What Ars offers instead is a simple score that lets people quickly identify wheat and chaff as they scroll through the comments. So far, the system has helped to flag astro-turfers (ie disguised PR people who write things like “I just love the new Kindle XYZ”) through negative scores.
More intriguing is what happens next. As Fisher explains, low scores will cause a comment to fade to grey and, if the score is really low, it will disappear altogether. The idea is that trolls and pitchmen will quickly get discouraged and migrate to other sites. Meanwhile, Ars is also introducing a star system that will let readers quickly scroll to the good stuff.
So what to make of all this? My initial impression is that Ars has hit on a effective way to crowd source comment quality. The only question is whether there is a risk of fostering the hive mentality and group think that can infect even the smartest sites. For instance, would an intelligent pro-SOPA, copyright advocate simply be voted out of existence?
According to Fisher, ”it’s not what people say, it’s how they say it that earns the votes,” meaning unpopular opinions will have a fighting chance.
See the full story here: http://paidcontent.org/2012/10/11/comment-voting-ars-technicas-new-solution-to-shills-and-kooks/?utm_source=General+Users&utm_campaign=779018ef4d-c%3Amed+d%3A10-12&utm_medium=email