(By a mod, obviously. Who else has a strength-10 vote and is following this discussion so closely?)
Indeed, I notice that the mods (yes, obviously it’s the mods) have been strong-downvoting pretty much all of my comments in this discussion with you.
So, before I continue engaging, I really do have to ask: this project of yours, where you are engaging in this apparently good-faith discussion with me, trying to hash out disagreement, etc.—what do the other mods think of it?
Is this just you on your own quixotic sidequest, with no buy-in from anyone else who matters?
If that’s the case, then that seems to make the whole thing rather farcical and pointless.
(Really, strong-downvoting a reply, to a moderator, written on that moderator’s request! If we want to talk about problems with voting behaviors, I’d suggest that the mods start by looking in the mirror.)
I asked in the sunshines channel on the LW slack and people there said that they were voting comments based on quality as a comment, and while one is downvoting many of your comments on the page overall, was not downvoting the majority of the comments in this thread.
There are more 10-strength users than just the mods; it may be the case that enough of them are downvoting comments that are at positive karma but leaving the −8 comments alone, which results in no one person downvoting more than a few comments in the thread, but the comments being underwater as a whole. But if there is a single mod who is trying to make this thread not happen, they’re not telling me (which seems worth doing because it would affect my behavior more than the downvoting would). [Edit: the person who did the database query clarified, and I now think that the votes are primarily coming from mods.]
I made the classic mistake of ‘asking two questions together’ and so primarily got responses on voting behavior and not what they think of the project, but I would (from their other writing) guess they are mostly out of hope about it.
I’m not sure if it was a mod, but the existence of high-strength votes and people willing to use them liberally seems like a problem to me. I also have a 10-strength vote but almost never use it because I don’t trust my own judgment enough to want to strongly influence the discourse in an unaccountable way. But others apparently do trust themselves this way, and I think it’s bad that LW gives such people disproportionate influence.
FWIW, my guess is the site would be in a better place if you voted more, and used your high vote-strength more. My guess is you would overall add a bunch of positive signal, much more than an average commenter, which is why it IMO makes sense for your votes to have a lot more weight.
I do think voting around the zero point tends to be more whack and have a bunch of more complicated consequences, and often a swing of 10 points feels disproportionate to what is going on when a comment is between 1 and 10 karma. I’ve considered making various changes to the vote system to reduce the effects of this, but haven’t found something worth the tradeoff in complexity.
I started writing a reply to your other comment, when I noticed that my last comment in reply to you had been strong-downvoted.
(By a mod, obviously. Who else has a strength-10 vote and is following this discussion so closely?)
Indeed, I notice that the mods (yes, obviously it’s the mods) have been strong-downvoting pretty much all of my comments in this discussion with you.
So, before I continue engaging, I really do have to ask: this project of yours, where you are engaging in this apparently good-faith discussion with me, trying to hash out disagreement, etc.—what do the other mods think of it?
Is this just you on your own quixotic sidequest, with no buy-in from anyone else who matters?
If that’s the case, then that seems to make the whole thing rather farcical and pointless.
(Really, strong-downvoting a reply, to a moderator, written on that moderator’s request! If we want to talk about problems with voting behaviors, I’d suggest that the mods start by looking in the mirror.)
I asked in the sunshines channel on the LW slack and people there said that they were voting comments based on quality as a comment, and while one is downvoting many of your comments on the page overall, was not downvoting the majority of the comments in this thread.
There are more 10-strength users than just the mods; it may be the case that enough of them are downvoting comments that are at positive karma but leaving the −8 comments alone, which results in no one person downvoting more than a few comments in the thread, but the comments being underwater as a whole. But if there is a single mod who is trying to make this thread not happen, they’re not telling me (which seems worth doing because it would affect my behavior more than the downvoting would). [Edit: the person who did the database query clarified, and I now think that the votes are primarily coming from mods.]
I made the classic mistake of ‘asking two questions together’ and so primarily got responses on voting behavior and not what they think of the project, but I would (from their other writing) guess they are mostly out of hope about it.
I’m not sure if it was a mod, but the existence of high-strength votes and people willing to use them liberally seems like a problem to me. I also have a 10-strength vote but almost never use it because I don’t trust my own judgment enough to want to strongly influence the discourse in an unaccountable way. But others apparently do trust themselves this way, and I think it’s bad that LW gives such people disproportionate influence.
FWIW, my guess is the site would be in a better place if you voted more, and used your high vote-strength more. My guess is you would overall add a bunch of positive signal, much more than an average commenter, which is why it IMO makes sense for your votes to have a lot more weight.
I do think voting around the zero point tends to be more whack and have a bunch of more complicated consequences, and often a swing of 10 points feels disproportionate to what is going on when a comment is between 1 and 10 karma. I’ve considered making various changes to the vote system to reduce the effects of this, but haven’t found something worth the tradeoff in complexity.