Seems to me that a downvote would associate negative valance with both the act of posting on LW and with whatever their specific mistake is, with the latter being stronger. So no vote and a comment with a mixture of praise and criticism is probably the stronger play if you’re looking to improve someone’s writing or fix some technical mistake while keeping them as a contributor, but a downvote is still effective if all you care about is seeing fewer posts of that kind.
I think this should be “never downvote”.
Seems to me that a downvote would associate negative valance with both the act of posting on LW and with whatever their specific mistake is, with the latter being stronger. So no vote and a comment with a mixture of praise and criticism is probably the stronger play if you’re looking to improve someone’s writing or fix some technical mistake while keeping them as a contributor, but a downvote is still effective if all you care about is seeing fewer posts of that kind.
That would be true if the point was actually about implementing the reinforcement ideal rather than using it to validate a premeditated ideal.