Counterpoint: I get value from being notified of votes/karma changes. Especially when someone bothers to vote on an old post, it’s nice to revisit it and update my mental model of which comments of mine will be popular or not. As a result, I’ve changed my target from 80% upvotes to 90% - If I don’t get some downvotes, I’m likely over-editing and over-filtering myself, but people are kind enough that I have to be pretty bad to get many downvotes.
Definitely try it on or off for a week or two every year, and optimize for yourself :)
I eventually got tired of not knowing where the karma increments were coming from, so I changed it to cache once a week. I just got my first weekly cache, and the information I got from seeing what was voted on outweighed the encouragement of any Internet Points Neurosis I may have.
This makes sense re old posts. Thanks for pointing to a valid use.
Inside my brain, I feel especially susceptible to anything that acts like Internet Points, and that little star was triggering the itch. Without the star there, I click less often on my username to see how many Internet Points I got. (I was also clicking on the star even when I knew there was no new information there!) Removing the star removed some of the emotional immediacy.
Yep, I expect some people will want them turned off, which is why we tried to make that pretty easy! It might also make sense to batch them into a weekly batch instead of a daily one, which I’ve done at some points to reduce the degree to which I felt like I was goodharting on them.
Most people definitely wanted daily, since that’s what their LessWrong habits were already. I also am pretty okay with daily, and think it gets rid of most of the bad “repeatedly check 10 times a day” loop that things like Facebook can get me into.
In case anyone sees this: I turned off my Vote Notifications, and it has increased my enjoyment of the site by at least 10%. You should, too.
Counterpoint: I get value from being notified of votes/karma changes. Especially when someone bothers to vote on an old post, it’s nice to revisit it and update my mental model of which comments of mine will be popular or not. As a result, I’ve changed my target from 80% upvotes to 90% - If I don’t get some downvotes, I’m likely over-editing and over-filtering myself, but people are kind enough that I have to be pretty bad to get many downvotes.
Definitely try it on or off for a week or two every year, and optimize for yourself :)
I eventually got tired of not knowing where the karma increments were coming from, so I changed it to cache once a week. I just got my first weekly cache, and the information I got from seeing what was voted on outweighed the encouragement of any Internet Points Neurosis I may have.
This makes sense re old posts. Thanks for pointing to a valid use.
Inside my brain, I feel especially susceptible to anything that acts like Internet Points, and that little star was triggering the itch. Without the star there, I click less often on my username to see how many Internet Points I got. (I was also clicking on the star even when I knew there was no new information there!) Removing the star removed some of the emotional immediacy.
Yep, I expect some people will want them turned off, which is why we tried to make that pretty easy! It might also make sense to batch them into a weekly batch instead of a daily one, which I’ve done at some points to reduce the degree to which I felt like I was goodharting on them.
Why isn’t weekly notifications the default? Daily is likely more harmful than useful for the typical person
Most people definitely wanted daily, since that’s what their LessWrong habits were already. I also am pretty okay with daily, and think it gets rid of most of the bad “repeatedly check 10 times a day” loop that things like Facebook can get me into.
I’m of the type to get easily addicted to notifications, and daily has felt rare enough for me to not trigger any reaction.