There was a time before LW2 when people complained that LW wasn’t getting enough posts, but no one complained that posts weren’t getting enough comments. I checked my own post history and there’s a noticeable decline in average number of comments per post between now and 4 years ago (there’s a gap in my posting history so I’m sure exactly when the decline in comments happened). Maybe someone could plot the average number of comments for all posts over time and check if it correlates with any changes that have been made to LW?
My guess is maybe it has to do with the old 10x karma multiplier for posts, which paradoxically discouraged people from making posts and redirected their energy into commenting. If that’s the case maybe we can institute a smaller karma multiplier to better balance posts vs comments.
Maybe it has something to do with this question you asked? Maybe letting people leave anonymous comments if they’re approved by the post author or something like that could help?
There was a time before LW2 when people complained that LW wasn’t getting enough posts, but no one complained that posts weren’t getting enough comments. I checked my own post history and there’s a noticeable decline in average number of comments per post between now and 4 years ago (there’s a gap in my posting history so I’m sure exactly when the decline in comments happened). Maybe someone could plot the average number of comments for all posts over time and check if it correlates with any changes that have been made to LW?
My guess is maybe it has to do with the old 10x karma multiplier for posts, which paradoxically discouraged people from making posts and redirected their energy into commenting. If that’s the case maybe we can institute a smaller karma multiplier to better balance posts vs comments.
Maybe it has something to do with this question you asked? Maybe letting people leave anonymous comments if they’re approved by the post author or something like that could help?