CCIP-021 - Temporarily sort comments by newest first after a post is submitted.

Summary

This proposal is for sorting comments by newest first after a post is submitted. The intended goal is to level the playing field between early bird low-effort comments and more meaningful high-effort comments by limiting visibility for the former.

Problem Statement

After a post is submitted, the first comments tend to be low-effort. Most of them are simple trite remarks or jokes about the parent post which tend not to offer much originality or value. Users who make these comments are probably only seeking attention or farming moons and often receive numerous upvotes just for being first. Users who make more meaningful comments first take time to even notice the post and additional time to write a comment.

Solution

After a submission has been posted, temporarily set the suggested comment sorting to newest first. After 15 minutes(more or less), the suggested sorting will be switched to top comments first. This change should give later comments an advantage over early comments. Since every comment will be treated the same for a set amount of time, it might also encourage users to post more top-level comments and therefore increase the odds of triggering a discussion.

The 15-minute time limit will be tweaked by the mod team for optimization. The reader will always have the option to change his/her own suggested sort to something else.

Concerns

The first two items in the following list are concerns given by u/CryptoMaximalist in the CCMeta thread, which I have paraphrased. The last one is mine.

• Hiding comment scores for a longer period of time may be considered as an alternative method or additional measure for achieving this goal. However, this idea would have to be submitted as a separate proposal. Currently, scores are hidden for 5 minutes. Contest mode is a controlled option for hiding scores, but it also collapses lower-level comments and might hamper discussion.

• Many Reddit clients do not respect suggested sorting and allow the user to override them.

• My own minor concern would be the potential for incentivizing more spam in the top-level comments, since farmers would be fighting for visibility. Rate-limits could be required.

Thanks for your attention.

FYI, if you wonder why this poll looks familiar, that's because it's a repost from a poll submitted a month ago which didn't pass. The reason is likely because the time span was set to 3 days instead of 7. The time span for this poll is set to 7 days.

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