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What's missing in reddit/digg: a way to see which side won an argument in discussions

6 points by amichail ↗ HN
Although you can vote up/down individual comments, there's no easy way to see which side of an argument won overall.

Any ideas on how this could be done?

25 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 65.8 ms ] thread
ijoshua
Easy. The losers are usually the ones who participate.
mynameishere
Wrong.

Plus: You just participated.

Goladus
Well, he's right by virtue of a tautology. Winners are the ones who participate as well. Right or not, it's an asinine comment. I've downmodded maybe 3-4 posts in the past month and this was one of them.
ijoshua
<q>You just participated.</q>

I did not realize this was an argument. I guess I lost.

Seriously, though, the most interesting arguments don't resolve for quite some time, if ever. For example, who was the winner in the infamous Torvalds v. Tanenbaum argument over monolithic versus micro-kernels? One could say that Torvalds "won," in the sense that Linux became far more successful than Minix. Yet, Windows and Mac OS are both based, in part, on a micro-kernel architecture, and both have a greater share of the market than Linux.

ijoshua
I'd like to see a scoring system that evaluates the discussion or thread as a whole, rather than the individual contributions; a metric like a signal-to-noise ratio, where a thread gets a higher score for being on-topic and relevant, or a lower score for degenerating into a pissing match.
run4yourlives
"Winning an argument is like winning at the Special Olympics. Sure you won, but you're still retarded."
Goladus
This comment is no more funny or insightful than it was 5 years ago. Worse, it discourages positive contributions as well as negative.
nostrademons
Positive contributions usually don't spark arguments. Even if they're controversial or unpopular, they tend to spark discussion instead.
Goladus
I disagree, and I also think the line between argument and discussion is rather blurry; especially in text-based communication.

One of the most interesting threads I've read lately was that one where Walter Bright posted a comment about D in a thread bashing C++ programmers. His post was attacked by a few others, and the resulting argument was very interesting.

I think this is the thread: http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2007/9/7/257355

Though I don't have time to find the specific chain of comments.

euccastro
I think there is an inverse relationship between positive attitude and eagerness to win arguments.
Goladus
The point of an online discussion is not to win or lose, it's to learn and hopefully educate others.
amichail
Online discussions can go on forever.

But if you keep score, one side might consider giving up if it is obvious that it is losing.

Goladus
What if the side that's losing is right?
amichail
They did not make their case well or perhaps the forum is not an appropriate one. They can try again in another debate.
ajm
Welcome to democracy @work ;)
rms
I think of karma as the "game" part of sites like this. The winner would be the one with high karma. It's just not very satisfying to win.
s_baar
That erroneously assumes that it is possible to win an argument on the internet.
robg
Personally, I think most online discussions are bankrupt. It's time to scrap the whole approach and start fresh. It's not close to how we share knowledge in the real world and simply stating and reading opinions is nothing more than good entertainment.
cmars232
Maybe you should do this in a meta-site like Disqus, that'd be interesting. I could see why a site like Reddit/Digg wouldn't want to add a feature like this, it would probably encourage the wrong sort of behavior.

But human nature is human nature, there's always going to be a market for a pissing contest, why not capture it? :D

johnnygoodman
Perhaps comments could be tagged and any +1 or -1 to a comment would trickle down to all of those tags? Would people take the time to tag comments?

You'd need a way to boil down the answer choices in order to declare a clear cut winner. By boiling it down, you take the personality and shades out gray out of the comment you'd be voting on and therefore much of the value.

Also, if the winning side is a "pro life" tag and you are pro choice, you are unlikely to see much value or be swayed by the vote. I would see such a vote as dumbed down and dig into the comments for the 'real' content.

inklesspen
It can't be done. The truth doesn't become falsehood just because it gets voted down.
tyler
No one said anything about truth or falsehood. The truth, unfortunately, does not just automatically win in an argument.
voidstar
What?! Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?
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