The Consent of the Crowd Detected in an Open Forum

Within Reddit, Change My View is a specific debate forum where anyone can expose her or his view on a given topic and ask the crowd to provide counter-arguments with the aim of potentially changing this view. CMV uses a dual reward system according to which a) anyone, often the person who had asked the initial question, can highlight and acknowledge an argument (a post) by giving it a "delta" (Δ) and b) anyone can up- or down-vote one or several posts in a discussion. We take advantage of this dual reward system to investigate a phenomenon we call the Consent of the Crowd. Our results provide evidence on the use of the up-vote reward system by the crowd in order to express a dissent against the Δ reward. This phenomenon may be observed when not enough contributors got a chance to join the discussion before the Δ is granted. Our result highlights the necessity for forum moderators to foster discussion between as many participants as possible before closing discussions.