wanting less of a particular user’s contributions is a legitimate reason to downvote that user’s contributions, regardless of the particular content of a specific comment.
While I in theory agree with this, I wouldn’t want to see this become common in practice. The problem is, you don’t need that many users to karmassassinate someone completely. That makes the process potentially really nondemocratic and noisy. You could say that other users could correct for abusive downvoting by upvoting, but I doubt this actually happens enough.
Yes, I agree completely that if the majority of the site isn’t good about upvoting what they do want, then a few people who downvote everything (and everyone) they don’t want get to exert preference-implementing power far out of proportion to their numbers, and if the preferences of those people are bad for the site, then the result is bad for the site.
And I agree that this is likely the case in reality.
But in pointing that out, you’re invoking a much bigger issue than the one we started out discussing, because this isn’t just a problem with downvoting all comments for a given user (aka “karmassassination”).
It’s a problem with downvoting all comments that support or oppose a given political platform, or all comments that support or oppose a given philosophical position, or all comments that display or fail to display a given rhetorical style, or any category of comments.
It’s most obvious when the category is a user, because user’s can complain of abuse and our social instinct is to defend other people from abuse we consider unjustified. (An instinct and a practice I endorse.) We don’t have that instinct to defend political platforms or philosophical positions or rhetorical styles, so when users exert the same degree of power to implement their (potentially site-damaging) preferences about those things, we mostly don’t notice or care, and we don’t come up with catchy words for it.
In any case… regardless of the scope of the issue, the question at hand is how best to address it.
You seem to be advocating addressing this by establishing a social norm of not exerting power, and treating the few people who do as norm-violators who should cool it down and be less pushy about implementing our preferences. (At least when it comes to users… perhaps you are OK with exerting that power for other categories of comments.)
I advocate instead a social norm of exerting that power, and treating the many people who don’t as norm-violators who should step it up and be less lazy about implementing our preferences.
Finding and categorizing comments by user is a lot easier than finding them by political or philosophical position. I think that’s more relevant than social instincts in this case.
I think you’re advocating a very time intensive approach to voting behaviour. Power would concentrate in the hands of the few who have time to plow through every relevant comment in case they come across a user or an opinion that might violate their preferences. Do you have good reasons to expect these kinds of users would protect your preferences?
If what you’re advocating becomes the norm, how is a user supposed to know why he was downvoted/upvoted and change/continue their behaviour? Even with the current voting volume, few explanations for votes are given.
Power would concentrate in the hands of the few who have time to plow through every relevant comment in case they come across a user or an opinion that might violate their preferences.
Or it would diffuse among the many who vote according to their preferences on whatever comments they happen to notice.
Do you have good reasons to expect these kinds of users would protect your preferences?
Nope, in either case. I doubt my preferences align particularly well with the “coherent volition” of LW as a whole.
If what you’re advocating becomes the norm, how is a user supposed to know why he was downvoted/upvoted and change/continue their behaviour?
I agree that this is a problem. If silence becomes the norm, this problem is not ameliorated.
Downvotes and upvotes are in general a poor mechanism for communicating that sort of detailed information, they just provide a sense over time a sense of what kinds of things get downvoted… more by looking at the downvoting of other users than by looking at the downvoting of our own comments, in practice, because there are so many more other users than there are usses. But they’re what we have, and they are better than silence.
Even with the current voting volume, few explanations for votes are given.
Or it would diffuse among the many who vote according to their preferences on whatever comments they happen to notice.
I doubt that. Many people here have long comment histories. You don’t simply happen to notice most old comments, but if you’re so inclined and have the time, clickfest awaits.
If silence becomes the norm, this problem is not ameliorated.
Silence already is the norm. “By the way I downvoted all your comments because of X.” How do you expect that to go?
What amount of bad comments would be a reasonable threshold for downvoting someone’s every comment? 50 percent? 20 percent? Should there be guidelines for that?
What amount of bad comments would be a reasonable threshold for downvoting someone’s every comment? 50 percent? 20 percent?
My own standard for downvoting a user as a category is “Would Less Wrong be better off if this user went away?” It’s possible that there’s some threshold percentage that causes me to arrive at that judgement, but if so, I don’t know what that threshold is.
Should there be guidelines for that?
My suggested guideline is: if LessWrong would be better off if user X went away, downvote user X’s comments.
You don’t simply happen to notice most old comments, but if you’re so inclined and have the time, clickfest awaits.
Sure, that’s true. And I certainly agree that it’s easier to retroactively downvote all of a single user’s comments than it is to retroactively downvote all the comments in various other categories. It is consequently true that if downvoting all the comments in a category I want less of is a bad thing, doing so for the category “user X’s comments” is particularly bad because it’s both bad and easy.
Silence already is the norm. “By the way I downvoted all your comments because of X.” How do you expect that to go?
Sorry, I was unclear. By “silence” I don’t mean the absence of English sentences, I mean the absence of signal.
To rephrase… if failing to downvote comments in a category that’s of negative value to the site becomes (or remains) the norm, it becomes (remains) true that users won’t know that they should change their behaviour. (Corresponding things are true of failing to upvote comments in a positive-value category.)
If that norm is replaced by up/downvoting such comments as I advocate, you’re right that the user doesn’t suddenly become aware of what the problem/benefit is. But they weren’t aware of that information before implementing that norm-replacement, either.
Looked at the other way: if our goal is to maximize the amount of information people get about what’s wrong (or right) with their comments, discussing how we ought to be using the karma system is a waste of time, because karma is a deeply flawed mechanism for achieving that goal.
If that norm is replaced by up/downvoting such comments as I advocate, you’re right that the user doesn’t suddenly become aware of what the problem/benefit is. But they weren’t aware of that information before implementing that norm-replacement, either.
If all your comments are downvoted because someone deemed that 20% of them are damaging, it’s much more difficult to deduce why that happened than if voting happens per comment.
if our goal is to maximize the amount of information people get about what’s wrong (or right) with their comments [...] karma is a deeply flawed mechanism for achieving that goal
If you take into account how lazy people are explaining themselves, it might still be a pretty good mechanism for that purpose, certainly better than nothing.
If all your comments are downvoted because someone deemed that 20% of them are damaging, it’s much more difficult to deduce why that happened than if voting happens per comment.
Yes, that’s true.
If you take into account how lazy people are explaining themselves, it might still be a pretty good mechanism for that purpose, certainly better than nothing.
I certainly agree that karma is better than nothing, and I suppose it’s possible that it represents an optimal means for getting information from people too lazy to provide information by other means.
While I in theory agree with this, I wouldn’t want to see this become common in practice. The problem is, you don’t need that many users to karmassassinate someone completely. That makes the process potentially really nondemocratic and noisy. You could say that other users could correct for abusive downvoting by upvoting, but I doubt this actually happens enough.
Yes, I agree completely that if the majority of the site isn’t good about upvoting what they do want, then a few people who downvote everything (and everyone) they don’t want get to exert preference-implementing power far out of proportion to their numbers, and if the preferences of those people are bad for the site, then the result is bad for the site.
And I agree that this is likely the case in reality.
But in pointing that out, you’re invoking a much bigger issue than the one we started out discussing, because this isn’t just a problem with downvoting all comments for a given user (aka “karmassassination”).
It’s a problem with downvoting all comments that support or oppose a given political platform, or all comments that support or oppose a given philosophical position, or all comments that display or fail to display a given rhetorical style, or any category of comments.
It’s most obvious when the category is a user, because user’s can complain of abuse and our social instinct is to defend other people from abuse we consider unjustified. (An instinct and a practice I endorse.) We don’t have that instinct to defend political platforms or philosophical positions or rhetorical styles, so when users exert the same degree of power to implement their (potentially site-damaging) preferences about those things, we mostly don’t notice or care, and we don’t come up with catchy words for it.
In any case… regardless of the scope of the issue, the question at hand is how best to address it.
You seem to be advocating addressing this by establishing a social norm of not exerting power, and treating the few people who do as norm-violators who should cool it down and be less pushy about implementing our preferences. (At least when it comes to users… perhaps you are OK with exerting that power for other categories of comments.)
I advocate instead a social norm of exerting that power, and treating the many people who don’t as norm-violators who should step it up and be less lazy about implementing our preferences.
Finding and categorizing comments by user is a lot easier than finding them by political or philosophical position. I think that’s more relevant than social instincts in this case.
I think you’re advocating a very time intensive approach to voting behaviour. Power would concentrate in the hands of the few who have time to plow through every relevant comment in case they come across a user or an opinion that might violate their preferences. Do you have good reasons to expect these kinds of users would protect your preferences?
If what you’re advocating becomes the norm, how is a user supposed to know why he was downvoted/upvoted and change/continue their behaviour? Even with the current voting volume, few explanations for votes are given.
Or it would diffuse among the many who vote according to their preferences on whatever comments they happen to notice.
Nope, in either case. I doubt my preferences align particularly well with the “coherent volition” of LW as a whole.
I agree that this is a problem.
If silence becomes the norm, this problem is not ameliorated.
Downvotes and upvotes are in general a poor mechanism for communicating that sort of detailed information, they just provide a sense over time a sense of what kinds of things get downvoted… more by looking at the downvoting of other users than by looking at the downvoting of our own comments, in practice, because there are so many more other users than there are usses.
But they’re what we have, and they are better than silence.
True.
I doubt that. Many people here have long comment histories. You don’t simply happen to notice most old comments, but if you’re so inclined and have the time, clickfest awaits.
Silence already is the norm. “By the way I downvoted all your comments because of X.” How do you expect that to go?
What amount of bad comments would be a reasonable threshold for downvoting someone’s every comment? 50 percent? 20 percent? Should there be guidelines for that?
My own standard for downvoting a user as a category is “Would Less Wrong be better off if this user went away?” It’s possible that there’s some threshold percentage that causes me to arrive at that judgement, but if so, I don’t know what that threshold is.
My suggested guideline is: if LessWrong would be better off if user X went away, downvote user X’s comments.
Sure, that’s true. And I certainly agree that it’s easier to retroactively downvote all of a single user’s comments than it is to retroactively downvote all the comments in various other categories. It is consequently true that if downvoting all the comments in a category I want less of is a bad thing, doing so for the category “user X’s comments” is particularly bad because it’s both bad and easy.
Sorry, I was unclear. By “silence” I don’t mean the absence of English sentences, I mean the absence of signal.
To rephrase… if failing to downvote comments in a category that’s of negative value to the site becomes (or remains) the norm, it becomes (remains) true that users won’t know that they should change their behaviour. (Corresponding things are true of failing to upvote comments in a positive-value category.)
If that norm is replaced by up/downvoting such comments as I advocate, you’re right that the user doesn’t suddenly become aware of what the problem/benefit is. But they weren’t aware of that information before implementing that norm-replacement, either.
Looked at the other way: if our goal is to maximize the amount of information people get about what’s wrong (or right) with their comments, discussing how we ought to be using the karma system is a waste of time, because karma is a deeply flawed mechanism for achieving that goal.
If all your comments are downvoted because someone deemed that 20% of them are damaging, it’s much more difficult to deduce why that happened than if voting happens per comment.
If you take into account how lazy people are explaining themselves, it might still be a pretty good mechanism for that purpose, certainly better than nothing.
Yes, that’s true.
I certainly agree that karma is better than nothing, and I suppose it’s possible that it represents an optimal means for getting information from people too lazy to provide information by other means.