Having the Last Word: Understanding How to Sample Discussions Online
In online debates, as in offline ones, individual utterances or arguments support or attack each other, leading to some subset of arguments winning (potentially from different sides of the debate). However, online conversations are much larger in scale than offline ones, with often hundreds of thousands of users weighing in, and so, readers are often forced to sample a subset of the arguments or arguments being put forth.
In predicting the locations of the winning arguments in reply networks, we can therefore suggest which arguments a reader should sample and read if he or she would like to grasp the winning opinions in such discussions. Our models have important implications for the design of future online discussion platforms.
Dunno why I found this research very funny. So... the best sample of comments to take within very long TLDR discussion threads is the last comment along each chain of sub-comments. Still funny as an insight!
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My experience. Online debates are rarely worth it. Half the time you have a troll on the other end or someone who wouldn't change his mind if his life depended on it. Best to be the change you want to see and all that.
I just assume I'm writing for whoever else reads it ;-)
The illusion of an audience. Trolls are easy - just ask them some unopinionated factual question, if one can be bothered, but again it isn't there for their benefit.
I think I just did too much about it in the past. I like sharing ideas and humor but I at least have to be careful not to get into a non productive back and forth, if you know what I mean?
When you're young (like, a teen) I think it's very productive. It gets the argumental juices flowing, you get to engage the other side and understand what their arguments are and how to attack them. You can't get the same thing from passively reading books. I remember my first lengthy (and I do mean lengthy) discussions online were even before I discovered facebook, it was in some yahoo group or something, and it was about nihilism. I joined cos I shared their views about atheism, but since I disagreed about their nihilism we got into a lot of debates about that, and it helped fortify my position greatly and proved fruitful in me coming up with arguments against nihilism years in the future.
But after a certain point - and a certain age - I think yeah online arguments, especially of the acrimonious kind - become less fruitful, because as we get older we tend to know about all the points of view out there, and our time is better spent researching and writing something more formal. Also, probably trolls didn't exist back then or weren't as proliferated! People used to actually mean what they wrote and were out for the truth not your feelings.
I certainly did indulge when I was younger. It can be a positing growing experience when engaged with an open mind on both fronts. But butting up egos is rarely productive.
yeah, reminds me of my time in ICQ groups - popular back in the Bronze Age. Fewer auto-trolls and paid-trolls but still enough devil's advocates, although being triggered was not considered a medical condition worthy of compensation.
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I won't read the paper, but from the abstract and title, am I right in gathering that the 'winning arguments' are usually the 'last word' comments, i.e. the ones that are located near or at the end of a debate?
Exactly! Although, once one knows the algo then trollA and trollB could post for ever..... assuming anybody cares by then.
I somehow doubt that everyone suddenly shuts up because a pearl of wisdom has been delivered.