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.
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!