Obvious jokes and back-patting comments are easy for readers to judge, so they get more extreme scores because it’s easy to decide how to vote on them. Ideologically charged comments of questionable seriousness are harder to judge, as well as more divisive. Hard-to-judge comments are more likely to be misinterpreted (leading to downvotes) and more likely to be passed over by normal readers (leaving them at the mercy of the minority who feel strongly about the topic/poster).
I doubt debates can fix this asymmetry. If LW readers spent longer thinking about their votes on edgier comments, that’d help, but that won’t happen because it’s no fun to spend 5 minutes deciding which little Internet thumb to click.
I think the basic problem’s unfixable.
Obvious jokes and back-patting comments are easy for readers to judge, so they get more extreme scores because it’s easy to decide how to vote on them. Ideologically charged comments of questionable seriousness are harder to judge, as well as more divisive. Hard-to-judge comments are more likely to be misinterpreted (leading to downvotes) and more likely to be passed over by normal readers (leaving them at the mercy of the minority who feel strongly about the topic/poster).
I doubt debates can fix this asymmetry. If LW readers spent longer thinking about their votes on edgier comments, that’d help, but that won’t happen because it’s no fun to spend 5 minutes deciding which little Internet thumb to click.