The Right to Dissent: Dead on the Vine?

Well, all I can say is that I've argued with Brian Ford, had Calvin from the Newsvine staff publically disagree with me, and been viewed to be supporting one of the people commonly seen to be a troll on Newsvine, and my rating is doing just fine. I make sure I take the time and effort to present my opinion politely and calmly though, so perhaps that could have something to do with it.

I just don't see any evidence of the ratings being "so obviously slanted"...

Apparently being critical of Newsvine will bring your positive feedback down as well. My rating has dropped another 4% since posting this article.

I think it's actually quite a bit more automated and simple than that. I notice that most of my replies have been given 1 positive tick (presumably by you). My rating is roughly the same as where it was when I first replied here, and I imagine that is because I haven't made any comments elsewhere in the mean time, and thus all of my comments have been rated.

Being the slacker I am however, I don't give out many ticks for comments, though I do tick any article I reply to as a general rule. So most of your comments don't have ticks. So lets say you've made around 100 posts or comments total on Newsvine. Now lets say you make 4 comments on an article, and none of them get positive votes. If your rating then drops by 4%, it seems likely that the rating is mostly a measure of the percentage of your comments and articles that have received ticks, which means that it's not so much people actively going out of their way to crush disenting opinions, so much as people simply not voting for an opinion they disagree with.

As a test of this theory, I've voted for all of your comments in this article up until this point. Let me know how that alters your rating. If it goes back up by around 4%, I think we have a winner :)

Oops, I didn't mean to post that one as a new comment outside of the old thread. Please feel free to delete this and the parent

Perhaps we could allow for explanations as to why feedback is affected?

I tend to dwell in hotbed issues such as reproductive rights. For the most part, my feedback has been decent. However, when I brought up a feminist argument in one of them, my feed back dropped dramatically. Reasons behind this are unknown. It could be because feminism tends to draw much ire. However, although I try to lay out arguments as reasonable as possible, if provoked, I am not a stranger to the snark, so it could be that as well. With issues such as these, you never really know.

As someone that is interesting in strengthening my argumentation skills, I would be interested to know the reasons behind the negative feedback. It would be helpful for the community as a whole, I think. If we know the reasons why our arguments are seen as a violation of the Newvine code, it would help us to attempt to fix those violations in future arguments.

As Steve Stills sung ... "Paranoia runs deep ..."

Newsvine has < 10 employees, and there is no way they have the bandwidth (or the patience) to read everyone's flames and counterflames. The rating system is user-generated and automated. Sheesh. If you don't like the results, go find a community that you feel more in synch with.

Or as Aerosmith once belted out: "...it's the same old story, same old song and dance, my friend..."

Put it another way, if you want more conservative viewpoints, invite more conservatives to participate. Everyone here has the ability to invite people to the site, but don't leave it at that, encourage them to participate, to write, and to seed articles.

If you don't want your comments or articles getting reported for any of the numerous reasons someone may report them, then perhaps it's the tone of presentation that needs work. Adding a flippant insulting remark at the end of a comment, as some conservative commentors do, detracts from the value of the comment, and they should expect that such comments (and particularly personal attacks) will be reported through the automatic reporting feature by the users of the site.

The admins of this site do not discriminate against any segment of users, as far as I know. I've seen admins warn both "liberals" and "conservatives" on comment threads, myself included.

If the conservatives want their viewpoints to be better represented, then they have to get off their arses and provide it, don't expect others to do it for you. If you sense a liberal bias in the content of this site, then your recourse is to seed and write more conservative articles and comment on and vote for them. If you only vote for things you comment on, then of course, the things you don't vote for are going to sink faster off the pages within the site. The admins don't manually make things disappear, but votes, active comments, and elapsed time do matter.

Something that would probably help is if we knew how the ratings are calculated. Which they are not likely to do as that would allow people who are so inclined to game the system so to speak. The other thing is excactly what the rating trying to tell us. I understand that it the number of "positive contributions" vs number of times my content has beend reported (which make who reported me and why, but that is a side note). Personally, the rating system means nothing to me.

I've spoken out on the point that I do not think the Newsvine system in and of itself is liberally (or conservatively) biased. I do think that the majority of people using Newsvine are liberals to one degree or another. This means they are more likely to vote up liberal oriented articles, not as likely to vote for conservative article, and are more likely to report conservative articles and comments (whether they should be or not). I would like to point this is observation and speculation, not an attack on anyone in particular. In and of itself this isn't problem with Newsvine. It is simply the result of a user driven system dominated by a particular group.

What to do about it? Well obvisously if you identify with the group that appears to be in the majority - you probably think nothing needs to be done. If identify with the group that appears to be in the minority - then you need to work to bring more people with your point of view to Newsvine. That is all there is to it.

Personally, I wouldn't sweat the positive feedback. Heck - a lower rating might be more desirable. A number of commentator personalities take it as mark of they are doing their jobs right by the amount of hate mail they receive.

Positive feedback is an indicator of how many agree with you, not based on how nice you were... but there is a correlation between negative feedback and rudeness.

I've said this before, I would hope most Newsviners conduct themselves the same way:

Reporting comments is something I do sparingly, and never for someone who merely expresses the opposite political opinion I hold. Only when someone obviously, flagrantly insults someone else.

As for positive feedback ratings, I didn't know they mattered that much. I just comment and never give much thought to whether someone likes it or not. My only concern is that it isn't mean or meaningless.

With all due respect, it does seem to be weekly that someone brings a variation of "Newsvine isn't conservative enough" to the front page. Is that really what you want? A site where people agree with you more than they oppose you? I don't understand the insistence on needing Newsvine to be more conservative. If others are reporting your comments because they don't agree with your politics, that is a valid argument. But I can say I don't operate like that and I'd be surprised to find out many others on here do.

Maybe Calvin can fill us in on the ratio of reasonable comment reports to unreasonable comment reports?

This statement makes no sense. I currently have 50% "positive feedback" rating and I despise Bush and let people know it.

Assuming the observation that conservative comments are flagged more often is in fact the case, it doesn't necessarily mean that liberal Newsviners are more unreasonable in their use of the reporting feature. Since there are fewer conservatives here, they present fewer targets for a larger population of liberal abusers, even though the percentage of abusers at both ends of the spectrum might be the same.

I always laugh wen the people who are the majority complain they are being biased against.
I really doubt there is a concerted effort against you. It just feels like it.
I also notice a lot of conservative believe there is a huge liberal conspiracy and everyone is against them
liberal media
activist judges
scientists
there was even a partisan insurgence at the cia.
The dems cant even get together to get a proper message out I dont see how they could have a conspiracy in all facets of life and government.

I will agree with the poster that having an unpopular view shouldnt be a punishment for polite commenters.

I got in a flamewar with Rhine Cyrus and my rating dropped ~7%, presumably because he and his alter ego login(s) modded my comments down. No politics involved. My question is this: why do you care? Do you get money for your pf rating? A certain number of candy bars every week? In all my experience with online forums, the only people who are never modded down are those who never say anything interesting. DBS, it's not 'liberal nastiness' to republicans. It's the same abuse of power that whoever is in the majority is always guilty of. Assuming that there's an approximately equal distribution of jerks in both liberal/conservative circles, then whichever side has more numbers will be out there voting down comments with which they don't agree more often. So it probably is a factor here, as it is everywhere. Just say anything pro-Microsoft on digg or slashdot and see how long it takes to get buried. At least it's not that bad here yet.

Calvin and Newsvine staff - just hide the silly little box already. It's apparently making a lot of people here unwilling to say what they want to say.

My suggestion: present your opinions as honestly as possible, and as politely as possible, never guided by PF rating. I never bother looking at the PF rating of those whose articles I read; I prefer to judge them by what I read.

I think the basic idea behind the system is perfect, as it helps us to receive feed-back on how our participation is being received by the community (what we do with that feedback, of course, is another matter altogether). And the less detailed ratings that Calvin and Mike mention will make the system even better.