Because if the person who modded you up had written a “me too” post instead and the three people who modded gspence down had all written “me not” posts, we would have four essentially content-free posts clobbering up the thread.
Yes, maybe you can make a point that people should either make a new point or not speak at all, because just stating an opinion may be likely to be biased. But (a) I don’t think it’s going to work—saying that what happened to gspence’s comment isn’t what should happen doesn’t change the fact that it did happen with the current model; and (b), well, I’d like to state my “me too”/”me not”! :-) Yes, if not stating opinions really does significantly debias, that would outweigh that concern, but I’m pretty skeptical about that actually happening, so the expected utility from the agree/disagree buttons wins out for me.
“Me too” is vacuous if it doesn’t add to original comment, while “I disagree” is supposed to contribute the explanation of why. The second “I disagree” which doesn’t add anything may support the first disagreeing comment in addition to the original comment.
I had been against ‘agree/disagree’ buttons but this discussion has convinced me. It is pretty obvious that ‘vote up/vote down’ is being used as ‘agree/disagree’ under the current model, and adding buttons for that as well as an explanation of how to use them (“Never vote up / down a comment on the basis of agreeing or disagreeing”) should fix that problem.
Because if the person who modded you up had written a “me too” post instead and the three people who modded gspence down had all written “me not” posts, we would have four essentially content-free posts clobbering up the thread.
Yes, maybe you can make a point that people should either make a new point or not speak at all, because just stating an opinion may be likely to be biased. But (a) I don’t think it’s going to work—saying that what happened to gspence’s comment isn’t what should happen doesn’t change the fact that it did happen with the current model; and (b), well, I’d like to state my “me too”/”me not”! :-) Yes, if not stating opinions really does significantly debias, that would outweigh that concern, but I’m pretty skeptical about that actually happening, so the expected utility from the agree/disagree buttons wins out for me.
“Me too” is vacuous if it doesn’t add to original comment, while “I disagree” is supposed to contribute the explanation of why. The second “I disagree” which doesn’t add anything may support the first disagreeing comment in addition to the original comment.
I had been against ‘agree/disagree’ buttons but this discussion has convinced me. It is pretty obvious that ‘vote up/vote down’ is being used as ‘agree/disagree’ under the current model, and adding buttons for that as well as an explanation of how to use them (“Never vote up / down a comment on the basis of agreeing or disagreeing”) should fix that problem.