I'm not saying all opinions are of equal value but I am saying that the star rating of comments has little relation to their value and is more related to how many people agree with it. If you don't believe that then just look at many people's ratings (I think I've said this before). Yours and Fred's have have a fairly smooth gradient but with a 1 star spike. Others, like Equivamp, Sonius and me, have a strong bimodal distribution.
What do you think is more likely. An almost equal number of my comments are well thought out and based on good evidence as are completely flawed and poorly reasoned? Or half the time people agree with me and the other half they don't?
Or you can look through ratings of art or stories on SoFurry or e621. There is only correlation with quality at the extreme ends of the scale, otherwise how highly rated a submission is seems to fit fairly well with how popular the kinks in it are.
"You're right to fear an echo chamber; but that comes about when people are unable to express their opinion at all, not when they're unable to get a positive rating on that opinion from the majority."
An echo chamber occurs when only one opinion is there and there is nothing to counter it. You've said that the ratings hide comments and generally the minority comments, so the ones that would break an echo chamber. If the comments with low ratings are hidden so no one will read them because you say it saves time then either it fails at its task and people read them anyway or it does create an echo chamber because a comment that isn't read has no more impact than a comment that wasn't expressed.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
I'm not saying all opinions are of equal value but I am saying that the star rating of comments has little relation to their value and is more related to how many people agree with it. If you don't believe that then just look at many people's ratings (I think I've said this before). Yours and Fred's have have a fairly smooth gradient but with a 1 star spike. Others, like Equivamp, Sonius and me, have a strong bimodal distribution.
5 stars: 42% (758)
4 stars: 9% (166)
3 stars: 6% (102)
2 stars: 4% (71)
1 star: 39% (712)
What do you think is more likely. An almost equal number of my comments are well thought out and based on good evidence as are completely flawed and poorly reasoned? Or half the time people agree with me and the other half they don't?
Or you can look through ratings of art or stories on SoFurry or e621. There is only correlation with quality at the extreme ends of the scale, otherwise how highly rated a submission is seems to fit fairly well with how popular the kinks in it are.
"You're right to fear an echo chamber; but that comes about when people are unable to express their opinion at all, not when they're unable to get a positive rating on that opinion from the majority."
An echo chamber occurs when only one opinion is there and there is nothing to counter it. You've said that the ratings hide comments and generally the minority comments, so the ones that would break an echo chamber. If the comments with low ratings are hidden so no one will read them because you say it saves time then either it fails at its task and people read them anyway or it does create an echo chamber because a comment that isn't read has no more impact than a comment that wasn't expressed.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~