It seems most submitted articles are promoted; six of the last ten recent posts are on the front page. That ranges from an article with a score of 8 to one with a score of 38. Furthermore, posting is relatively slow (the tenth most recent submitted is four days old). Because of this low rate, good articles do not slide under the radar. Consequently, voting does not appear necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. I think the only way to improve the value of voting would be to both increase posting while lowering the bar in terms of quality. To use a simple analogy, there is more incentive to pick the good apples out of a barrel when you know there are worms in it. Currently there are no negative consequences to not voting articles up or down… especially when there are so few that you, Eliezer, are probably reading them all. If there were twenty articles a day, though, we would vote up a good one when we found it.
I’m not suggesting we must submit more articles or lower our expectations—I just think that’s the primary reason higher volume sites like Reddit or Digg have higher rates of user voting. Same reason there is more voting within article comments on LW: there are more comments, and your vote may actually encourage people to read or ignore one.
i totally second this!!! Eliezer posts very few articles.
I usually come back from work and sit down to read on LW for 2-3 hours. I was fighting myself and telling myself to make a bit of effort to vote, as it is helpful as pointed out by eliezer. But, bcos the number of posts is so less, it really doesn’t matter. Eliezer can almost assume that we like the post, unless theres something negative about it written in the comments section. As pointed out by eirenicon, comment votes are very important and they certainly should be given more attention. yesterday i was reading the “alcohol thread” and it really helped to skim thru few and get past 250 comments!!!!
But if no one votes, I tend to assume the article is regarded by the readers as chaff. The four of ten that are not on the front page have relatively fewer votes.
True—but this is not an instance of no one voting (I assume “Are You Anosognosic?” has received some downvotes as well because it is under ‘Controversial’). The purpose of voting is to improve the signal to noise ratio, but there is so little noise on LW that voting is really only distinguishing between good signal and great signal. Nobody is afraid that not voting will diminish the current signal to noise ratio, are they?
It seems most submitted articles are promoted; six of the last ten recent posts are on the front page. That ranges from an article with a score of 8 to one with a score of 38. Furthermore, posting is relatively slow (the tenth most recent submitted is four days old). Because of this low rate, good articles do not slide under the radar. Consequently, voting does not appear necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. I think the only way to improve the value of voting would be to both increase posting while lowering the bar in terms of quality. To use a simple analogy, there is more incentive to pick the good apples out of a barrel when you know there are worms in it. Currently there are no negative consequences to not voting articles up or down… especially when there are so few that you, Eliezer, are probably reading them all. If there were twenty articles a day, though, we would vote up a good one when we found it.
I’m not suggesting we must submit more articles or lower our expectations—I just think that’s the primary reason higher volume sites like Reddit or Digg have higher rates of user voting. Same reason there is more voting within article comments on LW: there are more comments, and your vote may actually encourage people to read or ignore one.
i totally second this!!! Eliezer posts very few articles. I usually come back from work and sit down to read on LW for 2-3 hours. I was fighting myself and telling myself to make a bit of effort to vote, as it is helpful as pointed out by eliezer. But, bcos the number of posts is so less, it really doesn’t matter. Eliezer can almost assume that we like the post, unless theres something negative about it written in the comments section. As pointed out by eirenicon, comment votes are very important and they certainly should be given more attention. yesterday i was reading the “alcohol thread” and it really helped to skim thru few and get past 250 comments!!!!
But if no one votes, I tend to assume the article is regarded by the readers as chaff. The four of ten that are not on the front page have relatively fewer votes.
True—but this is not an instance of no one voting (I assume “Are You Anosognosic?” has received some downvotes as well because it is under ‘Controversial’). The purpose of voting is to improve the signal to noise ratio, but there is so little noise on LW that voting is really only distinguishing between good signal and great signal. Nobody is afraid that not voting will diminish the current signal to noise ratio, are they?