Also, while we’re discussing meta-level stuff, I think the absolute #1 best improvement that could be made to LessWrong is for a prompt to come up with a comment box inviting you to explain your reasoning whenever you downvote something. Downvotes without comment are IMO extremely bad for site culture and lead to a lot of the frustration discussed earlier.
Ironically, this comment was actually extremely helpful. I certainly don’t downvote things that I think are bad ideas, only things that I think violate standards of discourse or are inappropriate for the venue in which they are posted.
If downvote is just being used as the “I disagree” or “I don’t like this” button, I think LessWrong has far bigger problems to deal with!
Why do you believe that explanatory comments work? Here we have an example of an explanatory comment from Larks that failed to communicate anything to you. On Chris’s recent series, we have hundreds of explanatory comments that failed to communicate anything to him.
Have you ever seen a productive use of the question “Did you even read my reply?”? Have you ever seen someone believe the answer “yes” to that question?
(Oh, also the reason your comment is surface-level unhelpful is because “I thought it was a bad idea” isn’t a real explanation of your decision process, not because explaining votes is inherently bad—but of course you knew that already.)
My practice is to almost never downvote with comment. If I think something is wrong in an interesting way, then I up-vote it to increase its visibility (because its interesting) and reply with a comment.
If I think something is promising but in need of improvement I do the same.
If I downvote something, its usually not just because I disagree with it, but because I think its harmful in someway and I want to reduce its visibility. Commenting would tend to promote its visibility and be counterproductive towards that end. If someone is honestly confused as to why they have been down voted, they can explicitly ask and that will prompt me or others to comment.
Downvotes with explanation are way worse than downvotes without explanation. for every post downvoted to −9 I do NOT want to read 9 comments saying “Downvoted for not understanding what the purpose of downvotes is”
I don’t care if you get frustrated or annoyed at downvotes. That’s the WHOLE POINT. As you make comments and continue to be voted up and down you learn the kind of things the community approves and disapproves of, or you get out. Downvoting isn’t designed to optimize for being welcoming. It’s a moderation strategy designed to improve conversation for the existing participants.
I don’t care if you get frustrated or annoyed at downvotes. That’s the WHOLE POINT. As you make comments and continue to be voted up and down you learn the kind of things the community approves and disapproves of, or you get out. Downvoting isn’t designed to optimize for being welcoming. It’s a moderation strategy designed to improve conversation for the existing participants.
Actually, the more I think about this idea the more I dislike it. It’s much easier to learn what is and isn’t acceptable behavior if people just tell you rather than you having to suss it out yourself. Further, in many cases the reasoning for downvotes is far from clear, even for established users.
I have >4000 karma, I’ve written multiple top-level posts, I’m frequently on the top 30-day karma list, I know many community members in real life, and I’ve donated to and volunteered for both MIRI and CFAR—and even I am not always sure why some posts get downvoted. Imagine how much worse it must be for new users!
I’ve often heard people complain that LessWrong isn’t welcoming enough, that it’s intimidating, that it’s hard to participate in discussions here, etc. In some cases, this simply means that LessWrong’s level of rigor is too high for the person making the complaint, and that’s totally fine. But I also know a lot of intelligent, level-headed people who are interested in rationality and other core LessWrong concepts, but don’t post here because they find the site’s attitude towards newcomers off-putting.
There are various efforts being put in place to help address this—for instance, many of Eliezer’s original sequences are being compiled into an edited ebook format that should make it much easier for people to access the “core” of LessWrong. But I think that changing either the actual architecture of LessWrong or the culture so that we give more of an explanation for downvotes would be a great help for both existing users and newcomers.
Lastly, it’s certainly the case that well-kept gardens die by pacifism, and we should be careful about lowering the standards on LessWrong. I think the current standards on LessWrong are part of what makes the site valuable, and I don’t want to lower them—but making them more transparent would IMO certainly help.
I’m primarily concerned with downvotes that nobody explains at all. As Alsadius pointed out, if someone else has already explained their reasoning well, you can simply downvote the main comment and upvote their reply.
But there are many posts that I see being downvoted for unclear reasons with no replies at all. I’ve also noticed that when I call this out by making a comment that says “why is this being downvoted,” the voting trend often reverses. This strikes me as a problem.
A year or two ago I tried replying more often with “downvoted because...”. This did not appear to have any effect beyond some karma penalty for me when my reasons for downvoting were the least bit controversial.
I’ve occasionally written well-received downvote explanations, but that only seems easy to do when the reason the parent’s being downvoted is or should be obvious to all and sundry. I gather from this that the community likes seeing people scolded who make dumb points, but doesn’t like downvote explanations in general.
(I’ll admit a fairly small sample size, though—typically I don’t downvote posts I respond to, because of the risk of sparking a retaliatory cycle.)
I don’t do this all the time, but I’d say about half my downvotes are accompanied by a comment arguing with the post, though not always mine if someone else has made the point well. If my complaint is non-obvious, I try to do it every time.
This idea has been reinvented and discussed multiple times over the years, and it might be a good one, but Eliezer and other admins are not interested enough to spend any of their limited Trike resources on this.
Well, Eliezer’s attitude appears to be the exact opposite, he even implemented a 5 karma penalty to discourage people from replying to down-voted comments.
Also, while we’re discussing meta-level stuff, I think the absolute #1 best improvement that could be made to LessWrong is for a prompt to come up with a comment box inviting you to explain your reasoning whenever you downvote something. Downvotes without comment are IMO extremely bad for site culture and lead to a lot of the frustration discussed earlier.
This would be useful. In fact, I was just thinking about what the best way is for me to solicit anonymous feedback from people who’ve downvoted me.
I downvoted the parent because I thought it was a bad idea.
The unhelpfulness of this comment illustrates why it is a bad idea.
Ironically, this comment was actually extremely helpful. I certainly don’t downvote things that I think are bad ideas, only things that I think violate standards of discourse or are inappropriate for the venue in which they are posted.
If downvote is just being used as the “I disagree” or “I don’t like this” button, I think LessWrong has far bigger problems to deal with!
Why do you believe that explanatory comments work? Here we have an example of an explanatory comment from Larks that failed to communicate anything to you. On Chris’s recent series, we have hundreds of explanatory comments that failed to communicate anything to him.
Did you even read my reply? It literally starts with “this comment was actually extremely helpful.”
Have you ever seen a productive use of the question “Did you even read my reply?”? Have you ever seen someone believe the answer “yes” to that question?
Yes and yes.
Would you show me?
(Oh, also the reason your comment is surface-level unhelpful is because “I thought it was a bad idea” isn’t a real explanation of your decision process, not because explaining votes is inherently bad—but of course you knew that already.)
My practice is to almost never downvote with comment. If I think something is wrong in an interesting way, then I up-vote it to increase its visibility (because its interesting) and reply with a comment.
If I think something is promising but in need of improvement I do the same.
If I downvote something, its usually not just because I disagree with it, but because I think its harmful in someway and I want to reduce its visibility. Commenting would tend to promote its visibility and be counterproductive towards that end. If someone is honestly confused as to why they have been down voted, they can explicitly ask and that will prompt me or others to comment.
Downvotes with explanation are way worse than downvotes without explanation. for every post downvoted to −9 I do NOT want to read 9 comments saying “Downvoted for not understanding what the purpose of downvotes is”
I don’t care if you get frustrated or annoyed at downvotes. That’s the WHOLE POINT. As you make comments and continue to be voted up and down you learn the kind of things the community approves and disapproves of, or you get out. Downvoting isn’t designed to optimize for being welcoming. It’s a moderation strategy designed to improve conversation for the existing participants.
Actually, the more I think about this idea the more I dislike it. It’s much easier to learn what is and isn’t acceptable behavior if people just tell you rather than you having to suss it out yourself. Further, in many cases the reasoning for downvotes is far from clear, even for established users.
I have >4000 karma, I’ve written multiple top-level posts, I’m frequently on the top 30-day karma list, I know many community members in real life, and I’ve donated to and volunteered for both MIRI and CFAR—and even I am not always sure why some posts get downvoted. Imagine how much worse it must be for new users!
I’ve often heard people complain that LessWrong isn’t welcoming enough, that it’s intimidating, that it’s hard to participate in discussions here, etc. In some cases, this simply means that LessWrong’s level of rigor is too high for the person making the complaint, and that’s totally fine. But I also know a lot of intelligent, level-headed people who are interested in rationality and other core LessWrong concepts, but don’t post here because they find the site’s attitude towards newcomers off-putting.
There are various efforts being put in place to help address this—for instance, many of Eliezer’s original sequences are being compiled into an edited ebook format that should make it much easier for people to access the “core” of LessWrong. But I think that changing either the actual architecture of LessWrong or the culture so that we give more of an explanation for downvotes would be a great help for both existing users and newcomers.
Lastly, it’s certainly the case that well-kept gardens die by pacifism, and we should be careful about lowering the standards on LessWrong. I think the current standards on LessWrong are part of what makes the site valuable, and I don’t want to lower them—but making them more transparent would IMO certainly help.
I’m primarily concerned with downvotes that nobody explains at all. As Alsadius pointed out, if someone else has already explained their reasoning well, you can simply downvote the main comment and upvote their reply.
But there are many posts that I see being downvoted for unclear reasons with no replies at all. I’ve also noticed that when I call this out by making a comment that says “why is this being downvoted,” the voting trend often reverses. This strikes me as a problem.
A year or two ago I tried replying more often with “downvoted because...”. This did not appear to have any effect beyond some karma penalty for me when my reasons for downvoting were the least bit controversial.
I’ve occasionally written well-received downvote explanations, but that only seems easy to do when the reason the parent’s being downvoted is or should be obvious to all and sundry. I gather from this that the community likes seeing people scolded who make dumb points, but doesn’t like downvote explanations in general.
(I’ll admit a fairly small sample size, though—typically I don’t downvote posts I respond to, because of the risk of sparking a retaliatory cycle.)
I don’t do this all the time, but I’d say about half my downvotes are accompanied by a comment arguing with the post, though not always mine if someone else has made the point well. If my complaint is non-obvious, I try to do it every time.
This idea has been reinvented and discussed multiple times over the years, and it might be a good one, but Eliezer and other admins are not interested enough to spend any of their limited Trike resources on this.
That’s unfortunate, though it might of course still be possible to accomplish this shift on a cultural level or with more minor code changes.
I agree. Or perhaps a dropdown box with categories describing the general reason for upvote or downvote.
Well, Eliezer’s attitude appears to be the exact opposite, he even implemented a 5 karma penalty to discourage people from replying to down-voted comments.
Heavily downvoted comments, yes. This proposal is more oriented towards everyday voting situations.
Well, when justifying the change he implied that he didn’t think one should be replying to comments one downvotes.