this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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Okay but how do we quantitatively and unambiguously devise a metric for quality? More importantly, how do we come up with a satisfactory approximation to that metric? I'm open to ideas.
How about a ratio of post upvotes to avg upvotes per post in a community? At least upvotes somewhat correlate with post quality.
I like this, but I think that upvotes correspond to things people enjoy, which may or may not be of high quality. I.e., shitposting subs would probably be rated "high quality" when, like... it's literally the point to post shitty content.
Also, as stated, that means we have to sum over the entire time history of the community. We would probably want to limit the time history of what is summed over, subject to a maximum for subs with high post counts (like the shitposting subs.
IMO it's a great suggestion, but I think it needs to be part of a weighted combination of factors.
Character count and thread depth (number of replies deep threads go) are interesting, while imperfect.
A language model could rate discussion quality.
User surveys…
Hard to think of anything perfect.
You can't.
I absolutely think we can approximate it, and MAU furnishes a flawed example of such an approximation.
Personally, the only reason to come up with that kind of metric is to justify "profitability". Lemmy is completely and entirely devoid of the need of profit, so imo it hasn't, doesn't and won't matter