in Word, then cut/paste, but that's too much trouble when trying to answer a lot of comments at brief intervals.
Cliff
5. Also, if I get a comment, I'd like to get notification via email or some source where I can just see a straight list of all comments needing reply. At times I get behind in my replies and some get neglected. If I had a standard notification in my email, I could search my email for all the unanswered comments. Or maybe authors could have an unanswered comments inbox?
That would be much faster than my scanning through my articles for comments I haven't answered, and thus make it much more likely that I answer them in a timely manner.
Aside from the beauty of being able to turn out someone who doesn't interest you, an ignore feature would largely stop the troll-generated comment threads that mikebrah bemoans, because trolls would quickly be ignored by large sections of the community.
As far as the concern that a positive-only ratings system would incentivize people to comment as much as possible, how about if your rating is not based on overall # of positive votes, but rather on the average # of positive votes per comment. That would move insightful commenters up to the top of the leader board, where we want them. (And how about publishing a commenter's rating next to his avatar, like ABC +5.2?) To avoid one-comment-wonders invadingt he most-popular list, we could set a threshold of minimum 50 comments before someone appears there.
I like 31October's idea of weighted comments too. To add to that, we could consider algorithmically weighting a users ratings by his own rating, so that top-rated users' ratings are more influential than weak-rated users. We could also add weighting for contributors.
I agree that rating articles is even more susceptible to gaming than rating comments. I think that to some extent, the comments themselves are a form of rating an article. Perhaps it would be nice to add "most commented" to our lists of most-read and editors' picks. (Most commented does appear on instablog posts, but doesn't seem to appear on regular posts.)
Agree with Cliff that contributors should be getting comment notifications by email. Many message boards also give you the option of "subscribing" to a comment thread, so that you're notified when there are new comments.
On May 14 03:36 AM Cliff Wachtel wrote:
> a follow up to my last comment
>
> 5. Also, if I get a comment, I'd like to get notification via email
> or some source where I can just see a straight list of all comments
> needing reply. At times I get behind in my replies and some get neglected.
> If I had a standard notification in my email, I could search my email
> for all the unanswered comments. Or maybe authors could have an unanswered
> comments inbox?
>
> That would be much faster than my scanning through my articles for
> comments I haven't answered, and thus make it much more likely that
> I answer them in a timely manner.
>
On May 14 04:08 AM Eli Hoffmann wrote:
> It seems to me from the great feedback here that the first and most
> critical feature we need is "ignore." To answer your question, David,
> I think users should have access to how many ignores they've earned,
> but I would stop short of giving them the information of who's put
> them on ignore which could be inflammatory.
>
> Aside from the beauty of being able to turn out someone who doesn't
> interest you, an ignore feature would largely stop the troll-generated
> comment threads that mikebrah bemoans, because trolls would quickly
> be ignored by large sections of the community.
>
> As far as the concern that a positive-only ratings system would incentivize
> people to comment as much as possible, how about if your rating is
> not based on overall # of positive votes, but rather on the average
> # of positive votes per comment. That would move insightful commenters
> up to the top of the leader board, where we want them. (And how about
> publishing a commenter's rating next to his avatar, like ABC +5.2?)
> To avoid one-comment-wonders invadingt he most-popular list, we could
> set a threshold of minimum 50 comments before someone appears there.
>
>
> I like 31October's idea of weighted comments too. To add to that,
> we could consider algorithmically weighting a users ratings by his
> own rating, so that top-rated users' ratings are more influential
> than weak-rated users. We could also add weighting for contributors.
>
>
> I agree that rating articles is even more susceptible to gaming than
> rating comments. I think that to some extent, the comments themselves
> are a form of rating an article. Perhaps it would be nice to add
> "most commented" to our lists of most-read and editors' picks. (Most
> commented does appear on instablog posts, but doesn't seem to appear
> on regular posts.)
>
> Agree with Cliff that contributors should be getting comment notifications
> by email. Many message boards also give you the option of "subscribing"
> to a comment thread, so that you're notified when there are new comments.
Idea from another site I frequent…
... The comment section on bleacherreport.com isn't much to talk about (see link to article with comments: bleacherreport.com/art...). However, the do a great job with the articles author rankings. You may need to sign up to see how it is structured.
Depending upon how much you contribute you become:
Senior Writer (Top)
Columnist
Analyst
Scribe
Contributor
Member (Bottom)
The more you contribute to the site, the more say/pull you should have in commenting on an article.
I do agree with the other posters, as far as thumbs up, thumbs down is clear enough on whether something was good bad or indifferent.
www.flayme.com/troll/#Why
Besides the fair warnings about just ignoring trolls, the site makes some astute observations:
How can troll posts be recognized:
Repetition of a question or statement is either a troll - or a pedant; either way, treatment as a troll is effective.
Missing The Point - Trolls rarely answer a direct question - they cannot, if asked to justify their twaddle - so they develop a fine line in missing the point.
Thick or Sad - Trolls are usually sad, lonely folk, with few social skills; they rarely make what most people would consider intelligent conversation. However, they frequently have an obsession with their IQ and feel the need to tell everyone. This is so frequent, that it is diagnostic!
On May 14 03:41 PM Ricard wrote:
> BTW, I found something interesting (in case anyone else is new at
The maximum discrimination might be to identify Top 100 Contributors in a way similar to the way contributors are identified. But I am not sure about how this would conflict with my desire to avoid an insiders' club.
I hope that all this good input can be netted out to some positive changes.
So I wouldn't get too excited about being a top rated commenter as a result. I could be the number 1 commenter tomorrow if I really wanted to go to all the trouble to give John Lounsbury 1182 negative votes on all of his comments.
For those who wish to have highly rated comments, here are a few tips:
- say that gold is going to $5000
-say that we will be living in caves in 6 months.
-say that AIG executives should be imprisoned.
-say that Geitner should be fired
-say that all Wall Street bonuses should be confiscated.
For a low grade:
-say that things are getting better
-say that everything is going to work out fine
-say that the market will rise to 10,000 by year end
-say that Cramer is a genius.
-say that gold is going to $300 per ounce
-say that our system actually is working wel.
Personally, I have decided to write what I please and not worry about the rating.
Perhaps it isn't just the comments that need to be policed.
Take for instance a recent article that made recommendations of high yield dividend stocks, and it turns out the dividends had been cancelled on half of them. The author was called to task for this, but not before the article appeared on Yahoo and MSN Money. That can't be good for SA's rep.
Maybe some kind of arbitration system could be used for misuse of SA.
Such as an author who spams everyone else's articles. Or consistently misrepresents the facts.
I have started reading less articles on SA outside those I follow because of those that ramisle mentioned. I have even started to read less from SA bar some time after browsing other websites like Bloomberg after I received the email.
There are good comments out there that are from both the bullish and bearish camps, but trolls and irresponsible writings are what deters me from SA most. I do hope this discussion will help improve SA's quality though.
On May 14 06:10 PM ramisle wrote:
> I would hope that SA would be more concerned with editorial integrity.
Using number of "followers" as a rating is meaningless. While the number might vaguely correlate with popularity (not quality) -- it simply promotes incestuous cliques where people follow the ideas they agree with and ignore competing ideas. If you want that, the mainstream news media already provides it.
Second, Seeking Alpha is really focusing on the wrong metric. I have observed authors (not commenters) publishing data and "facts" that are simply wrong. Others voice opinions as though they were fact -- while there is great value (IMHO) in hearing opinions that differ from my own (eg helping to manage risk by knowing alternate scenarios), an opinion is not a fact and should not be represented as such.
SA needs to focus more attention on content before it worries about a silly commenter rating system. I agree with ramisle above
I do like the "Follow" feature because of "Where" some I follow go on SA and also for "What" others I Follow add to the nuance of understanding of complex issues.
"Filtering" is best left to the audience. I fear as John Lounsbury, with the creation of more "Criteria" Elites Tend To Crush The Opposition.
I like the Idea of having a way to "Highlight" those with "Better" comments, but the true tool is the "Follow" button if you see someone that continually ads value.
**********************...
I would suggest the "Anti-Follow" button for those who are easily annoyed by those with less to add to the discussion. As a Function - when engaged on a "Commenter"; their comments IN THE COMMENT STREAM would be "Color Highlighted" and easily seen in scrolling giving ease in ability to skip. This Would Allow Filtering Of Perceived Detritus, Without Destruction Of The Comment Thread.
**********************...
Since we are discussing changing the "Thumbs" - I would prefer a 5 division scale of "Agree" to "Disagree" with the default as neutral (3). Actual Rebuttal Is Still The Best, but this would allow feedback when time is short. A similar scale for "Adds Data" and "Does Not Add Data" might be a helpful user initiated metric. Both of these will be corrupted, but no more than the "Thumbs".
As for attempting to eliminate someone from commenting - The "Report Abuse" should be the instigator with editorial review. Idiots Will Be Idiots - but in recognizing Idiots the boundaries are further defined. Even Fools Have Insight Sometimes.
It Is Divergent Viewpoint That Gives True Resolution Of Situation.
I subscribe to the "Police Yourself And Check Validity Of Your Data BEFORE Acting" school. Caveat Utilitor - Let The User Beware.
Not everything looks the same from different vantage.
The SA editors would have to be super human and omnipotent to stop "Bad Data" from getting through. Their Track Record Is Exemplary In My View; Based Upon The Chaos They Must Read. Time Is A Limited Resource.
1) Make comments collapsible
2) Introduce a "do-not-follow" function just like the "follow" function
3) Allow options to default "do-not-follow" list to be collapsed but still show the ratings so that people can decide to uncollapse it if needed
4) Make ups/downs only doable in uncollapsed form so that trolls have additional steps to take before making biased recommendations
I hope this is not complicated, but every little step forward is a good step. Any form of rating system can be gamed, so while there is always a way around the best mechanisms, striving for improvement while not increasing complexity will make SA better.
On May 14 08:38 PM PainfullyAware wrote:
> The More Complex The System - The Easier It Is To Corrupt.
Either SA wants to provide editorial services or they don't. If they don't, then this dicussion is moot. Let the thumbs up/down raters do what they will.
If SA is going to spend time soliciting feedback and improving the site -- the biggest bang for the buck would come from doing a better job editing content.
I was trying to be polite in saying "bad data" -- a lot of it is really just partisan propoganda, the same garbage we already get with mainstream media.
The number of articles is much smaller (and thus easier to edit) than comments and ratings.
I agree, the editors would have to be experts in all sectors.
Only Cramer tries to make that claim.
But each of us probably has one sector they are obsessive about, and have proof of our facts. And if we were allowed to post a "BS Alarm", it might be a way to weed out the gamers. Violators would be graded on the validity of their claims.
If there was a purpose for the Abuse button, I would think that would be it.
"I would suggest the "Anti-Follow" button for those who are easily annoyed by those with less to add to the discussion. As a Function - when engaged on a "Commenter"; their comments IN THE COMMENT STREAM would be "Color Highlighted" and easily seen in scrolling giving ease in ability to skip. This Would Allow Filtering Of Perceived Detritus, Without Destruction Of The Comment Thread."
I actually follow at least one author of whom I am often critical, on the basis that he presents information that is either (1) misleading (because it is incomplete) or (2) inadequate because it is accompanied by no meaningful analysis or discussion. However frustrating it is many times to read these posts, I do get research ideas from these relatively trivial psots, some of which lead me to learn something new.
Some readers may not be into figuring out things as I am and therefore may not benefit from this author's posts in a meaningful way, but I would not want to restrict his activities. I intend to keep on following this particular contributor.
Finally don't allow commentor's to rate thier own comment if that is happening. You should be able to figure that out.
However what ever the solution I dont want to see a bunch of complicated mumbo jumbo because simplicity is harmony. Just get rid of the abuse.
No I am not a system analyst so I cant give you the road map to this solution.
I guess there is no way to be able to have one person eliminated when reading. the same way you can edit a personal add so you don't show for someone. there are people I'd prefer not to read.
some of the racist rants i could do without.
I think the system is really being abused. I see huge problems in the macro economy and like the fact that things are reported in SA that aren't in the main stream media. If you write something that points out how what the government is telling you isn't true it does appear that some kind of army from nowhere has arrived to slam you. This didn't happen before, it is disturbing, and I wouldn't put it past companies to actually be paying people to go through the boards. But, established interests have never really liked media they can't control. I generally read bearish articles but don't prowl the bulls shouting them down. I also appreciate a good bull article, but do have trouble understanding how they happen to explain the macro issues as something that doesn't matter.
Would you consider having someone who does a bit more technical analysis with explaining.
On May 14 05:58 PM mr freddo wrote:
> Here is the problem. The higher your rating, the more you generate
> negative votes from other top rated commenters who wish to keep
> their position. The system is open to blatant ballot stuffing and
> also blatant negative voting.
>
> So I wouldn't get too excited about being a top rated commenter as
> a result. I could be the number 1 commenter tomorrow if I really
> wanted to go to all the trouble to give John Lounsbury 1182 negative
> votes on all of his comments.
>
> For those who wish to have highly rated comments, here are a few
> tips:
>
> - say that gold is going to $5000
> -say that we will be living in caves in 6 months.
> -say that AIG executives should be imprisoned.
> -say that Geitner should be fired
> -say that all Wall Street bonuses should be confiscated.
>
> For a low grade:
>
> -say that things are getting better
> -say that everything is going to work out fine
> -say that the market will rise to 10,000 by year end
> -say that Cramer is a genius.
> -say that gold is going to $300 per ounce
> -say that our system actually is working wel.
>
> Personally, I have decided to write what I please and not worry about
> the rating.
>
>
On May 14 03:41 PM Ricard wrote:
> BTW, I found something interesting (in case anyone else is new at
> this whole troll stuff):
>
> www.flayme.com/troll/#Why
>
> Besides the fair warnings about just ignoring trolls, the site makes
> some astute observations:
>
> How can troll posts be recognized:
>
> Repetition of a question or statement is either a troll - or a pedant;
> either way, treatment as a troll is effective.
> Missing The Point - Trolls rarely answer a direct question - they
> cannot, if asked to justify their twaddle - so they develop a fine
> line in missing the point.
> Thick or Sad - Trolls are usually sad, lonely folk, with few social
> skills; they rarely make what most people would consider intelligent
> conversation. However, they frequently have an obsession with their
> IQ and feel the need to tell everyone. This is so frequent, that
> it is diagnostic!
There are a lot of wonderful ideas and quibbles presented above. I hope SA changes the ratings system to in some way account for quality and inciteful writing, from both the authors as well as the commenters
The thumbs up or down may have come from how Motely Fool has its members rate stocks. But, I don't think the format applies properly here.
As an avid reader, I regularly see the same folks at the top of the comment stream, which means to me that they feel this is some kind of competition/attention-... game, rather than offering to us readers worthwhile investing insights. It's almost as if, in this insanely volatile market, that they would rather be at the top of the comment stream, then make prudent at-the-moment decisions about their investments just after the bell rings.
There are so many top commenters, as well as authors, who I now refuse to read; what they write is so far off the semblence of reality, that I believe they are just gaming the site, just to make a thumbs up, or pocket a check.
For instance, I read a lot about precious metals, energy and financials, and I have seen outrageous predictions that are so far away from reality that it makes me want to drop a pocket atom bomb onto SA for allowing this nonsense. To me--this is the most important part of all--is to have a way to vote about the authors themselves. That is the best way to clean up the quality of writing here. It's almost as if SA is about quantity, rather than quality. But, I have to add, that there are a handful of authors who are absolutely fabulous.
My thougths of the rating system is to drop the thumbs up and down, and add a disagree or agree, plus a valuable insight category. To have a category where people reject a commenter is likely useless, because all the commenter has to do is sign up under another name and continue his unabashed terrorizing. There likely is no way around that, unless SA has the ability to identify through an IP address.
One other idea is to have a "multiples" effect. That is if a commentor has a four to one ups vote vs. down vote, then that person is someone I want to follow, whether thay have written 20 comments, or 2000. Though, it might be best to allow only those who have 100 plus comments to qualify.
This website has greatly enhanced my investing decisions. To improve the mathematical quantifications to enhance my (our) positive reading experience, should be only behind SA's desire to improve the quality of the authors themselves.
seekingalpha.com/artic...
and we'll look into it right away.
Thanks,
Mick Weinstein
Editor in Chief
Seeking Alpha
On May 14 06:10 PM ramisle wrote:
> I would hope that SA would be more concerned with editorial integrity.
>
> Perhaps it isn't just the comments that need to be policed.
> Take for instance a recent article that made recommendations of high
> yield dividend stocks, and it turns out the dividends had been cancelled
> on half of them. The author was called to task for this, but not
> before the article appeared on Yahoo and MSN Money. That can't be
> good for SA's rep.
> Maybe some kind of arbitration system could be used for misuse of
> SA.
> Such as an author who spams everyone else's articles. Or consistently
> misrepresents the facts.
David, I like your positive rating only idea (similar to digg) which is properly the simplest and most direct way to avoid most of these problems. I would also require users to wait a minute or 2 before leaving another comment or rating another user's comment to help reduce spam and abuse.
I also like the idea of having 2 separate ratings, one for the quality of the comment and one to say whether you agree or disagree. The only problem is I fear many users would still give any comment they disagree with a negative rating which is why I still favor the digg concept over this one.
I'm intrigued with the "ignore" suggestion. If there are particular commenters a reader can't stand, it would be great if they could prevent themselves from even having to see those comments. But I don't know how well it would work in actual practice. Spammers are used to getting blocked anyway so they are always signing up for new accounts. It would be worth thinking more about though.
I asked for my points to be re-installed -- they were not, and I've not posted since till now.
The way this was achieved was creating a new alias and systematically goinh thru my old posts and thumbing down.
An idea is to stop thumbing after some number of days.
I stopped paying attention to the ratings months ago. When someone makes a comment that is even slightly critical of Obama, you get massive down thumbs. When someone writes something anti-Bush, you get massive thumbs up. The mainstream media is already slanted, we don't need a repeat here. Further, partisan rants have nothing to do with investments.
I have to echo the point made initially (I think) by ramisle -- that SA needs to pay more attention to the accuracy of what authors are writing. I have noticed a number of errors -- including a case where the author recommended dividends that had stopped paying (I am not sure if it is the same article ramisle saw). There are a HUGE number of articles that "report" whichever political party's talking points and propoganda -- and report these as fact. Neither party is being completely honest, so any author that wants to claim "analysis" should really be talking about the pros and cons of whatever argument.
You won't find Alpha by regurgitating either party line.
On May 14 10:23 PM John Lounsbury wrote:
>
> I actually follow at least one author of whom I am often critical,
> on the basis that he presents information that is either (1) misleading
> (because it is incomplete) or (2) inadequate because it is accompanied
> by no meaningful analysis or discussion. However frustrating it
> is many times to read these posts, I do get research ideas from these
> relatively trivial psots, some of which lead me to learn something
> new.
Several in the comment stream have made a similar note. The most recent egregious example I observed affected prudentinvestor, who gained 100 thumbs down overnight. I looked at his comment stream and only saw a few thumbs down on the first few pages. Obviously massive deep time slamming.
I will note you find the same sort of posts on tech ticker when someone points out an inconvenient truth the government or financial industry would not like. they get ganged up on. What a lovely democracy we have.
On May 15 09:12 AM ArkansasAngie wrote:
> I was fine with the voting systme till I saw mu count drop by nearly
> 100 within an hour.
>
> I asked for my points to be re-installed -- they were not, and I've
> not posted since till now.
>
> The way this was achieved was creating a new alias and systematically
> goinh thru my old posts and thumbing down.
>
> An idea is to stop thumbing after some number of days.
Here mine....
Everyone has a right to his/her opinion,
Hopefully, if you want to be published in Seeking Alpha..
You make an effort to make it an informed opinion!!!
I guess I'm not trying to say that our income taxes need to be as complicated as they are, but rather than it's best to find a simple, straightforward, user-friendly system than as "perfect" a system human minds can develop. At some logical point, there is a degree to which seeking perfection outweighs the benefits of a simple, yet slightly flawed system which everybody can understand.
Personally, I feel that the current reward system could use a little fine-tuning. Perhaps a simple mathematical formula that combines Positive vs Negative Ratings as a percentage (which would reward quality posters who post less frequent but high-quality posts) and also as a sum total would work. The main point I'd like to emphasize though is err on the side of simplicity over erring on the side of complexity.
I agree about the rankings, especially when it comes to gaming them, of which so many people here have illustrated the negative effects.
I also agree that the ideas are more important than anything else - whenever I talk about or look over finance-related topics, I expect about 90% of the material to either be corroborating a viewpoint I've already held (learn nothing new) or be something that I can debunk on the spot. It's that 10%...if it's even 10%, that I look for in order to change my perspective. That 10% ends up steering the ship, but it takes filtering through 90% of the garbage to get there.
What that means is that I don't like the garbage very much. Seeking Alpha allows for some powerful filtering tools as it is already, in that the list of people I follow tend to monopolize the time I spend looking for finance-related stuff, and for good reason. It's upped that 10% to something higher...much higher than it was just by reading the Wall Street Journal, 10Ks, and S&P reports, that's for sure.
But here's the thing. Like I said, that 10% I look for has nothing to do with corroborating my opinion, but rather changing my opinion in light of different facts or a perspective I hadn't considered before.
That was my biggest beef with you...not that I disagreed with your perspective, but that I was forced to see that same perspective everywhere...EVERYWHERE I looked. I didn't learn anything new by reading it the second time or the seventieth time. It lowered that 10% to (what was for me) borderline unacceptable. I had been accustomed to a much higher percentage of enlightening material on this site.
One thing you've taught me to respect (and this is a reflection of the value I placed on your repeated commentary) is that irrationality has a tendency of being very, very persistent. That goes a long way in explaining market bubbles, and, as I'm sure you'd agree with, market depressions as well, IMHO. So in that sense, thanks. I hope whatever choices you make from here on out benefit not only viewers like us, but you and your website as well.
BTW, who is Ned??
On May 15 08:41 PM Cetin Hakimoglu wrote:
> Here's my take. It don't matter how you rank. What matters if your
> ideas. Just because you're in the top 10 or top 50 doesn't necessarily
> mean your ideas or commentary is superior. Tell it like it is; bullish
> or bearish. Someone someone disagrees that's their problem.
SO if we have a voting that lets say ignores cetins vote, we will create a system that only shows you the positive stats you would like to see.
And on the contrary I think most of the people on this site, like to accept that spmetimes other people think in a differen way. I think we just need to accept this, and not produce a rating system to our favour.
* SA should really put into place a commentator block feature for each user. It would really be ideal if SA could monitor all the village idiots and ban them, but this is unrealistic since there is room for SA editors to make mistakes, it is more work for SA editors, it took several months (much too long) for SA editors to take action in recent cases, and even then there was apparently no banning so we’re still stuck listening to someone who is by admission immature, malevolent and probably unbalanced. Just let people decide for themselves and be done with it. The trolls can talk to themselves or have their own followers and no one else need be bothered.
* Just get rid of the negative but keep the positive voting choice. I have noticed that many fine, well thought out comments are receiving net negative votes, and indeed the entire comment stream on several fine articles are net negative. Obviously, there are people out there who are curmudgeons or trying to manipulate scoring. Research shows that if you want to encourage creativity in groups, ban or get rid of negativity in discussions. Although I have not commented much, I have found it very discouraging to write a well thought out comment only to find it bashed with negative comments without the negative commentators caring to comment on why they find my comment objectionable. Negative voting is an easy way out; let the curmudgeons speak if they object or they can remain unheard. Positive votes still may be tallied.
* If you are going to rank commentators on the number of positive votes (assuming now negative voting has been banned), several modifications are in order. Obviously raw number counts are inadequate since the more frequent commentators are more likely to be the top vote getters. This does not take into account quality. Dividing the total number of positive votes by the total number of comments gives a better quality representation. However, this suffers from small sample inaccuracies so that a commentator who has made one comment but received 20 positive votes (20:1) will be judged of better rank that someone who has generated 1000 positive votes over 500 comments (2:1), whereas the latter commentator, most would agree, should be ranked higher.
This defect could be corrected by multiplying the positive/total comment stream ratio by the square root of the total comments made by the commentator. Thus, a commentator who has commented 100 times and received 400 positive votes (4/1 ratio) would receive a score of 40 (4 times the square root of 100). This same score of 40 would be received by a commentator who received 800 positive votes over 400 comments (2/1 ratio times the square root of 400). The logic here is that short term extremely high ratios are unstable and should be discounted accordingly. Anyone below 100 total comments should just not be ranked.
I spent about 20 minutes thinking up this plan, but if a little more time is spent I’m sure you could improve upon it or come up with something better along the same lines.
* Mr Freddo’s point about how to increase your voting score is well taken (write that “gold is going to $5000” or “AIG executives should be imprisoned”, etc), but I do not think this requires any adjustments by SA. Personally the state of public mania about these issues gives me information, and as always, information is the most important commodity. If I don’t wish to read these commentators I can use my new SA commentator blocking feature!
Anyway, just some feedback on a Saturday morning to a fine website. Thanks.
If you take the net rating divided by number of comments, you get a better estimate of comment quality. Prudent Investor (#2) nets 3 thumbs up rankings per comment, while #1 Lounsbury gets less than half of that. Quantity over quality.
I still say SA needs to spend more time improving the quality of articles, and less time on how to game a rating system
I have started to use SA to find better quality authors, and then going to those author's web / blog sites directly -- bypassing the childishness and clique-ness that SA is quickly turning into. Going directly to the author's site often gives that author "payment" for his/her work -- either fame and/or money -- something that doesn't happen with SA.
seekingalpha.com/artic...
You even highlighted this article as an "Editors pick"... so presumably someone at SA must have read it?
As many commenters to that article have pointed out, the author's claim on GE's dividend is just plain wrong.
I think it’s great that people are congregating and thinking about ways to improve the process. As I’ve read through the posts I have refrained from voting on anything, I think this article should be a neutral zone where some ideas can be hashed out in terms of dealing with some problems and improving the overall experience.
I think there is a place for “thumbs down” votes as well as “thumbs up” votes. Is there a line that constitutes abuse? Certainly, if someone logs in and gives an anonymous thumbs down on every article they look at, as far as I’m concerned, that’s abuse. If they do 99 thumbs down and 1 thumbs up, I think that’s also abusive. Is it something that Seeking Alpha can do anything about? I don’t know.
As far as the “reporting abuse” feature, I have only used that to report people whose profanity and ethnic slur filled comments make me feel they have no place on this site. I believe that is a legitimate use of the feature.
I believe that the vast majority of people who read the site are not the problem. I believe a few bad apples are causing the problems by engaging in vendettas and using the following tactics:
Going into a user’s comments stream, tracking back to the articles, and systematically trying to trash their rating by giving their every comment a thumbs down.
Giving a thumbs down to every comment on an article (say one with a bearish bent) regardless of the quality of the comments or the presentation thereof.
Boosting their own scores (relatively) by systematically knocking down the scores of other commenters.
Giving thumbs down indiscriminately or anonymously without posting comments so that the other users can’t respond to their criticism or even necessarily know what the person took offense to. (And also, I might add, insulating themselves from any rating consequences by refusing to post their own comments)
After reading the comments from User 283977, Mr Freddo, Doubleguns and Arkansas Angie it is clear that other users share these concerns.
Beyond the technical solutions to these problems I think a certain amount of self policing may be in order. When I see an article that has gotten plastered by a troll, I’ve been giving a lot of fairly indiscriminate thumbs up on it just to counterbalance the baneful influence of the trolls. I know it seems kind of stupid and time-consuming, but I guess my theory is you want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
And until the trolls problem is somewhat dealt with, I would not remove the ability of users to give their own comments a thumbs up to counterbalance some of the nasty ones. We know that people are gaming the user ratings, let’s not take away a (small) defense against that unless a way is found of dealing with the underlying problem.
In closing, I would prefer not to censor any legitimate viewpoints, even if I consider them wrong or foolish. But for people who are messing with the system and trying to trash everyone they disagree with or who posts on articles they disagree with, I would hope there is some kind of solution.
A better goal would be a race to quality. Therefore, I would take a batting average approach: net thumbs up DIVIDED BY total comments. You'd get a totally different list of Top 10, Top 50, etc. For example, the top commenter at the moment has a +1951 rating based on 1227 comments...an average "good minus bad" average of 1.6 per comment...not exactly a rousing endorsement. By contrast, the person ranked number two has a +1750 from just 500 comments...a batting average of 3.5. Who is contributing "more" to Seeking Alpha? I contend it's the second person, not the first, even though he's contributed fewer than half the comments. I'd rather read a shorter list of good comments than a long string of good and bad ones.
Commenters farther down the list of Top 100 have batting averages of 4, 5, and more. They are much more valuable to the site. So what is SA seeking? Quality or quantity?
For those of you who favor eliminating the thumb's down, the same batting average concept could be applied to the thumb's up number only. Personally, I favor the keeping the thumb's down--there needs to be a way to express either disagreement with the comment or the fact that it is a lousy comment.
I agree with those who think the articles themselves should be ratable. Perhaps some categories could be established, like,
--contributes to the discussion and understanding,
--well-written,
--badly written,
--detracts from the discussion and understanding.
People could check off boxes quickly to rate the articles.
I don't totally agree that "followers" is a good measure. I'm not sure how they do it, but some authors seem to have huge numbers of followers, but their articles largely pass unnoticed, judging by the number of comments. That makes their number of followers suspicious. Is there a way that they have gamed the system and dumped in mailing lists of phantom followers?
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