I don’t think the attribution is right. I am always surprised by what does and doesn’t get upvoted, which means I’m poorly calibrated. Something useful I post to discussion after spending 20 hours on it gets 5 upvotes, and then something useless like this discussion post that took me 60 seconds to post gets 25+ upvotes. :)
My first assumption is that almost everything you post is seen as (at least somewhat) valuable (for almost every post #upvotes > #downvotes), so the net karma you get is mostly based on throughput. More readers, more votes. More votes, more karma.
Second, useful posts do not only take time to write, they take time to read as well. And my guess is that most of us don’t like to vote on thoughtful articles before we have read them. So for funny posts we can quickly make the judgement on how to vote, but for longer posts it takes time.
Decision fatigue may also play a role (after studying something complex the extra decision of whether to vote on it feels like work so we skip it). People may also print more valuable texts, or save them for later, making it easy to forget to vote.
The effect is much more evident on other karma based sites. Snarky one-liners and obvious puns are karma magnets. LessWrong uses the same system and is visited by the same species and therefore suffers from the same problems, just to a lesser extent.
Decision fatigue may also play a role (after studying something complex the extra decision of whether to vote on it feels like work so we skip it).
This. Also after reading a more complex thing, it seems common that I’ll forget to think about voting at all, since I’m distracted by thinking about the implications or who I might want to share it with or what other people have to say about it. Sometimes I remember to go back and vote, but I think most of the time I just don’t, whereas with funny things the impulse to focus on the author and give them a reward in response seems to be automatic.
Also, sometimes an apparently well-researched article turns out to be based on only a superficial understanding of the topic (e.g. only having skimmed the abstracts) and mis-represents the cited material, and this is sometimes revealed on “cross-examination” in the comments.
On the other hand I suspect you are well calibrated with what gives you respect and reputation. You could say that your poor calibration with respect to karma is karma’s problem! :)
Something useful I post to discussion after spending 20 hours on it
20 hours on a discussion post? That would be a mistake right there!
I don’t think the attribution is right. I am always surprised by what does and doesn’t get upvoted, which means I’m poorly calibrated. Something useful I post to discussion after spending 20 hours on it gets 5 upvotes, and then something useless like this discussion post that took me 60 seconds to post gets 25+ upvotes. :)
My first assumption is that almost everything you post is seen as (at least somewhat) valuable (for almost every post #upvotes > #downvotes), so the net karma you get is mostly based on throughput. More readers, more votes. More votes, more karma.
Second, useful posts do not only take time to write, they take time to read as well. And my guess is that most of us don’t like to vote on thoughtful articles before we have read them. So for funny posts we can quickly make the judgement on how to vote, but for longer posts it takes time.
Decision fatigue may also play a role (after studying something complex the extra decision of whether to vote on it feels like work so we skip it). People may also print more valuable texts, or save them for later, making it easy to forget to vote.
The effect is much more evident on other karma based sites. Snarky one-liners and obvious puns are karma magnets. LessWrong uses the same system and is visited by the same species and therefore suffers from the same problems, just to a lesser extent.
This. Also after reading a more complex thing, it seems common that I’ll forget to think about voting at all, since I’m distracted by thinking about the implications or who I might want to share it with or what other people have to say about it. Sometimes I remember to go back and vote, but I think most of the time I just don’t, whereas with funny things the impulse to focus on the author and give them a reward in response seems to be automatic.
Also, sometimes an apparently well-researched article turns out to be based on only a superficial understanding of the topic (e.g. only having skimmed the abstracts) and mis-represents the cited material, and this is sometimes revealed on “cross-examination” in the comments.
I guess that’s a little better. (also that sounds like poor accuracy rather than poor calibration, but that’s probably just semantics).
On the other hand I suspect you are well calibrated with what gives you respect and reputation. You could say that your poor calibration with respect to karma is karma’s problem! :)
20 hours on a discussion post? That would be a mistake right there!
The 20 hours isn’t for LW karma, obviously. It’s stuff like announcing IntelligenceExplosion.com.