I think of myself as having solid medium status at LW. I’m quite pleased with it, but don’t feel a drive for more status.
I think you may be underestimating a little. It is easy to neglect just how many lower status people there are… because low status people just don’t seem as salient and visible.
IIRC, people used to think that the Sun was about a median-luminosity star, but actually it’s more like 85th percentile; but less bright stars are harder to see. (And my parents don’t think of themselves as particularly wealthy people, because they tend to compare themselves to the people you see on TV, rather than the people you see in the streets.)
I’m certainly looking up more than down when I assess my status. However, I think that I’d count my status as higher if I had the same karma but got a significant amount of it from major posts rather than from comments.
On LW, karma is a reasonable proxy for status on LW. They aren’t the same, but I don’t see how you think NancyLebovitz’s question is non-responsive.
It very likely is that length of active membership on LW is highly correlated with karma (even last-30-days-karma). But isn’t length of active membership a reasonable proxy for status in a community?
I may not have put the question in the best place, but I asked it because I said I thought I had mid-level status, and people disagreed by pointing out that I have high karma.
I think the question is what we mean by mid-level. Brazil is a mid-level economy in the G20, but the G20 is the extreme tail of the distribution of country-economies. With a wider reference class, Brazil is a pretty big economy.
Hopefully to help you calibrate: I perceive you as Brazil -ish (wedrifid is more like UK, I’m more like New Zealand or Iran). And every lurker is Haiti. Because of the distribution of status on LW is probably Bell-curve shaped, there are a lot more Haitis than Brazils. (Because of lower bounds, status in a community is more like half a bell curve than the whole thing—someone who knows statistics probably could find a lot of errors in my terminology).
I may not have put the question in the best place, but I asked it because I said I thought I had mid-level status, and people disagreed by pointing out that I have high karma.
There is certainly a strong correlation between karma and status. In no small part because simple time spent interacting on the site contributes to both rather significantly through raw accumulation and domain specific practice. However for my part when I questioned your mid-level status estimate your karma didn’t occur to me and I wasn’t aware you had as much as you had. I queried my intuitive impression of how the NancyLebovitz handle behaves and is received by people on the site. Your influence is not insignificant.
That’s a time lag (rather than something more sinister, e.g. something fundamentally flawed in the LW code base’s understanding of integers); the rankings are not recomputed on a real-time basis, but the scores are.
I had guessed it was the other way round, given that my 30-day karma is 379 according to the green bubbles at the top and 408 in the top contributors list, and it was higher yesterday, and I recently paid the toll to comment on a downvoted thread a couple of times.
Not sure what Nancy thinks, but for me it’s “when this person speaks, others listen, with respect and often with deference”. I don’t think Nancy qualifies there, but I am not sure how to check that.
The question is, how would one measure this? The obvious metrics available are the number of comments and upvotes vs those for a similar comment by a regular of average status. Furthermore, if the replies are more respectful than average even in a disagreement, it is also an indication of higher status. This is hard to measure, of course. In the next order one would look at the timeline of comments and votes: higher-status posters are likely to attract more immediate reaction and an initial spike of upvotes.
There are, of course, exceptions. When Eliezer posts in favor of censorship, he gets downvoted more than average. In general, the status does not need to be the same across all topics, different regulars are considered experts in different areas. There is, of course, some halo effect spill-over between topics.
If someone here is interested in studying social dynamics on internet forums, they might shed further light on the issue or at least do some research.
I think of myself as having solid medium status at LW. I’m quite pleased with it, but don’t feel a drive for more status.
I think you may be underestimating a little. It is easy to neglect just how many lower status people there are… because low status people just don’t seem as salient and visible.
IIRC, people used to think that the Sun was about a median-luminosity star, but actually it’s more like 85th percentile; but less bright stars are harder to see. (And my parents don’t think of themselves as particularly wealthy people, because they tend to compare themselves to the people you see on TV, rather than the people you see in the streets.)
I’m certainly looking up more than down when I assess my status. However, I think that I’d count my status as higher if I had the same karma but got a significant amount of it from major posts rather than from comments.
Is karma the same thing as status?
No.
I don’t understand why you are asking that question. It does not seem to make much sense as a reply to the grandparent.
On LW, karma is a reasonable proxy for status on LW. They aren’t the same, but I don’t see how you think NancyLebovitz’s question is non-responsive.
It very likely is that length of active membership on LW is highly correlated with karma (even last-30-days-karma). But isn’t length of active membership a reasonable proxy for status in a community?
I may not have put the question in the best place, but I asked it because I said I thought I had mid-level status, and people disagreed by pointing out that I have high karma.
I think the question is what we mean by mid-level. Brazil is a mid-level economy in the G20, but the G20 is the extreme tail of the distribution of country-economies. With a wider reference class, Brazil is a pretty big economy.
Hopefully to help you calibrate: I perceive you as Brazil -ish (wedrifid is more like UK, I’m more like New Zealand or Iran). And every lurker is Haiti. Because of the distribution of status on LW is probably Bell-curve shaped, there are a lot more Haitis than Brazils. (Because of lower bounds, status in a community is more like half a bell curve than the whole thing—someone who knows statistics probably could find a lot of errors in my terminology).
I guess that makes me kind of like Pakistan.
There is certainly a strong correlation between karma and status. In no small part because simple time spent interacting on the site contributes to both rather significantly through raw accumulation and domain specific practice. However for my part when I questioned your mid-level status estimate your karma didn’t occur to me and I wasn’t aware you had as much as you had. I queried my intuitive impression of how the NancyLebovitz handle behaves and is received by people on the site. Your influence is not insignificant.
Natural language being what it is, “not insignificant” != “significant”. What do you think my influence is?
Significant.
No, I meant to ask you what effect(s) you think I’m having.
In general, I think that if you’re on the top all-time contributors sidebar, other people are going to see you as above medium status.
You’re the 13th all-time top contributor, and the… Hold on. There’s something wrong with the “Top Contributors, 30 Days” rankings.
That’s a time lag (rather than something more sinister, e.g. something fundamentally flawed in the LW code base’s understanding of integers); the rankings are not recomputed on a real-time basis, but the scores are.
I had guessed it was the other way round, given that my 30-day karma is 379 according to the green bubbles at the top and 408 in the top contributors list, and it was higher yesterday, and I recently paid the toll to comment on a downvoted thread a couple of times.
What do you consider the most relevant status markers on LW? You’ve mentioned karma, and making major posts rather than comments. What else?
At least one aspect is getting quoted, and that happens very rarely for me.
Not sure what Nancy thinks, but for me it’s “when this person speaks, others listen, with respect and often with deference”. I don’t think Nancy qualifies there, but I am not sure how to check that.
The question is, how would one measure this? The obvious metrics available are the number of comments and upvotes vs those for a similar comment by a regular of average status. Furthermore, if the replies are more respectful than average even in a disagreement, it is also an indication of higher status. This is hard to measure, of course. In the next order one would look at the timeline of comments and votes: higher-status posters are likely to attract more immediate reaction and an initial spike of upvotes.
There are, of course, exceptions. When Eliezer posts in favor of censorship, he gets downvoted more than average. In general, the status does not need to be the same across all topics, different regulars are considered experts in different areas. There is, of course, some halo effect spill-over between topics.
If someone here is interested in studying social dynamics on internet forums, they might shed further light on the issue or at least do some research.
You’re the 3rd highest female poster on the all-time ranking.