Hi everyone, I'd like to revisit a previously discussed idea: hiding comment scores for a long(er) period of time.

TLDR: increase the length of time before upvotes/downvotes on comments get displayed, from Reddit's default of 5 minutes to 60 minutes. Implement this change and see if it helps to drive more visibility towards quality content.

Downvoting and gaming the system

Users have been asking in Meta for awhile now, "what can be done about downvoting?" The issue of downvoting is likely to persist and get worse as another bull run brings more activity to the sub (and if moons continue to gain value and traction). Unfortunately mods do not have tools at hand to see how downvotes and admins are unlikely to make special exceptions on Reddit voting mechanics for just one specific sub.

I see two dynamics at play: 1) raining downvotes on everyone and 2) a more tactical downvoting. Both are a form of psychological warfare. The latter is an attempt to get your comment to the top of a post where there is more visibility and upvotes.

A rush to be the first/top comment means that other (and often quality) content gets buried. Witty or recycled one liners get pushed to the top.

• Please read this comment from u/fan_of_hakiksexydays or this comment from u/TNGSystems for more discussion of voting behavior and its consequences.

Hiding scores

I propose that we hide the score (the cumulative upvotes/downvotes) on comments for 60 minutes instead of the Reddit default of 5 minutes. You can still upvote or downvote comments, but the score will be hidden for an hour.

This can be achieved in one of two ways:

1. Simple: mods can toggle the subreddit setting Minutes to hide comment scores. If set to "60", comments will not show a score until they're an hour old.
2. Also simple?: set posts as Contest Mode by default for the first 60 minutes, which as an additional benefit will randomize the order of comments. (Our bot technicians would need to weigh in on whether it's feasible to then change sorting back to Best after an hour). This is how posts in r/Cointest are set if you want to see an example.

This idea has been suggested before:

• u/IHaventEvenGotADog brought it to a vote 2 years ago. It was before we formalized the CCIP process and the vote was split due to too many options
• u/CryptoMaximalist also brought this idea to a vote 1 year ago, and it failed to reach the decision threshold (this is when we had trouble passing governance, before CCIP-30):

The benefits that they outlined are still - and perhaps even more - relevant today:

• Limit bias and the bandwagon/snowball effect. Let users independently decide whether to upvote/downvote a comment without deferring to the hive mind.
• Controversial or contrarian opinions will not be as easily buried.
• Scores are still visible to mods so we can do our work of catching vote manipulation.

Caveats:

• Usernames will still be visible, so this does not address behavior where users upvote their friends. (i.e. I know that username, let me upvote them).
• This does not address downvoting on posts. Afaik the time that a post's score is hidden can not be tweaked by mods.
• This does not necessarily address someone downvoting every single comment in a thread. (But as Hakik mentions, this behavior has limited impact on distribution)

Please let me know your thoughts below, thanks.

---

Proposal by u/MrMoustacheMan

View Poll