The question is, what is karma an unreliable proxy for. Is it “quality”? Why would the output of a karma system even correlate with this—it’s a “vote” among a fairly heterogeneous (with respect to any given topic) audience. It doesn’t really correlate with quality on slashdot, for example. My theory is karma is the measure of how well the post plays among various LW social coalitions.
It seems my problem with karma is the same as my problem with Wikipedia. You do want feedback, but you want feedback from experts.
It’s a proxy for various things. Popularity of ideas is one thing, sure. Quality is another. It doesn’t have to be either or. If there’s any signal at all, I don’t understand why you should ignore it. I actually think downvotes carry much more signal than upvotes.
If there’s any signal at all, I don’t understand why you should ignore it.
Because it’s a highly noisy signal, and the part of the signal which is not pure noise is easy to manipulate. Even ignoring blatant manipulation events such as block down-voting, what does karma represent and how should it affect your beliefs and behaviours?
The question is, what is karma an unreliable proxy for. Is it “quality”? Why would the output of a karma system even correlate with this—it’s a “vote” among a fairly heterogeneous (with respect to any given topic) audience. It doesn’t really correlate with quality on slashdot, for example. My theory is karma is the measure of how well the post plays among various LW social coalitions.
It seems my problem with karma is the same as my problem with Wikipedia. You do want feedback, but you want feedback from experts.
It’s a proxy for various things. Popularity of ideas is one thing, sure. Quality is another. It doesn’t have to be either or. If there’s any signal at all, I don’t understand why you should ignore it. I actually think downvotes carry much more signal than upvotes.
Do you “vote”, by the way?
Because it’s a highly noisy signal, and the part of the signal which is not pure noise is easy to manipulate. Even ignoring blatant manipulation events such as block down-voting, what does karma represent and how should it affect your beliefs and behaviours?