Desrtopa makes a good point. The problem is less with downvoting all of someone’s posts, and more with downvoting all of someone’s posts without good reason. If there’s going to be a rule it should target the latter: mass downvotes that can’t be justified on the basis of the comments’ actual contents.
In any case, formalizing a rule might be overkill. One person could well be responsible for block downvoting not just ialdabaoth but also daenerys, NancyLebovitz, shminux & Tenoke. Five minutes of database access would suffice to check that, and if all this downvote spamming is just down to one person, taking away their downvote button ought to do the trick.
The weird downvotes I’ve gotten don’t match the pattern other people have mentioned. Instead of mass downvoting of comments, I get a very early downvote (maybe a bit more than one, I haven’t checked carefully) on posts. It might be a different person.
I agree that mass downvoting is bad for the community, with no obvious upside to permitting it. Taking away the perpetrator’s downvote button seems like a reasonable punishment.
There’s another reason to check: right now, we have an outstanding accusation against a respected user in the community . That user has not responded to that accusation. In a court of law (at least in the US), that would (generally) not be allowed as evidence of guilt, but from a Bayesian standpoint it does seem like P(Eugine Nier is systematically downvoting|Eugine doesn’t deny it)> P(Eugine is systematically downvoting|Eugine denies it).
Now, there are other plausible explanations also for why he has decided not to comment, and at this point, I’d assign no more than 50% or so that he’s responsible for this situation. If he’s not responsible, then his name is being unfairly dragged through the mud, and that should be stopped. So it is important simply for that reason to have this cleared up. My own emotional biases may be coming into play here, in that although I disagree with Eugine on most of the issues that seem to be triggering mass downvoting (essentially on the progressive end of the gender and race issues), I’ve generally found him to be one of the more reasonable and polite people to disagree with here, so I’d really like to have it confirmed that he’s not at fault here.
Is it technically possible for admins to check who’s downvoting whom, and if so, why the hell are they leaving us speculate rather than just friggin’ doing it?
I am gradually updating in favour of the hypothesis that at least one of the admins either approves of mass-downvoting as a means of influencing LW culture, or else has a strong enough dislike for the sort of ideas that appear to be be the targets of mass-downvoting at present that s/he considers the mass-downvoting to be a good thing.
I would find that rather surprising and extremely regrettable.
I am gradually updating in favour of the hypothesis that at least one of the admins either approves of mass-downvoting as a means of influencing LW culture, or else has a strong enough dislike for the sort of ideas that appear to be be the targets of mass-downvoting at present that s/he considers the mass-downvoting to be a good thing.
I have a prior that admins don’t consider karma important and think of up/downvoting issues as middle-school-level status/power games. “Mommy, he hid all my pencils and wrote a bad word on my locker door!”
It seems unlikely that both of these are true: (1) Having a karma system is a good thing for LW. (2) Issues related to the karma system, even ones that crop up repeatedly and produce a great deal of discussion and (it appears) strong feelings, should be treated as middle-school-level status games.
I don’t see problems with these two statements being jointly true provided the “good thing” in (1) is understood as a mild and minor good, and provided the “strong feelings” in (2) are limited to not too many people.
There is also TANSTAAFL. Attempting to control voting patterns will impose costs and some people are already uncomfortable with possible costs.
I agree that trying to control voting patterns will have costs. But the question here isn’t whether anyone should be trying to control voting patterns, it’s whether someone with admin responsibility on LW should be taking notice of this affair and making some comment. (Even if the comment is “Oh, for goodness’ sake, grow up and stop bothering yourselves about this unimportant stuff.”.)
Can you expand on your reasons for considering that conjunction unlikely?
I understand what you’re trying to imply here, but arriving there seems to depend on a lot of unstated assumptions (e.g., assumptions about what the admins’ goals are, about the heterogeneity of the LW community and the collective goals/attributes of various subsets of it, about what the alternatives are to some people treating karma as a middle-school-level status game, etc.) that it might be valuable to articulate (and think through) with more precision.
Can you expand on your reasons for considering that conjunction unlikely?
I confess it’s mostly a matter of gut feeling (“I try not to think with my gut”—Carl Sagan) and you’re right that there might be value in being more careful about it.
So it goes something like this. Suppose that, on balance, the karma-related concerns of LW users—including long-standing smart people like ialdabaoth—are “middle-school-level status games” or something equivalent thereto. That seems to indicate that being concerned much about karma is contemptible: that, e.g., it’s just plain silly to think it matters if someone loses hundreds or thousands of karma points because some other user has a grudge, or if hundreds or thousands of comments have bad-looking negative scores next to them, or aren’t displayed at all, because their authors happen to have annoyed someone in the past.
But it seems to me that if there’s any point to the karma system, it’s some combination of these things: (1) It motivates people to write high-quality articles and comments. (2) It helps guide readers to articles and comments more likely to be interesting or insightful. (3, much less important in my view) It helps give a rough indication of who’s likely to be worth paying attention to.
But I don’t think any halfway-normal human being can simultaneously be motivated by preferring a high karma score, and be unbothered by losing thousands of karma points because someone holds a grudge. I don’t think it can be right not to care whether hundreds or thousands of comments are misleadingly labelled, if the labels and the karma-based sorting heuristics are useful. It can’t make sense to have your opinion of a person coloured by their karma score, but also not to care if some people’s karma is reduced by hundreds or thousands of points because some obnoxious person has a grudge against them.
I’m quite happy to take seriously either side of the disjunction. It might be that the whole karma system is a distraction and that we should ignore the whole thing, in which case we probably shouldn’t care about the sort of behaviour ialdabaoth is protesting here. (Only probably. It could be that the karma system is a distraction but that, given that it’s there, we should care whether people’s feelings get hurt gratuitously.) It might be that the karma system has a positive motivational effect or provides useful information or both, in which case we probably should care about the sort of behaviour ialdabaoth is protesting here.
Could it be that different sides of the disjunction apply to different people, somehow? For instance, maybe the karma system is valuable because it motivates and informs newcomers—but as they “grow up” they should put away childish things and attend only to the actual content rather than the scores? Yes, it could (though I’m not convinced it is). But in that case, it seems to me that this sort of abuse is worth paying attention to. If we care enough about newcomers (or any other subcommunity we might decide the karma machinery exists for the sake of) to put up with what’s a distraction for everyone else, then we should also care enough about them to take notice when that thing-that’s-a-distraction-for-others is badly messed up.
I should perhaps add that even if we ended up agreeing that the right attitude is not to care about karma, the fact that this sort of thing has clearly annoyed and upset ialdabaoth and pretty much driven daenerys away seems like cause for concern. (Supposing that upsetting and driving away those people is considered a bad thing. It’s entirely possible that whoever is engaged in mass-downvoting considers driving daenerys away from Less Wrong a triumph and annoying ialdabaoth a victory. I decline to share their views, if so.)
OK. So, we’ve identified a few implicit assumptions here.
Being concerned about middle-school-level status games is contemptible; it’s just plain silly to think it matters.
It is highly unlikely that anyone is both motivated by total karma and unconcerned if their karma is reduced significantly by capricious acts of rogue agents.
More generally, it is senseless to both treat karma score as evidence of the worth of someone’s contributions and not to care if some people’s karma is reduced significantly by capricious acts of rogue agents.
Have I mischaracterized any of these?
For my own part, I think #3 is false, #2 might be true but ought not be, and #1 is both false and so pernicious as to be actively harmful to real people in the world.
On #1: I think calling something “middle-school-level” is, when applied to something done by intelligent adults, itself a term of contempt. I would not use that term to describe something I thought worth caring about. (I remark for clarity that it wasn’t I who used the term to describe concerns about karma.)
On #2: I agree that an ideal reasoner could have both those properties but am fairly sure that very few real human beings (even in the rather unusual LW population) do, whence my remark about halfway-normal human beings.
On #3: “Senseless” is too strong but if there are rogue agents engaging in such capricious acts then the value of karma score as an indication of the worth of someone’s contributions is reduced. More noise, less SNR. So if you find karma useful as a rough guide to a person’s level of useful contribution, you should be able at having noise added to it. (You might of course be glad of the noise for other reasons, e.g. if you wanted a particular category of person to be intimidated.)
On #3: Fair enough… I agree that if I use the signal, I should prefer that the noise in that signal be lower, all else being equal. So, yes, in that sense I should care. Agreed.
On #2: Yeah, that’s why I agreed that it might be true.
On #1:We may just have to agree to disagree on this one, as I’m too infuriated by what you’re saying to engage with it reasonably.
No, I don’t think it’s miscommunication, nor is it your fault at all. I’m just being emotionally oversensitive due to personal stuff, exacerbated by the fact that I learned today that a family member died and am processing that.
But.. well, OK, let me try to sneak up on it a little. Suppose it were true that someone I loved had killed themselves as a consequence of their experiences with being bullied in middle school. (This is in fact not at all true.) Does it make any sense that I would react strongly and negatively to dismissing middle-school-level status maneuvering as silly, and dismissing concern with it as contemptible?
As to the middle-school-level business, let me try to answer your question and some other allied questions that might be relevant:
I was not saying, and do not believe, that there is anything contemptible or silly going on when people in middle school engage in middle-school-level anything.
I was not saying, and do not believe, that concern with karma and such matters is in fact either (1) middle-school-level status manoeuvring or (2) contemptible.
I didn’t intend to say, though maybe I did by mistake, that everything that could be described as middle-school-level status manoeuvring is contemptible.
What I did say, and did intend to say, is that specifically calling something “middle-school-level”, if the thing in question is being done by adults of (at least) normal mental capacity, is typically an expression of contempt. (And, in particular, I interpreted Lumifer as intending either to express such contempt on his own behalf or at least to imply that the LW admins might see debates and angst over karma as contemptible.)
I suppose none of those is actually an answer to your question (I’m hoping that the above may bypass it, as it were) but here is one: In such a situation I can entirely see how you might have that reaction, and I’d regard it as a reasonable but maybe not a rational, reaction to have.
I would also agree that calling something “middle-school-level” when being done by adults suggests that the adult in question is not particularly competent. E.g., I might talk about trying to find my way around Berlin using middle-school German. Whether this expresses contempt or not depends a lot on the subject and the context.
I would add that many people don’t seem to get better at managing status games than a slightly above-average high-schooler, though that’s probably not true for middle school.
I am gradually updating in favour of the hypothesis that at least one of the admins either approves of mass-downvoting as a means of influencing LW culture,
The way Eliezer treated eridu, and (IIRC) asked that the upvote/downvote buttons be re-added to user overview pages provided their “% positive” was low enough, make me suspect that too.
or else has a strong enough dislike for the sort of ideas that appear to be be the targets of mass-downvoting at present that s/he considers the mass-downvoting to be a good thing.
I think it’s unlikely that Eliezer dislikes progressive ideas about gender that much, and all but impossible that Alicorn does. (What other mods are there?)
I don’t know. I’m, tempted to make a snarky comment to the effect that they’re too busy coming up with new unpopular changes like the karma penalty for replying to heavily downvoted comments. Snark aside, there have been prior requests for admins to deal with this, or if there’s a programming issue to actually do deal with this. As far as I can tell, this request has been outstanding for a very long time.
If my memory serves me well, I probably did agree with him on many issues, but anyway, if the accusations are true, I would consider such behavior very harmful for the website (and frankly, also an evidence for some mental problems). I mean, downvoting someone even when they announce a meetup… what the hell?
As I’ve said elsewhere… I endorse the “downvote what you want less of” metric. It follows that if someone wants me to stop posting here altogether, I endorse them downvoting every one of my posts. (Naturally, I endorse other things more.) So I’m reluctant to endorse automatic mechanisms to prevent such behavior.
That said, I would be OK with a lifetime sitewide cap to how many downvotes user A can issue to user B. I’d prefer making voting behavior public, but that has all kinds of other effects.
As for whether it’s harmful to the site or not… I’d say it depends a lot on the user being downvoted.
As for whether it’s harmful to the site or not… I’d say it depends a lot on the user being downvoted.
Sure it does. But let’s suppose that user A downvotes everything from user B, while most other users generally like the posts from user B. How likely is it that the community as a whole would benefit if the user B becomes discouraged by this behavior and leaves?
Let’s assume the user A behaves this way towards users B, C, D. In this case we have one person trying to send away three people, that other users don’t mind. How likely is this to improve the website?
Maybe it would be good to have some accepted way for the user A to express their dislike towards the user B, and let the community decide—a democratic ostracism vote, instead of an assassination. The key is that the community as a whole expresses their opinion, not just one individual removes another individual.
let’s suppose that user A downvotes everything from user B, while most other users generally like the posts from user B. How likely is it that the community as a whole would benefit if the user B becomes discouraged by this behavior and leaves?
Unlikely.
Let’s assume the user A behaves this way towards users B, C, D. In this case we have one person trying to send away three people, that other users don’t mind. How likely is this to improve the website?
Unlikely.
Maybe it would be good to have some accepted way for the user A to express their dislike towards the user B,
Dislike is another matter entirely. What we’re talking about is ways for A to express their preference that B not post here. And, as I’ve said, it seems we do have a way for A to express that preference: downvoting.
I agree with you completely that in the examples you list, and other similar examples where A’s preference is a likely-mistaken one, any mechanism that allows A to effectively act on that preference will likely harm the site.
let the community decide—a democratic ostracism vote, instead of an assassination. The key is that the community as a whole expresses their opinion, not just one individual removes another individual.
Sure, I endorse that.
For example, we could provide a mechanism whereby other users (E, F, G, etc.) can upvote contributions from users they consider valuable. Then the net karma score of users (B, C, D) would respect the collective opinions of the community as a whole, including but not limited to A’s opinion.
The first situation that you call unlikely is empirically happening. See Daenery’s comment here. The second situation you call unlikely also seems to be happening given that multiple users have reported the block downvoting to be occurring in a very similar fashion, and the political motivation in many of the cases looks identical.
I invite you to re-read Viliam_Bur’s question, which I quoted, and let me know if you still think your response is apposite.
If so, let me know, and I’ll consider it more carefully.
If not, I further invite you to consider the process whereby it seemed apposite at first, and what that process suggests about the context of this discussion.
VB’s question: “(Say situation X occurs.) How likely is it that the community as a whole would benefit if the user B becomes discouraged by this behavior and leaves?” My answer: “Unlikely.” Your response: “The first situation that you call unlikely is empirically happening.”
If I assume you understood everything properly, then you’re claiming that it is empirically demonstrable that the community as a whole is benefiting from user B (I infer daenerys, given your link) getting discouraged and leaving.
But I doubt that’s what you meant.
I think it most likely that you misunderstood my “Unlikely” to be a response to something other than the question VB asked… so probably you understood me to mean something like “It is unlikely that there’s a user B being discouraged by user A’s downvoting behavior.”
I think it most likely that you misunderstood my “Unlikely” to be a response to something other than the question VB asked… so probably you understood me to mean something like “It is unlikely that there’s a user B being discouraged by user A’s downvoting behavior.”
Yes, exactly. Ok. So I didn’t misread Viliam’s comment. Rather I misinterpreted your statement as a statement that his premise was unlikely. Thanks for clearing that up.
Do you have any thoughts about why it was so difficult for you to notice that “Unlikely” was a response to “How likely is it that X?”, rather than an assertion that VB’s premise was unlikely?
Do you have any thoughts about why it was so difficult for you to notice that “Unlikely” was a response to “How likely is it that X?”, rather than an assertion that VB’s premise was unlikely?
The most probable explanation is that I engaged in the fairly common failing of reading an opinion which I disagreed with in a way that made it weaker than stronger. Do you have a distinct explanation I should consider?
That this falls into the category that can be reasonably defended as voting up or down based on whether one wants to see more or less of that. Once that involves the author of the comments rather than their content, that really is a hard to defend position.
Replying is the low status option. Not acknowledging the authority of the accuser is the high status option.
This is an example of how on Less Wrong we frequently oversimplify how status works. To state that as that simple just doesn’t hold. For example, as this continues, my estimate for how likely it is that Eugine was actually behind this has gone up from around 10% to around 50%, and yes, that’s got to translate into a status hit, and it is unlikely that I am the only person making such an estimate.
After all, what would Eugine say? “No, you are wrong, I didn’t do it”?
Yes. That would be easy. And it is striking that the very first time this was brought up, Eugine didn’t even reply to express confusion or the like. And there are other solutions, for example if Eugine had responded quickly he could have simply made his votes public which one can do from preferences as I understand it. Of course, as time goes on, that option becomes substantially less persuasive because he would have had time to undo all those downvotes and then make them public.
as this continues, my estimate for how likely it is that Eugine was actually behind this has gone up from around 10% to around 50%,
That’s interesting. Do you think it’s true generally for some user X that, if I were to assert a belief that X was “behind this” and X did not respond, their lack of response would provide you with that much of a certainty-bump? Or is this unique to Eugine?
FWIW, were someone on LW to publicly assert their belief that I was covertly engaging in locally-disapproved-of behavior, I expect my response would be some version of “Interesting. Why do you believe that?” without confirming or denying it, and I doubt greatly that I would make my votes public in response.
Admittedly, were someone to PM me asking if I was doing that and if so why, I would probably answer honestly.
The certainty bump is a function of a variety of different aspects of the lack of response, including the fact that he didn’t even say something like what you suggest about “”Interesting. Why do you believe that? And that he’s not responded even as this thread has grown, and he didn’t respond to either PMs (apparently) or the first public call out.
There’s also an aspect of personalities that is relevant here. Frankly, I’d expect you to say something like your suggested response whether or not you were actually engaging in the behavior in question. If Eugine were not, given the rest of what I’ve seen of his interaction, I’d expect that he’d be substantially more likely to vocally deny it, since he’s generally blunt. And the 10% to to 50% has included finding out related information such as the fact that twice before ialdabaoth made direct comments to Eugine about this that got no response at all. See here and here.
So I should clarify that the movement from 10% to 50% is not just Eugine’s lack of denial, but the complete lack of response and finding out that this isn’t a new thing at all but something that has happened repeatedly previously.
For example, as this continues, my estimate for how likely it is that Eugine was actually behind this has gone up from around 10% to around 50%,
Wow. I agree that E_N’s silence is evidence they’re ialdabaoth’s downvoter (not least because E_N doesn’t generally shrink from confronting people about being wrong) but I wouldn’t peg it as having a likelihood ratio of 5. More like 1.2 or 1.5, maybe. The only strong bits of evidence pointing at E_N are these two points ialdabaoth made. The other things, namely
other people who wrote broadly left-wing things about sex/gender got block downvoted too, albeit less intensively
daenerys & Tenoke themselves noticed they were downvoted shortly after making left-wing-sounding comments on sex/gender
ialdabaoth’s stalker has to have at least 800 karma to downvote so much, which exonerates newbies
are much more slender evidence. The Eugine Dunnit Hypothesis does seem to tie all of that evidence together nicely, but maybe that’s confirmation bias. I’d better try thinking of contrary evidence:
a priori I’d have expected E_N to be less likely than average to go on a downvoting rampage; my mental model of E_N simply argues with people it disagrees with, rather than pulling some cloak-&-dagger shit
I’ve disagreed with E_N before, and I’m fairly sure E_N’s downvoted me at least once, but I don’t remember ever being block downvoted
shminux “would be quite surprised if whoever karma-stalked me was pissed off at anything I said about gender issues”
for example if Eugine had responded quickly he could have simply made his votes public which one can do from preferences as I understand it.
I might be wrong (I don’t use that feature) but I think that only makes votes on top-level posts public. (Though that information would still be suggestive.)
Edit: aaaand I only just saw your reply to TheOtherDave.
a priori I’d have expected E_N to be less likely than average to go on a downvoting rampage; my mental model of E_N simply argues with people it disagrees with, rather than pulling some cloak-&-dagger shit
I agree strongly here. That’s part of why my initial estimate was low. My initial estimate was based on the fact that there were around 5-6 users with enough karma and the apparent political motivation, and then I reduced that percentage for Eugine because he seemed unlikely to be the sort of person who would do something like this.
I’ve disagreed with E_N before, and I’m fairly sure E_N’s downvoted me at least once, but I don’t remember ever being block downvoted
I’ve been block downvoted before, also on gender/sex issues, but I’m fairly confident that wasn’t Eugine. On the other hand, I’m also fairly sure base on some things that I’ve seen that Eugine has downvoted people while he replies to them as part of an ongoing disagreement(Edit:And he seems to be doing just that to me right now in another conversation, which is sort of amusing at some level.) And this sort of thing seems indicative of the sort of attitude that would be more likely to go and engage in block downvoting. But even given that I agree it is out of character.
shminux “would be quite surprised if whoever karma-stalked me was pissed off at anything I said about gender issues”
Right. Trying to explain all of this with one hypothetical super downvoter may be a problem. In shminux’s case, he’s got a lot of different controversial opinions that could potentially trigger something. The same applies to Imm’s comment.
might be wrong (I don’t use that feature) but I think that only makes votes on top-level posts public. (Though that information would still be suggestive.)
Hmm, in that case, this would be close to completely useless- all of ialdabaoth’s submitted posts have multiple downvotes, so one could legitimately have downvoted almost all of them. The only that might be particularly interesting is this one which has only 2 downvotes.
On the other hand, I’m also fairly sure base on some things that I’ve seen that Eugine has downvoted people while he replies to them as part of an ongoing disagreement(Edit:And he seems to be doing just that to me right now in another conversation, which is sort of amusing at some level.) And this sort of thing seems indicative of the sort of attitude that would be more likely to go and engage in block downvoting.
This is actually what makes it fairly easy for me to believe that Eugine is responsible. In discussions I’ve had with him in the past, he seems to downvote my comments automatically, without regard for content, merely because I am disagreeing with him. Take, for example, these twocomments. Both of them are responses to Eugine, and both of them have exactly one downvote, which I am pretty confident comes from Eugine.
I can’t see a legitimate reason for downvoting either of those comments. Neither one makes an argument or presents a controversial opinion. They are just presenting facts, facts which correct some misconception upthread. The fact that they were downvoted seems to me an indication of pretty significant mindkilling. Basically, the downvoter seems to be saying, “I don’t want to see politically inconvenient facts on this website.” Either that or, “I don’t want to see people challenging my political views on this website.” That kind of attitude seems quite compatible with indiscriminate bulk downvoting.
taking away their downvote button ought to do the trick.
If someone cares enough to do this now, they likely simply make an alternate account, get a little karma from that account and then continue downvoting using that. This is at best a short-term, temporary solution.
I considered that outcome but I’m not too concerned about it. ialdabaoth got at least 200ish downvotes, so someone would need 800 karma to repeat that feat (and that’s assuming they’ve only targeted ialdabaoth). A “little” karma won’t do it.
A determined person could certainly gather 800 karma, but the effort involved would have a fair chance of deterring them. Even if it didn’t deter them, recouping the karma would take a while, and we could simply revisit the issue with fresh eyes if/when the downvote bombing eventually resumed.
It’s less strong than we thought. According to the comments in a more recent discussion, I had things the wrong way round: the downvoter wouldn’t need 4 karma points per downvote, but could actually apply 4 downvotes per karma point. So the bar for downvoting ialdabaoth 200 times would be only 50 karma, not 800. In light of that, I think taking away someone’s downvote button would be a lot less effective than I thought.
Desrtopa makes a good point. The problem is less with downvoting all of someone’s posts, and more with downvoting all of someone’s posts without good reason. If there’s going to be a rule it should target the latter: mass downvotes that can’t be justified on the basis of the comments’ actual contents.
In any case, formalizing a rule might be overkill. One person could well be responsible for block downvoting not just ialdabaoth but also daenerys, NancyLebovitz, shminux & Tenoke. Five minutes of database access would suffice to check that, and if all this downvote spamming is just down to one person, taking away their downvote button ought to do the trick.
The weird downvotes I’ve gotten don’t match the pattern other people have mentioned. Instead of mass downvoting of comments, I get a very early downvote (maybe a bit more than one, I haven’t checked carefully) on posts. It might be a different person.
I agree that mass downvoting is bad for the community, with no obvious upside to permitting it. Taking away the perpetrator’s downvote button seems like a reasonable punishment.
Thanks for expanding. That does make it sound more likely your downvoter isn’t whoever’s downvoting ialdabaoth.
There’s another reason to check: right now, we have an outstanding accusation against a respected user in the community . That user has not responded to that accusation. In a court of law (at least in the US), that would (generally) not be allowed as evidence of guilt, but from a Bayesian standpoint it does seem like P(Eugine Nier is systematically downvoting|Eugine doesn’t deny it)> P(Eugine is systematically downvoting|Eugine denies it).
Now, there are other plausible explanations also for why he has decided not to comment, and at this point, I’d assign no more than 50% or so that he’s responsible for this situation. If he’s not responsible, then his name is being unfairly dragged through the mud, and that should be stopped. So it is important simply for that reason to have this cleared up. My own emotional biases may be coming into play here, in that although I disagree with Eugine on most of the issues that seem to be triggering mass downvoting (essentially on the progressive end of the gender and race issues), I’ve generally found him to be one of the more reasonable and polite people to disagree with here, so I’d really like to have it confirmed that he’s not at fault here.
Is it technically possible for admins to check who’s downvoting whom, and if so, why the hell are they leaving us speculate rather than just friggin’ doing it?
I am gradually updating in favour of the hypothesis that at least one of the admins either approves of mass-downvoting as a means of influencing LW culture, or else has a strong enough dislike for the sort of ideas that appear to be be the targets of mass-downvoting at present that s/he considers the mass-downvoting to be a good thing.
I would find that rather surprising and extremely regrettable.
Who are the admins at present?
I have a prior that admins don’t consider karma important and think of up/downvoting issues as middle-school-level status/power games. “Mommy, he hid all my pencils and wrote a bad word on my locker door!”
That’s very possible.
It seems unlikely that both of these are true: (1) Having a karma system is a good thing for LW. (2) Issues related to the karma system, even ones that crop up repeatedly and produce a great deal of discussion and (it appears) strong feelings, should be treated as middle-school-level status games.
I don’t see problems with these two statements being jointly true provided the “good thing” in (1) is understood as a mild and minor good, and provided the “strong feelings” in (2) are limited to not too many people.
There is also TANSTAAFL. Attempting to control voting patterns will impose costs and some people are already uncomfortable with possible costs.
See my comments to TheOtherDave.
I agree that trying to control voting patterns will have costs. But the question here isn’t whether anyone should be trying to control voting patterns, it’s whether someone with admin responsibility on LW should be taking notice of this affair and making some comment. (Even if the comment is “Oh, for goodness’ sake, grow up and stop bothering yourselves about this unimportant stuff.”.)
Can you expand on your reasons for considering that conjunction unlikely?
I understand what you’re trying to imply here, but arriving there seems to depend on a lot of unstated assumptions (e.g., assumptions about what the admins’ goals are, about the heterogeneity of the LW community and the collective goals/attributes of various subsets of it, about what the alternatives are to some people treating karma as a middle-school-level status game, etc.) that it might be valuable to articulate (and think through) with more precision.
I confess it’s mostly a matter of gut feeling (“I try not to think with my gut”—Carl Sagan) and you’re right that there might be value in being more careful about it.
So it goes something like this. Suppose that, on balance, the karma-related concerns of LW users—including long-standing smart people like ialdabaoth—are “middle-school-level status games” or something equivalent thereto. That seems to indicate that being concerned much about karma is contemptible: that, e.g., it’s just plain silly to think it matters if someone loses hundreds or thousands of karma points because some other user has a grudge, or if hundreds or thousands of comments have bad-looking negative scores next to them, or aren’t displayed at all, because their authors happen to have annoyed someone in the past.
But it seems to me that if there’s any point to the karma system, it’s some combination of these things: (1) It motivates people to write high-quality articles and comments. (2) It helps guide readers to articles and comments more likely to be interesting or insightful. (3, much less important in my view) It helps give a rough indication of who’s likely to be worth paying attention to.
But I don’t think any halfway-normal human being can simultaneously be motivated by preferring a high karma score, and be unbothered by losing thousands of karma points because someone holds a grudge. I don’t think it can be right not to care whether hundreds or thousands of comments are misleadingly labelled, if the labels and the karma-based sorting heuristics are useful. It can’t make sense to have your opinion of a person coloured by their karma score, but also not to care if some people’s karma is reduced by hundreds or thousands of points because some obnoxious person has a grudge against them.
I’m quite happy to take seriously either side of the disjunction. It might be that the whole karma system is a distraction and that we should ignore the whole thing, in which case we probably shouldn’t care about the sort of behaviour ialdabaoth is protesting here. (Only probably. It could be that the karma system is a distraction but that, given that it’s there, we should care whether people’s feelings get hurt gratuitously.) It might be that the karma system has a positive motivational effect or provides useful information or both, in which case we probably should care about the sort of behaviour ialdabaoth is protesting here.
Could it be that different sides of the disjunction apply to different people, somehow? For instance, maybe the karma system is valuable because it motivates and informs newcomers—but as they “grow up” they should put away childish things and attend only to the actual content rather than the scores? Yes, it could (though I’m not convinced it is). But in that case, it seems to me that this sort of abuse is worth paying attention to. If we care enough about newcomers (or any other subcommunity we might decide the karma machinery exists for the sake of) to put up with what’s a distraction for everyone else, then we should also care enough about them to take notice when that thing-that’s-a-distraction-for-others is badly messed up.
I should perhaps add that even if we ended up agreeing that the right attitude is not to care about karma, the fact that this sort of thing has clearly annoyed and upset ialdabaoth and pretty much driven daenerys away seems like cause for concern. (Supposing that upsetting and driving away those people is considered a bad thing. It’s entirely possible that whoever is engaged in mass-downvoting considers driving daenerys away from Less Wrong a triumph and annoying ialdabaoth a victory. I decline to share their views, if so.)
OK. So, we’ve identified a few implicit assumptions here.
Being concerned about middle-school-level status games is contemptible; it’s just plain silly to think it matters.
It is highly unlikely that anyone is both motivated by total karma and unconcerned if their karma is reduced significantly by capricious acts of rogue agents.
More generally, it is senseless to both treat karma score as evidence of the worth of someone’s contributions and not to care if some people’s karma is reduced significantly by capricious acts of rogue agents.
Have I mischaracterized any of these?
For my own part, I think #3 is false, #2 might be true but ought not be, and #1 is both false and so pernicious as to be actively harmful to real people in the world.
On #1: I think calling something “middle-school-level” is, when applied to something done by intelligent adults, itself a term of contempt. I would not use that term to describe something I thought worth caring about. (I remark for clarity that it wasn’t I who used the term to describe concerns about karma.)
On #2: I agree that an ideal reasoner could have both those properties but am fairly sure that very few real human beings (even in the rather unusual LW population) do, whence my remark about halfway-normal human beings.
On #3: “Senseless” is too strong but if there are rogue agents engaging in such capricious acts then the value of karma score as an indication of the worth of someone’s contributions is reduced. More noise, less SNR. So if you find karma useful as a rough guide to a person’s level of useful contribution, you should be able at having noise added to it. (You might of course be glad of the noise for other reasons, e.g. if you wanted a particular category of person to be intimidated.)
On #3: Fair enough… I agree that if I use the signal, I should prefer that the noise in that signal be lower, all else being equal. So, yes, in that sense I should care. Agreed.
On #2: Yeah, that’s why I agreed that it might be true.
On #1:We may just have to agree to disagree on this one, as I’m too infuriated by what you’re saying to engage with it reasonably.
Oh! I can’t help wondering whether there’s some miscommunication going on here. Could you explain what infuriates you so?
No, I don’t think it’s miscommunication, nor is it your fault at all. I’m just being emotionally oversensitive due to personal stuff, exacerbated by the fact that I learned today that a family member died and am processing that.
But.. well, OK, let me try to sneak up on it a little.
Suppose it were true that someone I loved had killed themselves as a consequence of their experiences with being bullied in middle school. (This is in fact not at all true.)
Does it make any sense that I would react strongly and negatively to dismissing middle-school-level status maneuvering as silly, and dismissing concern with it as contemptible?
Oh, shit. I’m sorry.
As to the middle-school-level business, let me try to answer your question and some other allied questions that might be relevant:
I was not saying, and do not believe, that there is anything contemptible or silly going on when people in middle school engage in middle-school-level anything.
I was not saying, and do not believe, that concern with karma and such matters is in fact either (1) middle-school-level status manoeuvring or (2) contemptible.
I didn’t intend to say, though maybe I did by mistake, that everything that could be described as middle-school-level status manoeuvring is contemptible.
What I did say, and did intend to say, is that specifically calling something “middle-school-level”, if the thing in question is being done by adults of (at least) normal mental capacity, is typically an expression of contempt. (And, in particular, I interpreted Lumifer as intending either to express such contempt on his own behalf or at least to imply that the LW admins might see debates and angst over karma as contemptible.)
I suppose none of those is actually an answer to your question (I’m hoping that the above may bypass it, as it were) but here is one: In such a situation I can entirely see how you might have that reaction, and I’d regard it as a reasonable but maybe not a rational, reaction to have.
[EDITED to try to fix a formatting screwup.]
I would also agree that calling something “middle-school-level” when being done by adults suggests that the adult in question is not particularly competent. E.g., I might talk about trying to find my way around Berlin using middle-school German. Whether this expresses contempt or not depends a lot on the subject and the context.
I would add that many people don’t seem to get better at managing status games than a slightly above-average high-schooler, though that’s probably not true for middle school.
I would agree that it’s not an entirely rational reaction to have.
I don’t think so: measures such as the hiding of below-threshold threads (pushed for by EY) make karma less unimportant that it used to be.
The way Eliezer treated eridu, and (IIRC) asked that the upvote/downvote buttons be re-added to user overview pages provided their “% positive” was low enough, make me suspect that too.
I think it’s unlikely that Eliezer dislikes progressive ideas about gender that much, and all but impossible that Alicorn does. (What other mods are there?)
I don’t know. I’m, tempted to make a snarky comment to the effect that they’re too busy coming up with new unpopular changes like the karma penalty for replying to heavily downvoted comments. Snark aside, there have been prior requests for admins to deal with this, or if there’s a programming issue to actually do deal with this. As far as I can tell, this request has been outstanding for a very long time.
I asked about this a while ago, and apparently the software doesn’t support it :/
If my memory serves me well, I probably did agree with him on many issues, but anyway, if the accusations are true, I would consider such behavior very harmful for the website (and frankly, also an evidence for some mental problems). I mean, downvoting someone even when they announce a meetup… what the hell?
As I’ve said elsewhere… I endorse the “downvote what you want less of” metric. It follows that if someone wants me to stop posting here altogether, I endorse them downvoting every one of my posts. (Naturally, I endorse other things more.) So I’m reluctant to endorse automatic mechanisms to prevent such behavior.
That said, I would be OK with a lifetime sitewide cap to how many downvotes user A can issue to user B. I’d prefer making voting behavior public, but that has all kinds of other effects.
As for whether it’s harmful to the site or not… I’d say it depends a lot on the user being downvoted.
Sure it does. But let’s suppose that user A downvotes everything from user B, while most other users generally like the posts from user B. How likely is it that the community as a whole would benefit if the user B becomes discouraged by this behavior and leaves?
Let’s assume the user A behaves this way towards users B, C, D. In this case we have one person trying to send away three people, that other users don’t mind. How likely is this to improve the website?
Maybe it would be good to have some accepted way for the user A to express their dislike towards the user B, and let the community decide—a democratic ostracism vote, instead of an assassination. The key is that the community as a whole expresses their opinion, not just one individual removes another individual.
Unlikely.
Unlikely.
Dislike is another matter entirely. What we’re talking about is ways for A to express their preference that B not post here. And, as I’ve said, it seems we do have a way for A to express that preference: downvoting.
I agree with you completely that in the examples you list, and other similar examples where A’s preference is a likely-mistaken one, any mechanism that allows A to effectively act on that preference will likely harm the site.
Sure, I endorse that.
For example, we could provide a mechanism whereby other users (E, F, G, etc.) can upvote contributions from users they consider valuable. Then the net karma score of users (B, C, D) would respect the collective opinions of the community as a whole, including but not limited to A’s opinion.
The first situation that you call unlikely is empirically happening. See Daenery’s comment here. The second situation you call unlikely also seems to be happening given that multiple users have reported the block downvoting to be occurring in a very similar fashion, and the political motivation in many of the cases looks identical.
I invite you to re-read Viliam_Bur’s question, which I quoted, and let me know if you still think your response is apposite.
If so, let me know, and I’ll consider it more carefully.
If not, I further invite you to consider the process whereby it seemed apposite at first, and what that process suggests about the context of this discussion.
Yes, it does. Am I misinterpreting your statement, Viliam’s statement or am I missing some other context?
Well, you tell me.
VB’s question: “(Say situation X occurs.) How likely is it that the community as a whole would benefit if the user B becomes discouraged by this behavior and leaves?”
My answer: “Unlikely.”
Your response: “The first situation that you call unlikely is empirically happening.”
If I assume you understood everything properly, then you’re claiming that it is empirically demonstrable that the community as a whole is benefiting from user B (I infer daenerys, given your link) getting discouraged and leaving.
But I doubt that’s what you meant.
I think it most likely that you misunderstood my “Unlikely” to be a response to something other than the question VB asked… so probably you understood me to mean something like “It is unlikely that there’s a user B being discouraged by user A’s downvoting behavior.”
Would you agree?
Yes, exactly. Ok. So I didn’t misread Viliam’s comment. Rather I misinterpreted your statement as a statement that his premise was unlikely. Thanks for clearing that up.
You’re welcome.
Do you have any thoughts about why it was so difficult for you to notice that “Unlikely” was a response to “How likely is it that X?”, rather than an assertion that VB’s premise was unlikely?
The most probable explanation is that I engaged in the fairly common failing of reading an opinion which I disagreed with in a way that made it weaker than stronger. Do you have a distinct explanation I should consider?
What was the opinion you disagreed with?
That this falls into the category that can be reasonably defended as voting up or down based on whether one wants to see more or less of that. Once that involves the author of the comments rather than their content, that really is a hard to defend position.
(nods) Cool. Thanks for clarifying.
Replying is the low status option. Not acknowledging the authority of the accuser is the high status option.
After all, what would Eugine say? “No, you are wrong, I didn’t do it”?
This is an example of how on Less Wrong we frequently oversimplify how status works. To state that as that simple just doesn’t hold. For example, as this continues, my estimate for how likely it is that Eugine was actually behind this has gone up from around 10% to around 50%, and yes, that’s got to translate into a status hit, and it is unlikely that I am the only person making such an estimate.
Yes. That would be easy. And it is striking that the very first time this was brought up, Eugine didn’t even reply to express confusion or the like. And there are other solutions, for example if Eugine had responded quickly he could have simply made his votes public which one can do from preferences as I understand it. Of course, as time goes on, that option becomes substantially less persuasive because he would have had time to undo all those downvotes and then make them public.
That’s interesting. Do you think it’s true generally for some user X that, if I were to assert a belief that X was “behind this” and X did not respond, their lack of response would provide you with that much of a certainty-bump? Or is this unique to Eugine?
FWIW, were someone on LW to publicly assert their belief that I was covertly engaging in locally-disapproved-of behavior, I expect my response would be some version of “Interesting. Why do you believe that?” without confirming or denying it, and I doubt greatly that I would make my votes public in response.
Admittedly, were someone to PM me asking if I was doing that and if so why, I would probably answer honestly.
The certainty bump is a function of a variety of different aspects of the lack of response, including the fact that he didn’t even say something like what you suggest about “”Interesting. Why do you believe that? And that he’s not responded even as this thread has grown, and he didn’t respond to either PMs (apparently) or the first public call out.
There’s also an aspect of personalities that is relevant here. Frankly, I’d expect you to say something like your suggested response whether or not you were actually engaging in the behavior in question. If Eugine were not, given the rest of what I’ve seen of his interaction, I’d expect that he’d be substantially more likely to vocally deny it, since he’s generally blunt. And the 10% to to 50% has included finding out related information such as the fact that twice before ialdabaoth made direct comments to Eugine about this that got no response at all. See here and here.
So I should clarify that the movement from 10% to 50% is not just Eugine’s lack of denial, but the complete lack of response and finding out that this isn’t a new thing at all but something that has happened repeatedly previously.
(nods) OK. Thanks for clarifying.
Yup, I’d expect that as well.
Wow. I agree that E_N’s silence is evidence they’re ialdabaoth’s downvoter (not least because E_N doesn’t generally shrink from confronting people about being wrong) but I wouldn’t peg it as having a likelihood ratio of 5. More like 1.2 or 1.5, maybe. The only strong bits of evidence pointing at E_N are these two points ialdabaoth made. The other things, namely
other people who wrote broadly left-wing things about sex/gender got block downvoted too, albeit less intensively
daenerys & Tenoke themselves noticed they were downvoted shortly after making left-wing-sounding comments on sex/gender
ialdabaoth’s stalker has to have at least 800 karma to downvote so much, which exonerates newbies
Eugine_Nier went over the 5-quotation quota in this month’s Rationality Quotes (and in last month’s as well)
are much more slender evidence. The Eugine Dunnit Hypothesis does seem to tie all of that evidence together nicely, but maybe that’s confirmation bias. I’d better try thinking of contrary evidence:
a priori I’d have expected E_N to be less likely than average to go on a downvoting rampage; my mental model of E_N simply argues with people it disagrees with, rather than pulling some cloak-&-dagger shit
I’ve disagreed with E_N before, and I’m fairly sure E_N’s downvoted me at least once, but I don’t remember ever being block downvoted
shminux “would be quite surprised if whoever karma-stalked me was pissed off at anything I said about gender issues”
lmm’s comment
Not sure what to make of it all.
I might be wrong (I don’t use that feature) but I think that only makes votes on top-level posts public. (Though that information would still be suggestive.)
Edit: aaaand I only just saw your reply to TheOtherDave.
I agree strongly here. That’s part of why my initial estimate was low. My initial estimate was based on the fact that there were around 5-6 users with enough karma and the apparent political motivation, and then I reduced that percentage for Eugine because he seemed unlikely to be the sort of person who would do something like this.
I’ve been block downvoted before, also on gender/sex issues, but I’m fairly confident that wasn’t Eugine. On the other hand, I’m also fairly sure base on some things that I’ve seen that Eugine has downvoted people while he replies to them as part of an ongoing disagreement(Edit:And he seems to be doing just that to me right now in another conversation, which is sort of amusing at some level.) And this sort of thing seems indicative of the sort of attitude that would be more likely to go and engage in block downvoting. But even given that I agree it is out of character.
Right. Trying to explain all of this with one hypothetical super downvoter may be a problem. In shminux’s case, he’s got a lot of different controversial opinions that could potentially trigger something. The same applies to Imm’s comment.
Hmm, in that case, this would be close to completely useless- all of ialdabaoth’s submitted posts have multiple downvotes, so one could legitimately have downvoted almost all of them. The only that might be particularly interesting is this one which has only 2 downvotes.
This is actually what makes it fairly easy for me to believe that Eugine is responsible. In discussions I’ve had with him in the past, he seems to downvote my comments automatically, without regard for content, merely because I am disagreeing with him. Take, for example, these two comments. Both of them are responses to Eugine, and both of them have exactly one downvote, which I am pretty confident comes from Eugine.
I can’t see a legitimate reason for downvoting either of those comments. Neither one makes an argument or presents a controversial opinion. They are just presenting facts, facts which correct some misconception upthread. The fact that they were downvoted seems to me an indication of pretty significant mindkilling. Basically, the downvoter seems to be saying, “I don’t want to see politically inconvenient facts on this website.” Either that or, “I don’t want to see people challenging my political views on this website.” That kind of attitude seems quite compatible with indiscriminate bulk downvoting.
If someone cares enough to do this now, they likely simply make an alternate account, get a little karma from that account and then continue downvoting using that. This is at best a short-term, temporary solution.
I considered that outcome but I’m not too concerned about it. ialdabaoth got at least 200ish downvotes, so someone would need 800 karma to repeat that feat (and that’s assuming they’ve only targeted ialdabaoth). A “little” karma won’t do it.
A determined person could certainly gather 800 karma, but the effort involved would have a fair chance of deterring them. Even if it didn’t deter them, recouping the karma would take a while, and we could simply revisit the issue with fresh eyes if/when the downvote bombing eventually resumed.
That’s a strong argument. I’m convinced.
It’s less strong than we thought. According to the comments in a more recent discussion, I had things the wrong way round: the downvoter wouldn’t need 4 karma points per downvote, but could actually apply 4 downvotes per karma point. So the bar for downvoting ialdabaoth 200 times would be only 50 karma, not 800. In light of that, I think taking away someone’s downvote button would be a lot less effective than I thought.