Let's test that theory, Reg style
Apple sucks.
Hypothesis: Upvote:Downvote ratio is approximately equal to fandroid:fanboi ratio.
Internet forums often use reader moderation to determine which comments are the best, but new research suggests that tallying up and down votes for online comments is a poor measure of those comments' actual quality. Oh, you may think you know who's brilliant and who's a troll in our forums, dear Reg reader – but according to …
Instead I got 90 downvotes and 15 up votes.
All I said was:
'Here on El Reg the theory appears to be correct, there always appears to be a disproportionate number of downvotes when anyone on here praises an Apple product.
The comments also tend to be more extreme in their nature. So there could also be a correlation between this and the Political Left here in the UK, as they too tend to shout the loudest, have a nastiness and are less forgiving. The Left wing bias is also prevalent and entrenched in the media (except of course the Daily Mail) including the impartial BBC.
Of course there is other evidence as well. Comments on the news articles tend to dip off after 1pm on Friday which is the end of the working week for the public sector which is generally considered left wing.
In conclusion, he may have a point, or it's just that a disproportionate number of immature trolling di**heads populate this site. In which case my theory falls to pieces.'
I mean how can that be offensive to anyone?
"I mean how can that be offensive to anyone?"
Because the people that actually use the vote button consistently are the ones you targeted :-/ Sort of like putting a mirror in the face of a raving lunatic (ie. Ballmer). I was 1 of your 15 up votes 2 weeks ago, and I still back your comment in full.
The voting system is so skewed and useless, it should of never been introduced. But like anything else, one person finds a new hook, and then everyone is hooked and using it. Technology sites very typically play follow the leader when it comes to viral social schemes, the Register is no different apparently, and "Gangnam Style" posting appears to be encouraged.
Doesn't take a genius to figure out the voting system is biased and worthless, just takes a moment of thought. If you take another moment of thought, then you realize "Voting" + "Anonymous Coward" puts the whole BBS in a position for trending and complete lack of competence. (BTW, I dislike AC posting more than the voting system, but that is another matter).
But hey, if all the cool kids are doing it...
"after 1pm on Friday which is the end of the working week for the public sector "
Don't know which public sector in the UK you are referring to but MY part ( >27 yrs experience) is busiest after 2pm on Friday and frequently works beyond stated "day" to finish the work
Try not to generalise if basing this on your personal prejudices or "I have a mate in the pub whose wife knows someone in the public sector"
Statistically for every Apple praising comment you will get a ration of 1:23 upvotes:downvotes.
The majority of El Reg Commentards appear to own Android phones, while the minority WinPhone and Blackberry owners keep quiet for fear of embarrassment.
Fandroids are generally the same kind of people who wear Burberry and drive cars with 'my other car is a Porsche' sticker on the bumper and read 'Which Mobile' dreaming of the day they can get hold of an iPhone.
They would all love to own an iDevice but their menial jobs and minimum wage hold them back.
Jealousy is a green eyed monster.
..while the minority WinPhone and Blackberry owners keep quiet for fear of embarrassment..
Ahem, as a Blackberry owner of sorts*, I feel I have to say that maybe, just maybe, we 'keep quiet' as we find there are better things to bleat about than our mobile phones, which, after all, are just devices we allow into our lives for the sole purpose of enabling other people to annoy us with inane requests at the most inopportune moments (oh, and ordering Pizzas)
*I say, of sorts, it's currently U/S as the damn'd screen on the thing cracked for no discernable reason. (No, it wasn't dropped, nor subjected to stresses unusual or otherwise, I woke up one morning and the thing had cracked overnight, so, yes maybe in the middle of a dream I punched the feck out of it or something, as deep down in my psyche I really hate it and want to join either the Church of Jobs or Page-Brin.).
Whilst I'm making up my mind as to whether I'll replace the Crack'dberry, I'm quite happily using an old (and rather pleasantly quite dumb) Nokia.
What appears at first glance to be a harmless story from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious turns out to be the colossal middle finger which El Reg has been dying to give its commentards all these years. Impressive. Now can you put the PHP back and stop messin' around.
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I have paid a click farm to give me 1000 up-votes for this post, a bargain at 0.005 USD per up-vote. These up-voted will of course promote millions (if not billions) of other up-votes from gullible ElReg easily swayed commentards.
I look forward to my paid for popularity, should be starting any time now....
about now...
anytime now....
It seems that the commentard/readership demographics also help. Over here, a different effect comes into play; good comments usually get upvoted, bad comments get downvoted and it is usually fanboi/shill stuff getting really downvoted.
But an interesting thing is that the later your comment gets in, or the further down the pile it is, the less up/downvotes you get. Or it might even get zero votes. That's mostly because it's rare that commentards will ever read all the comments and will start skimming if it is large enough.
But no, I haven't seen the balancing out stuff going on in here. Those that get balanced votes (like say, 10 up 10 down) are usually like that because their comments actually do have the same number of people for and against the comment, not because of a balancing out thing.
Well, El Reg is full of some rather smart individuals. Even some of the biggest asses on here regularly contribute intelligent, thought provoking and sometimes funny things.
But at places where the great unwashed frequent, like Yahoo! News, the results of this study do seem more accurate. A nice follow up study would be to determine if a narrower range of subject matter had an impact on the results vs a general current events venue.
I have to completely disagree, there is no correlation between a posts intelligence and its up votes on this website.
The most up voted comments on the Register contain a combination of snark, anti Microsoft sentiment, anti Apple sentiment, pro Google sentiment or pro Linux sentiment.
The Register attracts a considerable amount of blind faith followers. For example, The Register posted a news article on the morning Microsoft officially cut the price of the RT in the UK stating that Microsoft had cut the price in the US but had no plans to cut it in the UK. The highest rated comments was;
"Are MS aware that the instant they lower the price of something in America the entire world is aware of it thru' something called 'The Internet'. They might want to get onboard, there's load of good info on it like-
Tidal wave of hatred on Windows 8 months before it went on sale, demanding a start menu but just adding the button for the .1 upgrade
Screwing consumers over first sale rights and demanding once a day online verification when releasing a new games machine
Getting into bed with NSA then releasing Cloudy office and always on kinect.
Who, in the UK, Australia etc are going to buy a full priced RT when it's For Sale in USA?"
We have snark, we have anti-Microsoft AND we have factually incorrect.
Yeh, but sometimes people put themselves in that position.
For instance, you started off very well with 4 typical sentiments found here, you were stating the obvious truth. However, you wound up sounding to be in a very strong stance that aligns you closely to MS. So, even though you didn't post negatively, you still took a side personally. But, I'll just assume that in general you're a lover not a hater :-).
I'm a lover of factually correct posts ;-)
But you've highlighted the main issue with the voting system in that the vast majority of forums, The Reg included, have a very strong "you're either with us or against us" tribalism. Pointing out errors is quite often seen as an attack against their camp.
@Daniel B:
" But an interesting thing is that the later your comment gets in, or the further down the pile it is, the less up/downvotes you get. Or it might even get zero votes. That's mostly because it's rare that commentards will ever read all the comments and will start skimming if it is large enough."
I think t's more to do with the fact that once people read an article and its associated comments, they generally don't come back - especially as there is no way to track comments/threads.
The later you post, the less amount of people read it.
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I am not sure if you are being facetious or if you don't know this, but the bronze, silver, and gold badges are not dependent on any number of votes
I don't know if you are being anal or if you don't know this, but you're totally wrong.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/27/el_reg_commentard_badges/
The qualifying thresholds for badges are:
Bronze (about 650 commentards qualify)
Operated forum handle for more than one year, and more than 100 posts in the last 12 months.
Silver (about 200 commentards qualify)
Silver badge holders meet bronze requirements and have more than 2,000 upvotes.
Gold (awarded to 10 commentards)
This discretionary badge is awarded by Reg staff, and we are starting off with 10 people who have been very helpful - to us, through news tips and beta testing, for example - and to their fellow readers, through their posts.
The door's over there. Close it on your way out. Have a downvote for your troubles too...
I don't think upvotes on posts as AC count toward the silver badge as I'm way past 2000. Either that or I have a hardcoded bronze badge after a less than civil argument I had with Trevor Pott about the original implementation of the system. Either way, I cba to manually count them to be sure.
There needs to be a tongue-in-cheek icon.