There’s a consistent pattern to what gets voted down.
“Experimental” isn’t what gets voted down. Arrogance or confrontation combined with poor thinking/writing gets voted down. If you’re making a really big conclusion, you need to make your premises really clear. If you’re not confident in your point, or if you’re incredibly confident in your point, you should frame your post more as raising a question than answering one. And you need to respect basic rules of grammar and spelling; lesswrong is probably in the top .1% of civility for this type of forum, and users like it that way.
If you exercise a certain degree of humility, use a spellchecker, and avoid being confrontational, it is very unlikely you will be voted down. You might not be voted up, but people will be hesitant to punish you if you are humble and friendly, as opposed to arrogant and antagonistic.
Of course, I have to admit I’m thrilled about this new system; I’ve had maybe a dozen good top-level post ideas bouncing around, and this should motivate me to start posting them. But I think there’s a consistent pattern to what gets voted down; polite posts that use a spellchecker almost never get voted down, even if people aren’t interested in them.
“If you exercise a certain degree of humility, use a spellchecker, and avoid being confrontational, it is very unlikely you will be voted down.”
This will hopefully be true with the new system that shows negative scores (I for one will be a lot more loath to vote down anything below +2), but I’m not sure it has been true historically, as I have seen posts that I liked and were all of the above that have been voted down. I’m not entirely opposed to the karma changes, as I can see that there will be positive effects via motivation, but I think a modification may be helpful: Instead of downvotes being automatic −10, why not let negative scores on posts be −2 or −3? It would still make people think twice before posting, without scaring the bejeezes out of lower karma posters, and readers won’t feel as bad about voting down things that really oughtn’t be here.
There’s a consistent pattern to what gets voted down.
“Experimental” isn’t what gets voted down. Arrogance or confrontation combined with poor thinking/writing gets voted down. If you’re making a really big conclusion, you need to make your premises really clear. If you’re not confident in your point, or if you’re incredibly confident in your point, you should frame your post more as raising a question than answering one. And you need to respect basic rules of grammar and spelling; lesswrong is probably in the top .1% of civility for this type of forum, and users like it that way.
If you exercise a certain degree of humility, use a spellchecker, and avoid being confrontational, it is very unlikely you will be voted down. You might not be voted up, but people will be hesitant to punish you if you are humble and friendly, as opposed to arrogant and antagonistic.
Of course, I have to admit I’m thrilled about this new system; I’ve had maybe a dozen good top-level post ideas bouncing around, and this should motivate me to start posting them. But I think there’s a consistent pattern to what gets voted down; polite posts that use a spellchecker almost never get voted down, even if people aren’t interested in them.
“If you exercise a certain degree of humility, use a spellchecker, and avoid being confrontational, it is very unlikely you will be voted down.”
This will hopefully be true with the new system that shows negative scores (I for one will be a lot more loath to vote down anything below +2), but I’m not sure it has been true historically, as I have seen posts that I liked and were all of the above that have been voted down. I’m not entirely opposed to the karma changes, as I can see that there will be positive effects via motivation, but I think a modification may be helpful: Instead of downvotes being automatic −10, why not let negative scores on posts be −2 or −3? It would still make people think twice before posting, without scaring the bejeezes out of lower karma posters, and readers won’t feel as bad about voting down things that really oughtn’t be here.