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by tprice7 5126 days ago
Or maybe the secret is to use a ranking system that keeps the trolls invisible. This is something I have been working on, if you are interested see this: http://www.thoughtocean.com/what/dilution

I would very much appreciate feedback.

2 comments

Google the term "hellban".

No, seriously, google it. I'm not just giving you the name, unless I'm looking at an overpersonalized search results page, the result page is a fair gateway into both sides of the controversy around the practice as well.

The way that trolls are made invisible on Thought Ocean isn't really analogous to hellbanning; it's closer to how people who aren't your Facebook friend are invisible to you on Facebook. Thought it's still pretty different from that also.
That sounds like an excellent idea.

A thought; in a large enough site, new users need a way to find quality users they vouch for (imagine going to reddit's homepage and trying to vouch for users).

Yeah, that is definitely one of the main problems we face. A few things that mitigate this, however:

1. If you have friends who use Thought Ocean, they can be the first people that you vouch for.

2. If you see a particularly interesting post or insightful comment, vouching for the person who posted it is likely a good idea.

3. Thought Ocean has a feature that gives you feedback on why things get ranked the way they do (the "flow comes through.." feature on the flow tab). This makes a trial-and-error approach possible: just vouch for random people, keep the people who contribute to good posts and lose the people who contribute to bad ones.