As someone that still considers themself to be a “newbie”, I actually have a few thoughts on this. (I know my account is actually quite old- I discovered this site and spent a day or two on it when I was avoiding studying for a test in college, but then I forgot about it and didn’t happen to rediscover the site for well over a year).
I don’t really have a feel for how often you guys get new users stumbling in here and posting, but I have to say that at least for me, wandering into the discussion section in the beginning sent me running right back to the sequences. I think that unless you come in primed with a background in logic or debate (and maybe even then), most of the types of people you’re interested in attracting will realize that they are missing crucial background knowledge and go try to get that knowledge before they engage.
So I suppose that if you have someone that doesn’t have the patience to try and at least spend a few days reading over the core sequences and learning the vocabulary then downvotes could be one way to indicate to them that they’re not ready to discuss at the level of the group. So I would suspect that as others have mentioned in the comments, it would only really be a problem if you’ve got a bunch of new users at the same time talking to each other and not getting that effect.
I think that one way of addressing it would be to create separate areas for people who want to talk about the old stuff and people that want to talk about the new stuff. I know that personally there were many times as I read through the sequences that I wanted to make a comment or ask a question that wasn’t always already addressed in the comments when the article came out. Those were often very insightful and helped to clarify some of the questions that I had, but I sort of felt like the time for contributing to them had passed. But if you had an area dedicated to people that were working through the sequences it would somewhat sequester the newer users to work through the basics without making them feel like they were being shuttled off to the kids table. And of course the more experienced users could show up and make suggestions, raise the level of discussion, etc.
As someone that still considers themself to be a “newbie”, I actually have a few thoughts on this. (I know my account is actually quite old- I discovered this site and spent a day or two on it when I was avoiding studying for a test in college, but then I forgot about it and didn’t happen to rediscover the site for well over a year).
I don’t really have a feel for how often you guys get new users stumbling in here and posting, but I have to say that at least for me, wandering into the discussion section in the beginning sent me running right back to the sequences. I think that unless you come in primed with a background in logic or debate (and maybe even then), most of the types of people you’re interested in attracting will realize that they are missing crucial background knowledge and go try to get that knowledge before they engage.
So I suppose that if you have someone that doesn’t have the patience to try and at least spend a few days reading over the core sequences and learning the vocabulary then downvotes could be one way to indicate to them that they’re not ready to discuss at the level of the group. So I would suspect that as others have mentioned in the comments, it would only really be a problem if you’ve got a bunch of new users at the same time talking to each other and not getting that effect.
I think that one way of addressing it would be to create separate areas for people who want to talk about the old stuff and people that want to talk about the new stuff. I know that personally there were many times as I read through the sequences that I wanted to make a comment or ask a question that wasn’t always already addressed in the comments when the article came out. Those were often very insightful and helped to clarify some of the questions that I had, but I sort of felt like the time for contributing to them had passed. But if you had an area dedicated to people that were working through the sequences it would somewhat sequester the newer users to work through the basics without making them feel like they were being shuttled off to the kids table. And of course the more experienced users could show up and make suggestions, raise the level of discussion, etc.