Vote aggregation is how we get “this is worth being seen by people reading LW” from “I want to see this.” Individuals know a bit more about their own personal preferences than they do about the personal preferences of others. Asking people to judge the personal preferences of others can only lead to a decline in accuracy of reporting.
I think this shift from personal preference to a focus on curating content for others shifts the approach to voting in a way that is likely to better result in votes that reflect what is worth reading when a person comes to the site rather than what people on LW like.
I think the point is that what people on LW like should be worth reading. I can imagine a few different general situations and only in the most ridiculous situation does changing the voting basis from “what you want to see/don’t want to see” to “what you think the community should read/should not read” improve the content.
Situation 1: LW users have good taste and want to see more worthy posts.
In this case the switch would at best cause no change and at worse decrease the quality of posts because users may be worse at judging the opinions of others than they are at judging their own opinions.
Situation 2: LW users are unable to judge a post’s worthiness.
If the users aren’t able to judge worthiness, voting on what they think is worthy can’t actually improve their score.
Situation 3: LW users have bad taste and what they want to see has little/negative correlation with worthiness, but they can still judge worthiness well if asked.
In this case switching the voting system would be effective. But this sounds ridiculous on it’s face! How could someone capable of judging worthiness not actually prefer worthy content to unworthy content?
There might be multiple dimensions of quality, or types (of content) that require time to invest in (to appreciate/recognize quality/etc.), that not everyone wants to invest in currently. See here, from further up the page—LW users aren’t homogenous wrt. taste and topic related group membership population can ‘have effects on ability to judge’.
Situation 3: LW users have bad taste and what they want to see has little/negative correlation with worthiness, but they can still judge worthiness well if asked.
Basically this, with ‘and time investment is required to understand X, like the Sequences (except hopefully it takes less time)’.
(Perhaps this could be solved via recognition of different types (or groups) which can be filtered on, and tools for doing so.)
I understand this position and it’s totally relevant to the question of when to downvote. However, I don’t think it has much relevance to the question of when a user should upvote. If a person isn’t interested in certain genres of topics, downvoting every post on one of those topics wouldn’t improve discourse; it would lead to uniformity of topics. Only the few topics for which more people (accounting for karma weights) are interested in than uninterested in would remain more upvoted than downvoted. However, with the current system most people understand that this situation is exactly what the novote is for. If one doesn’t have any interest in AI research then one should filter those posts where they can and disregard them where they can’t.
I like the idea of automatically figuring out what topic a post is based on the upvote, novote, and downvote patterns of different users. Maybe some combination with that and the topic tags on posts could lead to a different, individualized karma system. Votes from users with similar interest in topics would have more weight for each other than they do for users with disparate interest in topics. Seems a little echo-chambery, but I see value in the idea.
I do see a bit of a incongruity between what you’re describing and the the comment you linked to which I can’t square. In actuality, eapache seems to have the ability to see the value in AI research topics, but regardless is uninterested in the topic himself. But what you’re describing would lead to eapache not being able to discern value or lack of value in AI research topics because he’s uninterested and thus hasn’t invested the time to be able to appreciate them.
I understand this position and it’s totally relevant to the question of when to downvote. However, I don’t think it has much relevance to the question of when a user should upvote.
Yes.
In actuality, eapache seems to have the ability to see the value in AI research topics, but regardless is uninterested in the topic himself.
Yes.
what you’re describing would lead to eapache not being able to discern value or lack of value in AI research topics because he’s uninterested and thus hasn’t invested the time to be able to appreciate them.
Perhaps. I might be able to appreciate AI research topics, while
maybe not appreciating (all of) it as much
or be as good at detecting flaws as say, an expert
The new tagging system actually works really well for this. I set AI to have a moderate negative homepage modifier, and still get to see the top AI posts but mostly only those.
Vote aggregation is how we get “this is worth being seen by people reading LW” from “I want to see this.” Individuals know a bit more about their own personal preferences than they do about the personal preferences of others. Asking people to judge the personal preferences of others can only lead to a decline in accuracy of reporting.
I think the point is that what people on LW like should be worth reading. I can imagine a few different general situations and only in the most ridiculous situation does changing the voting basis from “what you want to see/don’t want to see” to “what you think the community should read/should not read” improve the content.
Situation 1: LW users have good taste and want to see more worthy posts.
In this case the switch would at best cause no change and at worse decrease the quality of posts because users may be worse at judging the opinions of others than they are at judging their own opinions.
Situation 2: LW users are unable to judge a post’s worthiness.
If the users aren’t able to judge worthiness, voting on what they think is worthy can’t actually improve their score.
Situation 3: LW users have bad taste and what they want to see has little/negative correlation with worthiness, but they can still judge worthiness well if asked.
In this case switching the voting system would be effective. But this sounds ridiculous on it’s face! How could someone capable of judging worthiness not actually prefer worthy content to unworthy content?
There might be multiple dimensions of quality, or types (of content) that require time to invest in (to appreciate/recognize quality/etc.), that not everyone wants to invest in currently. See here, from further up the page—LW users aren’t homogenous wrt. taste and topic related group membership population can ‘have effects on ability to judge’.
Basically this, with ‘and time investment is required to understand X, like the Sequences (except hopefully it takes less time)’.
(Perhaps this could be solved via recognition of different types (or groups) which can be filtered on, and tools for doing so.)
Does that make sense?
I understand this position and it’s totally relevant to the question of when to downvote. However, I don’t think it has much relevance to the question of when a user should upvote. If a person isn’t interested in certain genres of topics, downvoting every post on one of those topics wouldn’t improve discourse; it would lead to uniformity of topics. Only the few topics for which more people (accounting for karma weights) are interested in than uninterested in would remain more upvoted than downvoted. However, with the current system most people understand that this situation is exactly what the novote is for. If one doesn’t have any interest in AI research then one should filter those posts where they can and disregard them where they can’t.
I like the idea of automatically figuring out what topic a post is based on the upvote, novote, and downvote patterns of different users. Maybe some combination with that and the topic tags on posts could lead to a different, individualized karma system. Votes from users with similar interest in topics would have more weight for each other than they do for users with disparate interest in topics. Seems a little echo-chambery, but I see value in the idea.
I do see a bit of a incongruity between what you’re describing and the the comment you linked to which I can’t square. In actuality, eapache seems to have the ability to see the value in AI research topics, but regardless is uninterested in the topic himself. But what you’re describing would lead to eapache not being able to discern value or lack of value in AI research topics because he’s uninterested and thus hasn’t invested the time to be able to appreciate them.
Yes.
Yes.
Perhaps. I might be able to appreciate AI research topics, while
maybe not appreciating (all of) it as much
or be as good at detecting flaws as say, an expert
The new tagging system actually works really well for this. I set AI to have a moderate negative homepage modifier, and still get to see the top AI posts but mostly only those.