Editing 1019: First Post
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| title = First Post | | title = First Post | ||
| image = first_post.png | | image = first_post.png | ||
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| titletext = 'Nuh-uh! We let users vote on comments and display them by number of votes. Everyone knows that makes it impossible for a few persistent voices to dominate the discussion.' | | titletext = 'Nuh-uh! We let users vote on comments and display them by number of votes. Everyone knows that makes it impossible for a few persistent voices to dominate the discussion.' | ||
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
Many news websites allow users to post comments on an article. The intention is that users can debate the stance(s) or implication(s) made by the article. On most sites, comments are displayed in chronological order. This puts the oldest comments at the top and newest at the bottom. | Many news websites allow users to post comments on an article. The intention is that users can debate the stance(s) or implication(s) made by the article. On most sites, comments are displayed in chronological order. This puts the oldest comments at the top and newest at the bottom. | ||
− | There are many pitfalls to allowing comments, but this comic refers to one in particular: most users are too busy to read more than just the top few comments. Therefore, if you were able to control the content of those comments, your opinions would be the ones that the majority of users read. If you pay people to do nothing but read the site, you ensure that they will be the first ones to see the article and that their comments (that you pay them to write) will be at the top of the page. In this scenario, the comments being posted appear to convey a particular political belief. The advantage of this is, according to | + | There are many pitfalls to allowing comments, but this comic refers to one in particular: most users are too busy to read more than just the top few comments. Therefore, if you were able to control the content of those comments, your opinions would be the ones that the majority of users read. If you pay people to do nothing but read the site, you ensure that they will be the first ones to see the article and that their comments (that you pay them to write) will be at the top of the page. In this scenario, the comments being posted appear to convey a particular political belief. The advantage of this is, according to Randall, that it would be much cheaper to employ a college student to perform that task than pay a website for an advertisement. Also, the fact that it is a comment posted by another reader would make it seem as though the opinion was coming from the general population and not a politician or company, as an advertisement would imply. |
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− | + | The title text refers to {{w|Reddit|Reddit's}} {{w|conversation threading}} system which allows users to vote comments up or down and then sorts them by the resulting "karma score" (total up-votes minus total down-votes). The pitfall here is that the same control can be exerted. Simply post your opinion on the matter using an account that can't be traced to you and then have the 5 students create a large number of dummy accounts that all vote your opinion up, maintaining its position at the top of the page. | |
− | + | The comic's title refers to a once-common form of online posturing where the first user to see the article will comment "First post" or even just "First". The intent is that everyone else see that they were there first and, therefore, must be somehow better than you. | |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
− | :[ | + | :[A bar graph with two bars. The first bar is much taller than the second. It is marked '$1,500,000', and below the x-axis, is labelled "Cost to buy an ad on every story on a major news site every day until the election. The second bar is much shorter, marked "$200,000', and labelled "Cost to pay five college students $20/hour to camp the site 24/7 and post the first few comments the moment a story goes up, giving you the last word in every article and creating an impression of peer consensus.] |
− | + | :The problem with posting comments in the order they're submitted. | |
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− | :The problem with posting comments in the order they're submitted | ||
{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
− | + | [[Category:Charts]] | |
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