A thought, inspired by this, Facebook’s React options, and the failure of some previous attempts by websites to disambiguate “I agree” from “I thought this was funny” and “I think the reasoning here was sound.”
On OKCupid, a while back they tried to have “personality” and “looks” as separate category. In practice, people seemed to lump them together, in a vague-halo-effect phenomenon (spoilers: it turns out people mostly cared about looks)
Slashdot’s separating of “funny” and “insightful” helps separate some of this, but I think people still tend to downvote ideological opponents when given the chance, and it takes special effort to reward ideological opponents who are making good arguments.
But I just noticed Facebook’s React options force something: you might find something sad, and heartwarming, and funny all at the same time. But you still ultimately have to pick just one of the reacts to give. This forces me to think a bit about how something made me feel beyond “I liked it.”
I agree with Zvi about the barrier-to-entry/complexity costs of the OP here, but a lot of that is because slack doesn’t have built in tools to make it clear what the various symbols mean.
But, in a hypothetical Less Wrong 2.0 or Arbitral 2.0 or whatever, you could have multiple upvote/downvote options, and be forced to pick one (maybe, at most one upvote, and most one downvote).
So upvotes might be:
Funny Agree Well-Reasoned
And some downvotes might be:
Irrelevant Poorly-Reasoned Inflammatory
Being forced to pick one would maybe shortcircuit the halo affect. And the main difference between the OP and this is that the icons would be clearly visible with mouse-over explanations so that people can learn as they go.
You could also do things to make Funny and Agree very viscerally rewarding to click (maybe with cool animations and bigger icons), but have Well-Reasoned actually be weighted higher in the default-sorting-algorithm.
Also, I noticed something a little interesting just now:
Facebook has Like, Love, Haha, Wow and Angry.
Some people use Love and ‘strong like’. Sometimes I use it as a ‘oh my god, the thing you experiencing seems really profoundly human and resonates with me and I’m connecting with you right now’ (and this is most interesting to me when the thing they’re posting is an abstract philosophical thing or argument, that for some reason I find heart-inducing)
But the Love is not costless. It carries… a similar quality but lower magnitude of the social awkwardness of hugging someone you don’t know. It feels kinda weird (to me).
How willing I am to Love something that somebody posted varies on how well I know the person, and how strongly the thing resonates with me. And this… seems kinda… good? The barrier to entry is rooted in something more human. Or something.
Epistemic Status: Spitballing
A thought, inspired by this, Facebook’s React options, and the failure of some previous attempts by websites to disambiguate “I agree” from “I thought this was funny” and “I think the reasoning here was sound.”
On OKCupid, a while back they tried to have “personality” and “looks” as separate category. In practice, people seemed to lump them together, in a vague-halo-effect phenomenon (spoilers: it turns out people mostly cared about looks)
Slashdot’s separating of “funny” and “insightful” helps separate some of this, but I think people still tend to downvote ideological opponents when given the chance, and it takes special effort to reward ideological opponents who are making good arguments.
But I just noticed Facebook’s React options force something: you might find something sad, and heartwarming, and funny all at the same time. But you still ultimately have to pick just one of the reacts to give. This forces me to think a bit about how something made me feel beyond “I liked it.”
I agree with Zvi about the barrier-to-entry/complexity costs of the OP here, but a lot of that is because slack doesn’t have built in tools to make it clear what the various symbols mean.
But, in a hypothetical Less Wrong 2.0 or Arbitral 2.0 or whatever, you could have multiple upvote/downvote options, and be forced to pick one (maybe, at most one upvote, and most one downvote).
So upvotes might be:
Funny
Agree
Well-Reasoned
And some downvotes might be:
Irrelevant
Poorly-Reasoned
Inflammatory
Being forced to pick one would maybe shortcircuit the halo affect. And the main difference between the OP and this is that the icons would be clearly visible with mouse-over explanations so that people can learn as they go.
You could also do things to make Funny and Agree very viscerally rewarding to click (maybe with cool animations and bigger icons), but have Well-Reasoned actually be weighted higher in the default-sorting-algorithm.
Also, I noticed something a little interesting just now:
Facebook has Like, Love, Haha, Wow and Angry.
Some people use Love and ‘strong like’. Sometimes I use it as a ‘oh my god, the thing you experiencing seems really profoundly human and resonates with me and I’m connecting with you right now’ (and this is most interesting to me when the thing they’re posting is an abstract philosophical thing or argument, that for some reason I find heart-inducing)
But the Love is not costless. It carries… a similar quality but lower magnitude of the social awkwardness of hugging someone you don’t know. It feels kinda weird (to me).
How willing I am to Love something that somebody posted varies on how well I know the person, and how strongly the thing resonates with me. And this… seems kinda… good? The barrier to entry is rooted in something more human. Or something.
[/musing]