Data point: I was going to make a different comment, but have been made paranoid and inclined to hoard my existing karma by the new, more liberal downvoting recommendations. I’m never going to find out whether my original comment would have improved anyone else’s reading experience or not, because I didn’t care about it enough to take a newly increased risk as the price for saying it.
I don’t want to trade in karma I earn for great comments so I can make mediocre comments. I want my karma to go up, preferably fast. I’m not sure if this is a good goal to have—maybe karma just feels like approval and I like it because I wasn’t hugged enough as a child or something—but nevertheless, I have that motivation.
I advise against this strategy. The quality of your comments is generally positive, and that will be reflected in your karma, so just post when you have something to say and it will go up overall, though it’s pretty unpredictable what will be voted up or down.
I don’t want to trade in karma I earn for great comments so I can make mediocre comments. I want my karma to go up, preferably fast. I’m not sure if this is a good goal to have—maybe karma just feels like approval and I like it because I wasn’t hugged enough as a child or something—but nevertheless, I have that motivation.
And yet… the strategy your instincts are driving you to implement isn’t making your karma go up fast. At least, it would go up faster if you lowered your standard. What your extra caution is achieving in practice is sacrificing karma gain in favour of conveying a reputation as a considered, insightful poster with a diplomatic style.
If you actually want to increase karma faster, post a whole heap more and only inhibit posts that are rude or particularly stupid.
That said, it is possible to maintain high karma and come across as an entirely unhug-worthy pain in the ass a lot of the time. Data Point: The most downvoted person on this site remained in the top posters list until a couple of weeks ago when I spent ten minutes browsing his posts making sure I that I downvoted everything stupid. By all means, I encourage you to continue to err on the side of not being a pain in the ass.
I’m still making comments. And I value some strategies over others to get karma—I don’t want it to go up for sheer volume and dumb luck. I’d rather make comments that come to mind as good things to say, not just type the unfiltered contents of my brain. (The unfiltered contents of my brain contain a lot more fiction references, inside jokes that are known only to my close personal friends, and musings about muffins and tofu and broccoli than anyone wants to read.) And I’d rather the good ones get voted up and the bad ones get informative replies—not freely dispensed downvotes—so I can adjust my behavior with more information than a brute negative number.
Also, as a counterexample, I took a karma hit for a number of comments on another thread—I remarked on it and they’ve all been compensated for, but if I hadn’t said anything I imagine they’d have sat there indefinitely, because apparently the new “downvote freely” ethos hasn’t made me paranoid enough.
so I can adjust my behavior with more information than a brute negative number.
For comparison, I prefer to comment the same way I would if nobody was voting on them. If the people here like my comments, then they’ll float to the top. If my comments routinely got downvoted to oblivion, I’d probably post elsewhere instead.
In other words, I’m a big fan of the marketplace of ideas, but I don’t have one in my own head.
For comparison, I prefer to comment the same way I would if nobody was voting on them. If the people here like my comments, then they’ll float to the top. If my comments routinely got downvoted to oblivion, I’d probably post elsewhere instead.
Insofar as voting is collective feedback from this community, it carries at least some informational value that one should value to the extent that one considers the average LW user to have intelligent, insightful opinions.
Insofar as voting is collective feedback from this community, it carries at least some informational value that one should value to the extent that one considers the average LW user to have intelligent, insightful opinions.
It does. Perhaps the most significant value I get is in calibrating my expression. People here, who for most part are a relative inferential distance from myself and relatively high in comprehension ability. When people here don’t understand what I’m saying then chances are I’m leaving too many inferential steps implicit, expressing myself inelegantly or conveying concepts too quickly and I need to adjust my communication.
It does. Perhaps the most significant value I get is in calibrating my expression. People here, who for most part are a relatively inferential distance from myself and relatively high in comprehension ability. When people here don’t understand what I’m saying then chances are I’m leaving too many inferential steps implicit, expression myself inelegantly or conveying concepts too quickly and I need to adjust my communication.
In context, if these grammatical mistakes were intentional I tip my hat to you, sir. Well played.
Considering that some posts are getting hundreds of comments, not that many people have the time to read them all (especially if you have to search a bit to find what you have and haven’t read), it may be better for everyone to have fewer comments, but of higher quality.
Or, to put it another way, considering that you’re writing once to be read dozens of times, it’s nice to your readers to take a bit of effort to polish up your prose, it costs a few seconds to you but can save a few seconds to a lot of people. This may feel unusual if we are used to situations like conversation (or online chat) where the listener/talker ratio isn’t as skewed.
The real risk is when certain forms of comment (approval, disapproval) are discouraged, because the community’s standards of “quality” are skewed.
The real risk is when certain forms of comment (approval, disapproval) are discouraged, because the community’s standards of “quality” are skewed.
Agreed. I strongly feel that comments of a few words expressing thanks, agreement, apology, sympathy, approval, acknowledgement, etc. should simply hover at zero. Such remarks are part of the native architecture by which we communicate, and I think we lose something if we discourage them.
I agree with the descriptive content of what you wrote, but not the normative content. I agree that we do lose something if we discourage these sorts of comments. However, short comments that don’t add anything to the discussion (like the ones you mention) do add a significant amount to what gets displayed on the screen. If someone is reading this with a screen reader, a text browser, an iphone, or even just a small laptop or old, low-res display, then they will have to wade through “MBlume 22 April 2009 07:55:59AM* 8 points [-] Thanks—I agree. Vote up | Vote down | Permalink | Parent | Report | Reply”, for no good reason. Much better to discourage this sort of noise that adds nothing to the pursuit of rationality as such.
Might be bad—in principle, it would be nice if we could sift through many comments as a community, so as to increase the number of good ones that can float to the top. If everyone who reads a bad comment votes it down, not that many will be inconvenienced by additional mediocre comments, and allowing folks to attempt comments they think might be good (and might not be) would plausibly increase the absolute quantity of good comments. (This depends on our ability to sort good comments to the top and mediocre ones to not-much-read locations, though.)
A second reason it might be bad is that commenting, and engaging with LW content more generally, increases the chances that the commenter will learn from it and do something with it. But, again, the costs may be prohibitive if such comments stay mixed with the best of LW.
It’s not a matter of polished prose. I’m not paranoid because I think I might make a grammatical error or abuse semicolons. It’s a matter of what ideas I commit to words and send out to the community. My thought process when I was debating whether to scrap my original comment was anxious and convoluted: “There aren’t any other comments yet, do I really want this to set the tone for the entire discussion? This idea relies on the kind of personal anecdote that’s gotten me poor results before. But it’s still relevant, and I’ve been mistaken in the past about whether a comment would be well received...” At which point I decided that even if the original comment wasn’t good enough, my internal agonizing probably was.
Well, karma is a tangible (if imperfect) measure of success in this community, and rationalists should win… right?
I think this perception is a problem for the community, and I don’t think it’s workable to tell people to not feel like this. Two possible ways around it:
Make comment scores affect karma only if it goes outside some range, e.g., perhaps you’d lose a point of karma for a −2 post, two points for −3 post, gain a point for +2 post, two points for a +3, &c. This would likely be a pain to implement.
Make karma dropping normal and expected, but not tied to participation, e.g., take the square root of everyone’s karma on a weekly basis. This has obvious downsides for karma cutoffs to do certain things (like post articles).
I like this conceptually, but pragmatically I do not see its advantage. I think one way to do something similar is to keep karma split into positive and negative karma. I am currently around 75 karma, but my hunches tell me that is probably +125 −50. Someone sitting at +125 −50 is different than +250 −175 or +80 −5.
Having bad karma get its own bucket is less demeaning than having it change your entire “score”. It is still bad but you can still get a feel good from the positive scores.
(Edit) Oh, Jordan said the same thing. Please ignore this comment.
Data point: I was going to make a different comment, but have been made paranoid and inclined to hoard my existing karma by the new, more liberal downvoting recommendations. I’m never going to find out whether my original comment would have improved anyone else’s reading experience or not, because I didn’t care about it enough to take a newly increased risk as the price for saying it.
I don’t want to trade in karma I earn for great comments so I can make mediocre comments. I want my karma to go up, preferably fast. I’m not sure if this is a good goal to have—maybe karma just feels like approval and I like it because I wasn’t hugged enough as a child or something—but nevertheless, I have that motivation.
I advise against this strategy. The quality of your comments is generally positive, and that will be reflected in your karma, so just post when you have something to say and it will go up overall, though it’s pretty unpredictable what will be voted up or down.
And yet… the strategy your instincts are driving you to implement isn’t making your karma go up fast. At least, it would go up faster if you lowered your standard. What your extra caution is achieving in practice is sacrificing karma gain in favour of conveying a reputation as a considered, insightful poster with a diplomatic style.
If you actually want to increase karma faster, post a whole heap more and only inhibit posts that are rude or particularly stupid.
That said, it is possible to maintain high karma and come across as an entirely unhug-worthy pain in the ass a lot of the time. Data Point: The most downvoted person on this site remained in the top posters list until a couple of weeks ago when I spent ten minutes browsing his posts making sure I that I downvoted everything stupid. By all means, I encourage you to continue to err on the side of not being a pain in the ass.
I’m still making comments. And I value some strategies over others to get karma—I don’t want it to go up for sheer volume and dumb luck. I’d rather make comments that come to mind as good things to say, not just type the unfiltered contents of my brain. (The unfiltered contents of my brain contain a lot more fiction references, inside jokes that are known only to my close personal friends, and musings about muffins and tofu and broccoli than anyone wants to read.) And I’d rather the good ones get voted up and the bad ones get informative replies—not freely dispensed downvotes—so I can adjust my behavior with more information than a brute negative number.
Also, as a counterexample, I took a karma hit for a number of comments on another thread—I remarked on it and they’ve all been compensated for, but if I hadn’t said anything I imagine they’d have sat there indefinitely, because apparently the new “downvote freely” ethos hasn’t made me paranoid enough.
For comparison, I prefer to comment the same way I would if nobody was voting on them. If the people here like my comments, then they’ll float to the top. If my comments routinely got downvoted to oblivion, I’d probably post elsewhere instead.
In other words, I’m a big fan of the marketplace of ideas, but I don’t have one in my own head.
Insofar as voting is collective feedback from this community, it carries at least some informational value that one should value to the extent that one considers the average LW user to have intelligent, insightful opinions.
It does. Perhaps the most significant value I get is in calibrating my expression. People here, who for most part are a relative inferential distance from myself and relatively high in comprehension ability. When people here don’t understand what I’m saying then chances are I’m leaving too many inferential steps implicit, expressing myself inelegantly or conveying concepts too quickly and I need to adjust my communication.
In context, if these grammatical mistakes were intentional I tip my hat to you, sir. Well played.
Is that bad?
Considering that some posts are getting hundreds of comments, not that many people have the time to read them all (especially if you have to search a bit to find what you have and haven’t read), it may be better for everyone to have fewer comments, but of higher quality.
Or, to put it another way, considering that you’re writing once to be read dozens of times, it’s nice to your readers to take a bit of effort to polish up your prose, it costs a few seconds to you but can save a few seconds to a lot of people. This may feel unusual if we are used to situations like conversation (or online chat) where the listener/talker ratio isn’t as skewed.
The real risk is when certain forms of comment (approval, disapproval) are discouraged, because the community’s standards of “quality” are skewed.
Agreed. I strongly feel that comments of a few words expressing thanks, agreement, apology, sympathy, approval, acknowledgement, etc. should simply hover at zero. Such remarks are part of the native architecture by which we communicate, and I think we lose something if we discourage them.
I agree with the descriptive content of what you wrote, but not the normative content. I agree that we do lose something if we discourage these sorts of comments. However, short comments that don’t add anything to the discussion (like the ones you mention) do add a significant amount to what gets displayed on the screen. If someone is reading this with a screen reader, a text browser, an iphone, or even just a small laptop or old, low-res display, then they will have to wade through “MBlume 22 April 2009 07:55:59AM* 8 points [-] Thanks—I agree. Vote up | Vote down | Permalink | Parent | Report | Reply”, for no good reason. Much better to discourage this sort of noise that adds nothing to the pursuit of rationality as such.
Might be bad—in principle, it would be nice if we could sift through many comments as a community, so as to increase the number of good ones that can float to the top. If everyone who reads a bad comment votes it down, not that many will be inconvenienced by additional mediocre comments, and allowing folks to attempt comments they think might be good (and might not be) would plausibly increase the absolute quantity of good comments. (This depends on our ability to sort good comments to the top and mediocre ones to not-much-read locations, though.)
A second reason it might be bad is that commenting, and engaging with LW content more generally, increases the chances that the commenter will learn from it and do something with it. But, again, the costs may be prohibitive if such comments stay mixed with the best of LW.
It’s not a matter of polished prose. I’m not paranoid because I think I might make a grammatical error or abuse semicolons. It’s a matter of what ideas I commit to words and send out to the community. My thought process when I was debating whether to scrap my original comment was anxious and convoluted: “There aren’t any other comments yet, do I really want this to set the tone for the entire discussion? This idea relies on the kind of personal anecdote that’s gotten me poor results before. But it’s still relevant, and I’ve been mistaken in the past about whether a comment would be well received...” At which point I decided that even if the original comment wasn’t good enough, my internal agonizing probably was.
Well, karma is a tangible (if imperfect) measure of success in this community, and rationalists should win… right?
I think this perception is a problem for the community, and I don’t think it’s workable to tell people to not feel like this. Two possible ways around it:
Make comment scores affect karma only if it goes outside some range, e.g., perhaps you’d lose a point of karma for a −2 post, two points for −3 post, gain a point for +2 post, two points for a +3, &c. This would likely be a pain to implement.
Make karma dropping normal and expected, but not tied to participation, e.g., take the square root of everyone’s karma on a weekly basis. This has obvious downsides for karma cutoffs to do certain things (like post articles).
I like this conceptually, but pragmatically I do not see its advantage. I think one way to do something similar is to keep karma split into positive and negative karma. I am currently around 75 karma, but my hunches tell me that is probably +125 −50. Someone sitting at +125 −50 is different than +250 −175 or +80 −5.
Having bad karma get its own bucket is less demeaning than having it change your entire “score”. It is still bad but you can still get a feel good from the positive scores.
(Edit) Oh, Jordan said the same thing. Please ignore this comment.