The asymmetry between upvotes and downvotes comes the fact Less Wrongers on a whole want more content on Less Wrong rather than less.
In principle one could tweak the interest rate on the Less Wrong content economy by eliminating the ability to downvote for users who have less than X karma. Personally, I think we are currently too harsh in our moderation and backing off a bit (requiring 1 karma to downvote) would be a worthwhile experiment. Less Wrong is already going to rip your ideas apart plenty without the added injury of downvotes. The bigger problem is people being Negative Nancys about unimportant things like whether your thing would be more appropriate for discussion or open thread or what have you. Enforcing rules has a social cost; frivolous rules mean you’re paying the cost for little gain. I also dislike seeing people downvote posts past −4 or so for no real reason (god forbid anyone should attempt humor on April Fool’s day).
Another idea I had is trying to create a norm of people sending appreciative private messages for posts they like. I think posters would be extremely responsive to this sort of social reward (much more than mere upvotes, which invite score comparisons etc.) and since they’re private messages, they wouldn’t clog up the site with content-free praise comments. This could be done informally, or it could be institutionalized if there was a popup that would randomly sometimes appear when you upvoted something inviting you to send an appreciative PM. I actually think this could be pretty fabulous for Less Wrong if it was done right. I don’t think people realize on a System 1 level how fantastically valuable a thoroughly researched post on important ideas is, but right now writing that sort of post is athanklessjob. (Or: “When making a correction or complaint as a top-level comment, choose one positive thing about the post, if any, and point it out first.” Or maybe we can just embrace the idea that harsh criticism is normal and expected?)
In principle one could tweak the interest rate on the Less Wrong content economy by eliminating the ability to downvote for users who have less than X karma. Personally, I think we are currently too harsh in our moderation and backing off a bit (requiring 1 karma to downvote) would be a worthwhile experiment. Less Wrong is already going to rip your ideas apart plenty without the added injury of downvotes. The bigger problem is people being Negative Nancys about unimportant things like whether your thing would be more appropriate for discussion or open thread or what have you. Enforcing rules has a social cost; frivolous rules mean you’re paying the cost for little gain. I also dislike seeing people downvote posts past −4 or so for no real reason (god forbid anyone should attempt humor on April Fool’s day).
Another idea I had is trying to create a norm of people sending appreciative private messages for posts they like. I think posters would be extremely responsive to this sort of social reward (much more than mere upvotes, which invite score comparisons etc.) and since they’re private messages, they wouldn’t clog up the site with content-free praise comments. This could be done informally, or it could be institutionalized if there was a popup that would randomly sometimes appear when you upvoted something inviting you to send an appreciative PM. I actually think this could be pretty fabulous for Less Wrong if it was done right. I don’t think people realize on a System 1 level how fantastically valuable a thoroughly researched post on important ideas is, but right now writing that sort of post is a thankless job. (Or: “When making a correction or complaint as a top-level comment, choose one positive thing about the post, if any, and point it out first.” Or maybe we can just embrace the idea that harsh criticism is normal and expected?)