X-Posts Explained: Analyzing and Predicting Controversial Contributions in Thematically Diverse Reddit Forums
Journal: Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Year: 2021

Most online discussion forums capture user feedback in the form of "likes'' and other similar signals, but limit this to positive feedback. A few forums, most notably Reddit, offer both upvotes and downvotes. Reddit posts that received a large number of both upvotes and downvotes receive an explicit "controversiality'' marker, while heavily downvoted posts are hidden from the standard view of the discussion, and only shown upon explicit clicks. This paper aims at understanding the nature and rol