With all the reddit users coming over lately, I wanted to share something. This is what happened to Voat.

submitted by Alduin from self.propaganda

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[–]magnora7[A] 95 insightful - 8 fun95 insightful - 7 fun96 insightful - 8 fun -  (6 children)

Yup, I was there when voat was called whoaverse, I watched it all happen and you're absolutely right!

This is why user participation is important. This is why the pyramid of debate is important. This is why everyone who truly cares about saidit needs to voice their opinions and vote when they see something insightful or fun.

We have lots of defenses against what happened to voat, but primary among them is community.

The second thing we have going for us is no downvote. So the dedicated minority group cannot re-shape the site at large to their own desires nearly as easily. It got much worse as well after voat added restrictions where if you've been downvoted you cannot downvote others. It sped up the echo-chamber feedback-loop effect and let these extremists take over the mainstream culture of voat much more quickly. Now a dissenting voice of reason stands out like a sore thumb, and is downvoted to hell.

Saidit doesn't have these locking-out features because we don't have downvotes, and we're careful to avoid "improvements" to the algorithm that actually just speed up the feedback loop that creates an echo-chamber culture. Furthermore one group cannot brigade another, because there is no downvote, and also they must abide by the pyramid of debate or be banned from saidit. So the only remaining way to "brigade" is to argue one's point rationally.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the admins actually care. This site used to be called antiextremes.com, specifically referencing avoiding the extremes of reddit (censorship) and voat (far-right). It's literally our declared mission to avoid becoming voat, even right in our original name.

The reason reddit went bad is because the admins turned a blind eye (or perhaps were paid to) while brigading and astroturfing groups took it over, subreddit by subreddit.

Voat however failed because the admins just let whoever take it over, as you pointed out. They had no ideological backbone, no pyramid of debate, no nothing. Just an empty space for anyone who has enough free time to go absolutely nuts and create their own echo chamber. And that's exactly what happened.

But at saidit, we will actually will learn from their failures and try our best to avoid them.

Fourthly, saidit has open modlogs available in any sub under the list of mods, it says "moderation log". Anyone can click it and see everything every mod has ever done. Voat and reddit hide this information for mods only. This transparency adds a LOT of accountability. No more secret user deletions and secret mod coups.

Fifthly, we're run by donations. Not advertiser revenue or big secret investors. This means we have zero incentive to get rid of certain messages to please our advertisers and investors, because we have none other than community donations. We do not plan to ever change this funding model because saidit is run for the community, not for profit.

So you can see our approach is multifaceted, and we think we have a very good chance at avoiding the fate that befell voat. It won't be easy, but I believe we can do it.

[–]zyxzevn 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I have some idea for in depth discussions, related to your "pyramid of debate". I think it may be a good idea.

Have a look at MIT Deliberation.
It is made to prevent forum manipulation and focus on discussions. You may improve it a lot with the pyramid idea.
Here is a link
It explains how different ideas can live together without being in conflict with each other. It is like a meta-organisation above the discussion.

It also shows a different problem: The main topic already assumes a certain position in the discussion. It assumes that there is a "catastrophic global heating". (Because it is MIT). This problem might be avoided by allowing your own meta-topics and place these same discussions in a different context.

I have also seen that these meta-topics are actually used to reduce discussions or mark them as "fully discussed", while in fact they are not. So I have added my own meta-structure, by starting every discussion with a meta-topic.

A meta-topic starts by stating its sources and initial idea. More sources can be added. So a discussion about an event can have like 15 different news-sources. That way people do not need to start a new meta-topic when there is some new minor news.

I would also add logical fallacies and logical biases as standard flag and reply option in the discussion.

In the MIT example, the discussion starts with a huge bias in the climate discussion. As I see it, there is in reality no large consensus. Many NASA scientists disagree with the findings, based on satellite observations.

To solve this problem, a meta-topic should always come with certain assertions/assumptions. Which can be discussed separately.

Also there should be trust-values of reporting on certain topics by certain agencies. I don't trust anything that is not directly observed. And I don't trust the CIA or military complex at all. I often assume that the opposite is happening. This means I may use them as an anti-source.

So in the meta-topics we can discuss observations, reports and mark how much we trust them. Even come with counter reports or observations. Only that makes a topic worthwhile, without even having a discussion.

On deeper levels the assumption is already be made that these reports are correct, so any discussion or complaints of these assumptions can be removed. That way the discussion can stay on focus.

Sadly the MIT version does not deal with trust-values, but I don't think they are easy to add. These values are different per user. Like my CNN trust value 5%,

On admin level you could create mainstream news channels as default. Each user will have personal trust values for these channels. But these can also differ per report, as sometimes bad sources give good reports.

The trust-values can also be used as a tar-pit for users. As it allows them to de-rank a lot of the meta-topics that they are not interested in supporting. And things that they trust will be more on top.

It can also be used as honey-pot by the admin to detect manipulations by companies or agencies. People that value CNN above 80% can be marked as non-trustworthy, but if these values are public the community can find these people very quickly.

Still manipulation is very strong at certain levels if you look at how the CIA or I$raeli online manipulation is organized. Often they pretend to be on one side, and derange the discussions by inserting emotionally loaded topics or replies.
For example, a scientific discussion on micro-thermite is often deranged with no-planers or nuclear or energy-weapons..

But the meta-topic also describes the limits of the discussion. So these distractions can be removed directly out of the discussion. They are meta off-topic. And they move to the meta-topic garbage can, allowing people to reuse their texts to create their own meta-topic or even to discuss the moderation. All separately.

If this works at all, still needs to be tested ;-)

[–]magnora7 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

That's interesting and might be very useful. But at the same time seems very rigid and unforgiving. I think the end result might just be similar to votes on reddit, where the groupthink essentially determines the consensus, because those are the people marking the logical fallacies and so on.

I like your framing of the concept of meta-topics, but I have to wonder if every thread isn't already a meta-topic, if you know what I mean.

Setting the limits of a conversation sounds interesting, but reminds me much of the Overton window, where intense debate is allowed within the window, but things outside the window are effectively taboo and aren't "allowed" to be discussed, and in this way the narrative is kept confined to the status quo.

Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

[–]zyxzevn 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Replying because I think you may be interested in these ideas.

The deliberation and meta-topics still needs to be tested of course. I have not heard about the Overton window, and will look it up.

On reddit discussions works well, because similar people get to the same sub-reddit. But these sub-reddits are also echo-chambers of popular opinion. People do not want to change their opinion based on facts. They seem to do it based on emotions. This causes echo-chambers and moderation.

For example. In /r/physics I often get downvoted, because I present the well tested science instead of the popular science. If I write anything bad about the big bang, I will likely get banned. I notice there is a lot of moderation in scientific forums. Discussing 9/11 free fall was even forbidden.

meta-topics proposal

Let's keep the discussion structure as it is and add meta-topics.

The meta-topics are indeed an organisation above the post level that we see. It could even be a different meta-forum on top of this one. The meta-topic could deal with everything about the Muller report. Like a key-word, but more organized. It can be very slow-paced and go on for 2 years.

It could help to organize the 200 posts that will show up as soon the Muller report gets out. This will also bury any other news. If it is all under one meta-topic, people can see different sources at once.

The meta-topic as I see it, has many different sources and discussions and viewpoints underneath.
The viewpoints are just the parts of the discussion that are limited to the viewpoint. There could also be a funny side.

In code: meta-topic= {sources, discussions, viewpoints, funny}

The limiting of the discussions, is not about stopping them. Branches of the discussions can be linked to certain viewpoints in the meta-topic. And people can continue discussions in these viewpoints alone. And add links in these viewpoints to other viewpoints.

It could work as a meta-organisation of the discussions. It may be very valuable after a few years. Like a wikipedia of discussions. Without censorship and with many sources and many viewpoints.

If you are discussing the involvement of the I$raelis in the demolitions at 9/11, you do not want to have the internet task force on you. Instead you want to discuss it and see where it leads. Neither do you want to discuss the powerful political lobby that is going on. Just stay on topic.
But if you think it belongs there, you can a link to a new viewpoint.
Like: what if 9/11 is also part of a mason ritual, or what if they also used nukes. The best viewpoints or links can be upvoted.

My idea behind is that people with certain ideas, can learn a different viewpoint by shifting this viewpoint/window. They can even positively contribute in a discussion that they do not even agree with, by having friendly conversations, or by pointing out certain logical fallacies or biases. Or by sharing some jokes.

A viewpoint is like a discussion that starts with: "What if ..? "
I see this type of discussions often in http://www.reddit.com/r/C_S_T/ and there we have open discussions about occult or weird stuff.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It could help to organize the 200 posts that will show up as soon the Muller report gets out.

I do like this type of thing.

When I first had the idea of saidit like 3 years ago, I imagined we could be able to have a story come out, then have 1 post about that story that includes a whole bunch of different sources and angles for the same story, as well as a timeline for the story as it develops. Then it'd be easy to follow a few major stories in a very comprehensive media-analysis kind of way. I think that'd be very valuable, but the technological hurdles are real. Not impossible, just extremely time-consuming. Maybe someday.

The ultimate would be if we can figure out a good way to integrate the wiki system with the rest of the site. Right now every sub has its own wiki. Check this one out for instance, anyone can edit this wiki page: https://saidit.net/s/OpenWikiTest/wiki/index

It's up to the sub's mods how open the wiki editing is, but for this one I've opened it wide up so we can practice as an example.

One bit of progress I made was moving the wiki tools box up to the top of the wiki page, instead of it being buried on the very bottom of the right sidebar like it was before.

But this whole wiki system was extremely under-utilized on reddit, I always felt, and part of that is because of how buried it is.

If we can come up with some sort of plan of a way to easily tie this wiki system in to the main posting/commenting system in a graceful way, that could be a great way to work toward the goals of creating these more long-lasting comprehensive systems to compile news information.

But we need to figure out exactly what that will look like, and then figure out how to code that in.

Right now the only way a person would know the wikis exist at all, is if they were to go to a specific sub, and then notice and click the 'wiki' tab at the top of the sub.

So the idea would be to figure out some way to tie in the wiki with the comment sections of a particular story, I guess. And maybe a way for when a news story article link is posted, for it to be linked somehow to a relevant wiki that is being built up about it. I guess maybe that could be done by comments?

I feel like there's something significant and useful that could be done with all this, but I'm not sure exactly what it would be yet. I'm open to ideas if anyone has any. But I think doing something with integrating the existing wiki structure in to the rest of the site more elegantly could do a lot. Someone just has to figure out a good design/approach for how to do that, that would take the least amount of coding (because that makes it much more likely to get done quickly)

[–]zyxzevn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I have done quite some programming, but indeed you would need to add a few new tables and references. Which can have complex complications. Linking is often difficult.

So I decided to make it simpler and very similar to the way discussions work.

I don't think a wiki system will work, as it shows only the data collected by one user or a few users. Or destroyed by one user (currently your example talks about boobs).

The simplest solution for a meta-topic

Each meta-topic can be similar to a normal post with replies underneath. Just with a different flag/enum.

The replies in the meta-topic are one of the 4 cathegories: sources, discussions, viewpoints, humour. These are also flags/enum. In time there could be some more. They are not necessary in order, but can be filtered or sorted.

These replies can be text, but also be a link to a source, or link to a discussion, or a viewpoint-discussion, or a humour reply. So there are 3 (or 4) types of links here. They could be encoded as URL. Viewpoints may need some texts to specify the "what if..", "Let's assume this or that is true".

The replies can start new branches of discussion-replies or discussion-links. Many people might want to add their own "fact checking" of the sources. And these can be discussed again.
Humour posts will be full with memes and other funny shit.
And even some viewpoints might be created in a funny way. Like: What if Trump is controlled by Putin?

I think the combination of depth of discussion and humour will attract nice people to the forum.

I think this could all be simple, if you program it all in a very similar way. But I leave that up to your expertise.

Well, let's give it some rest and maybe one of us will come up with a good solution. ;-)

I have some more on my wish list: I want to write full articles. This would be a post or reply in the discussion category. It would need chapters, revisions, and images right in the text.

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Or destroyed by one user (currently your example talks about boobs).

But it's got the full history so it's very easy to walk back if modified (as I did), and there are variable restrictions to make it so that only more trusted users can modify it.

The replies in the meta-topic are one of the 4 cathegories: sources, discussions, viewpoints, humour. These are also flags/enum. In time there could be some more. They are not necessary in order, but can be filtered or sorted.

This is a really great idea! What if we strip it down even more, and instead of 4 types we have just 2 types: comments (like regular) and sources. Sources consist of only a URL and a headline title limited to 300 characters or so, that must be a copy of the article headline.

Then for a user to submit a source, it'd have a separate box next to the "add comment" box that is already there so users could submit alternate sources. And a source would appear differently from a comment in coloring so it would be obviously different, and would be able to be sorted out differently by the sorts. And people could comment and vote on them like normal.

This is not a bad idea...