I think it’s pretty plausible that people should have a higher bar for commenting on highly upvoted comments (especially ones without much discussion underneath them). I’m definitely not sure though; if I imagine people doing that, I worry about the responses that get lost.
The obvious consequence of such a norm is comments having to say things like “don’t upvote this comment too much, because otherwise you will be robbing me of replies which I would otherwise get” or “please downvote this comment, so that it gets pushed down, so that I can get people replying to me, instead of staying silent because of a weird and incidental fact of comment section sorting”. This would be very bad, obviously.
The things which you are trying to do with the karma system would destroy its usefulness.
In threaded commenting systems like ours, replying to popular comments makes your comment much more visible than it would be as a top-level comment. This feature is common enough, that on Reddit (another threaded commenting system) people talk about “hijacking” a top comment to broadcast something they’re interested in.
Comments that hijack an unrelated thread can be downvoted (and thus hidden), or their authors censured for abusing the commenting system. This is a non-problem on Less Wrong.
I’d also been reading this thread on why people don’t explain their downvotes, and that tipped me even further in the direction of explaining my downvote, as I’d get a bit more data on what it was like (of course, every good downvote is alike, and every bad downvote is bad in its own way, so I’m sure I’m only getting a very particular sample).
I approve of explaining your downvotes. This is good, because it gives us the opportunity to discuss why those downvotes might be a bad idea.
The obvious consequence of such a norm is comments having to say things like “don’t upvote this comment too much, because otherwise you will be robbing me of replies which I would otherwise get” or “please downvote this comment, so that it gets pushed down, so that I can get people replying to me, instead of staying silent because of a weird and incidental fact of comment section sorting”. This would be very bad, obviously.
I agree it’s obvious that it at least pushes some in this direction. I think some versions of this could be very bad, though mostly it would be not that bad.
The things which you are trying to do with the karma system would destroy its usefulness.
By “destroy its usefulness”, how much less useful do you mean to say it would become?
Comments that hijack an unrelated thread can be downvoted (and thus hidden), or their authors censured for abusing the commenting system. This is a non-problem on Less Wrong.
I didn’t mean, in that comment, to imply that Ben was hijacking. I was just trying to provide at least one example of a pathological interaction with threading and karma.
The things which you are trying to do with the karma system would destroy its usefulness.
By “destroy its usefulness”, how much less useful do you mean to say it would become?
That would depend on how widespread your way of using it became. If very widespread—then basically all of the usefulness would be lost. If somewhat widespread—then only most of the usefulness would be lost. If only a handful of people did as you propose to do—then much of the usefulness would be lost, though not most.
If by “very widespread” you mean like ~10% of votes, I disagree. Do you mean that?
If only a handful of people did as you propose to do—then much of the usefulness would be lost, though not most.
If by “much of the usefulness would be lost” you mean something like “people would see comments that they liked <90% as much” or “people would get less than 90% of the information about what some kind of weighted LessWrong-consensus thought”, I disagree. Do you mean that?
If by “very widespread” you mean like ~10% of votes, I disagree. Do you mean that?
I mean something like “a majority of the most active users do this regularly”.
If by “much of the usefulness would be lost” you mean something like “people would see comments that they liked <90% as much” or “people would get less than 90% of the information about what some kind of weighted LessWrong-consensus thought”, I disagree. Do you mean that?
Those are very weak criteria, much weaker than anything I had in mind… and you still disagree that any such thing would happen? I do not see how such a view is supportable.
Fwiw I don’t find this very convincing. If a comment gets highly up voted for instance, it has the consequence of getting more dumb replies, but mostly people just accept that rather than having to caveat their comments and asking not to up vote.
If a comment gets highly up voted for instance, it has the consequence of getting more dumb replies
Also has the consequence of getting more smart replies, simply as a result of getting more replies overall due to being more popular.
If writing good comments resulted in stupid comments in response (a drawback) with no corresponding benefit, then people would write fewer good comments. The reason we don’t observe the latter to be happening isn’t because stupid responses aren’t a disincentive, but because good responses (alongside stuff like increased karma, reputation, the intrinsic desire to communicate deeply-held beliefs, the feeling that Someone is Wrong on the Internet, etc.) are a sufficiently good incentive that overcomes this disincentive.
People don’t ask not to upvote because receiving upvotes is obviously a desirable thing for the comment-writer.[1] To the extent your confusing comment tries to imply otherwise, it appears entirely out of tune with reality.
A comment getting up voted has highs status implications, and gets their ideas seen more. I think that’s the main desirable thing of high up votes, more discussion is really hit or miss in terms of desire ability.
Which is the point of my comment, there’s tons of externalities to the system of up voting and down voting that we just put up with because the system basically works.
And when you change the system by imposing an additional constraint/disincentive on receiving karma, without a corresponding benefit (unlike in the case of bad responses, which come attached with good responses), the balance of externalities changes. Therefore, so does commenters’ behavior.
Moreover, I disagree with the notion that more discussion is neutral on average/in expectancy. That’s only if the original comment writer[1] can’t easily distinguish between productive and unproductive responses or can’t bring themselves emotionally to ignore the latter and focus only on the former. If the person can do that, then they obtain positive value from the responses overall (they get to learn something new or have their misconceptions corrected, for example), even if the majority of them are useless.
In fact, I just did a quick-and-dirty check. I went to my comments feed on GreaterWrong, sorting by “Top” (i.e., in descending karma value order). I then opened up the first 10 comments in the list. Then, I set the “offset” URL parameter to 1000 (i.e., went to the 51st page of the list, showing my 1001st through 1020th highest-rated comments), and opened up the first 10 comments on that page. For each comment, I counted the number of direct replies which I would consider to be dumb (not wrong, but dumb). The counts:
Total number of dumb replies to my 1st through 10th highest-upvoted comments: 2
Total number of dumb replies to my 1001st through 1010th highest-upvoted comments: 1
Given the sample sizes, I’m going to mark this one down as “no difference detected”.
The obvious consequence of such a norm is comments having to say things like “don’t upvote this comment too much, because otherwise you will be robbing me of replies which I would otherwise get” or “please downvote this comment, so that it gets pushed down, so that I can get people replying to me, instead of staying silent because of a weird and incidental fact of comment section sorting”. This would be very bad, obviously.
The things which you are trying to do with the karma system would destroy its usefulness.
Comments that hijack an unrelated thread can be downvoted (and thus hidden), or their authors censured for abusing the commenting system. This is a non-problem on Less Wrong.
I approve of explaining your downvotes. This is good, because it gives us the opportunity to discuss why those downvotes might be a bad idea.
I agree it’s obvious that it at least pushes some in this direction. I think some versions of this could be very bad, though mostly it would be not that bad.
By “destroy its usefulness”, how much less useful do you mean to say it would become?
I didn’t mean, in that comment, to imply that Ben was hijacking. I was just trying to provide at least one example of a pathological interaction with threading and karma.
Having refreshed myself on Ben’s comment and its parent, I now think he was doing something continuous with hijacking.
That would depend on how widespread your way of using it became. If very widespread—then basically all of the usefulness would be lost. If somewhat widespread—then only most of the usefulness would be lost. If only a handful of people did as you propose to do—then much of the usefulness would be lost, though not most.
If by “very widespread” you mean like ~10% of votes, I disagree. Do you mean that?
If by “much of the usefulness would be lost” you mean something like “people would see comments that they liked <90% as much” or “people would get less than 90% of the information about what some kind of weighted LessWrong-consensus thought”, I disagree. Do you mean that?
I mean something like “a majority of the most active users do this regularly”.
Those are very weak criteria, much weaker than anything I had in mind… and you still disagree that any such thing would happen? I do not see how such a view is supportable.
Fwiw I don’t find this very convincing. If a comment gets highly up voted for instance, it has the consequence of getting more dumb replies, but mostly people just accept that rather than having to caveat their comments and asking not to up vote.
Also has the consequence of getting more smart replies, simply as a result of getting more replies overall due to being more popular.
If writing good comments resulted in stupid comments in response (a drawback) with no corresponding benefit, then people would write fewer good comments. The reason we don’t observe the latter to be happening isn’t because stupid responses aren’t a disincentive, but because good responses (alongside stuff like increased karma, reputation, the intrinsic desire to communicate deeply-held beliefs, the feeling that Someone is Wrong on the Internet, etc.) are a sufficiently good incentive that overcomes this disincentive.
People don’t ask not to upvote because receiving upvotes is obviously a desirable thing for the comment-writer.[1] To the extent your confusing comment tries to imply otherwise, it appears entirely out of tune with reality.
Unless you impose a cost big enough to render this claim false, which would be the case if something-like-kave’s-proposal gets implemented
A comment getting up voted has highs status implications, and gets their ideas seen more. I think that’s the main desirable thing of high up votes, more discussion is really hit or miss in terms of desire ability.
Which is the point of my comment, there’s tons of externalities to the system of up voting and down voting that we just put up with because the system basically works.
And when you change the system by imposing an additional constraint/disincentive on receiving karma, without a corresponding benefit (unlike in the case of bad responses, which come attached with good responses), the balance of externalities changes. Therefore, so does commenters’ behavior.
Moreover, I disagree with the notion that more discussion is neutral on average/in expectancy. That’s only if the original comment writer[1] can’t easily distinguish between productive and unproductive responses or can’t bring themselves emotionally to ignore the latter and focus only on the former. If the person can do that, then they obtain positive value from the responses overall (they get to learn something new or have their misconceptions corrected, for example), even if the majority of them are useless.
Or the audience!
I have never found this to be the case.
In fact, I just did a quick-and-dirty check. I went to my comments feed on GreaterWrong, sorting by “Top” (i.e., in descending karma value order). I then opened up the first 10 comments in the list. Then, I set the “offset” URL parameter to
1000(i.e., went to the 51st page of the list, showing my 1001st through 1020th highest-rated comments), and opened up the first 10 comments on that page. For each comment, I counted the number of direct replies which I would consider to be dumb (not wrong, but dumb). The counts:Total number of dumb replies to my 1st through 10th highest-upvoted comments: 2
Total number of dumb replies to my 1001st through 1010th highest-upvoted comments: 1
Given the sample sizes, I’m going to mark this one down as “no difference detected”.