Sharing Economy, Platforms and Crowds

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Paper Type

Short

Paper Number

1394

Description

This study examines the implications of a policy to remove the downvote option from an online discussion forum. Our analysis shows that after the downvote option is removed, both the number of posts and replies significantly increase. Interestingly, the average sentiment of the replies does not change significantly, which suggests that the removal of downvote option does not necessarily lead to users expressing negative impressions in their replies instead. We also find that the frequencies of product attribute related words significantly increase after the policy change. Finally, the average Gini coefficient of topics per post significantly decreases, suggesting that the topic distribution in replies became more diverse after the policy change. The latter two results together suggest that after the policy change users tend to post replies that are richer in information content. Our findings suggest that removing the downvote option may positively influence the discussion culture on the platform.

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Dec 14th, 12:00 AM

Haters Gonna Hate? How Removing Downvote Option Impacts Discussion Culture in Online Forum

This study examines the implications of a policy to remove the downvote option from an online discussion forum. Our analysis shows that after the downvote option is removed, both the number of posts and replies significantly increase. Interestingly, the average sentiment of the replies does not change significantly, which suggests that the removal of downvote option does not necessarily lead to users expressing negative impressions in their replies instead. We also find that the frequencies of product attribute related words significantly increase after the policy change. Finally, the average Gini coefficient of topics per post significantly decreases, suggesting that the topic distribution in replies became more diverse after the policy change. The latter two results together suggest that after the policy change users tend to post replies that are richer in information content. Our findings suggest that removing the downvote option may positively influence the discussion culture on the platform.

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