I don’t think I believe the sockpuppethypothesis for why this post and Y_i_a’s comment on it have a bunch of upvotes.
Main post: −18, 38% ⇒ either +28-46 or +29-47.
Comment: −11, 37% ⇒ +16-27.
The numbers of upvotes are very different in the two cases. If Y_i_a is using a load of socks then it’s hard to see why s/he wouldn’t use all the socks for both. You’d expect something like the same number of upvotes and downvotes for the original post and the comment.
On the other hand, if it’s just that readers like/dislike this sort of thing in roughly 3:5 proportions, you’d get what we see here: the original post and its comments are both at about the same %positive despite quite different numbers of votes in each case.
This isn’t a terribly strong argument, for all kinds of reasons. E.g., you might think that people who get as far as reading the comment would have a different like:dislike ratio from ones who just saw the original post. Maybe Y_i_a has a drawerful of socks but for some reason is happy being at about 3⁄8 positive. Etc. But I think the most likely thing is just that a substantial fraction of readers liked this.
When I first saw the post, it was at +6. (I don’t remember the % or how old it was.) It seems unlikely to me for something with a 38% approval rate to ever hit +6, although there are other hypotheses than Y_i_a sockpuppets. (E.g. sockpuppets used to downvote, or different demographics encountering it at different times.)
I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before, and I don’t think it’s a question of demographics or sockpuppets. Basically I think a bunch of people upvoted it because they thought it was funny, then after there were more comments, other people more thoughtfully downvoted it because they saw (especially after reading more of the comments) that it was a bad idea.
So my theory it was a question of difference in timing and in whether or not other people had already commented.
I don’t think I believe the sockpuppet hypothesis for why this post and Y_i_a’s comment on it have a bunch of upvotes.
Main post: −18, 38% ⇒ either +28-46 or +29-47.
Comment: −11, 37% ⇒ +16-27.
The numbers of upvotes are very different in the two cases. If Y_i_a is using a load of socks then it’s hard to see why s/he wouldn’t use all the socks for both. You’d expect something like the same number of upvotes and downvotes for the original post and the comment.
On the other hand, if it’s just that readers like/dislike this sort of thing in roughly 3:5 proportions, you’d get what we see here: the original post and its comments are both at about the same %positive despite quite different numbers of votes in each case.
This isn’t a terribly strong argument, for all kinds of reasons. E.g., you might think that people who get as far as reading the comment would have a different like:dislike ratio from ones who just saw the original post. Maybe Y_i_a has a drawerful of socks but for some reason is happy being at about 3⁄8 positive. Etc. But I think the most likely thing is just that a substantial fraction of readers liked this.
When I first saw the post, it was at +6. (I don’t remember the % or how old it was.) It seems unlikely to me for something with a 38% approval rate to ever hit +6, although there are other hypotheses than Y_i_a sockpuppets. (E.g. sockpuppets used to downvote, or different demographics encountering it at different times.)
I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before, and I don’t think it’s a question of demographics or sockpuppets. Basically I think a bunch of people upvoted it because they thought it was funny, then after there were more comments, other people more thoughtfully downvoted it because they saw (especially after reading more of the comments) that it was a bad idea.
So my theory it was a question of difference in timing and in whether or not other people had already commented.