Just skip the intro, R-code and graphs (too heavy on math).
Question 1:
Is there a difference in karma between posts that received a negative initial comment and those that received a positive initial comment? (Any difference suggests that one or both is having an effect.)
Conclusion 1:
The difference in means has shrunk but not gone away; it’s large enough that 10% of the possible effect sizes (of “a negative initial comment rather than positive”) may be zero or actually be positive (increase karma) instead. This is a little concerning, but I don’t take this too seriously:
this is not a lot of data
as we’ve seen there are extreme outliers suggesting that the assumptions of normality may be badly wrong
even at face value, 10 karma points doesn’t seem like it’s large enough to have any important real-world consequences (like make people leave LW who should’ve stayed)
Question 2:
Is there a difference in karma between the two kinds of initial comments, as I began to suspect during the experiment?
Conclusion 2:
As one would hope, neither group of comments ends up with net positive mean score, but they’re clearly being treated very differently: the negative comments get downvoted far more than the positive comments. I take this as perhaps implying that LW’s reputation for being negative & hostile is a bit overblown: we’re negative and hostile to poorly thought out criticisms and arguments, not fluffy praise.
Just skip the intro, R-code and graphs (too heavy on math).
Question 1:
Conclusion 1:
Question 2:
Conclusion 2:
tl;dr: maybe