Hmm. On one hand, I do think it’s moderately likely we experiment with Reacts, which can partially address your desire here.
But it seems like the problem you’re mostly trying to solve is not that big a problem to me (i.e I think it’s totally fine for conversations to just peter out, nobody is entitled to being responded to. I’d at least want to see a second established user asking for it before I considered prioritizing it more. I personally expect a “there is a norm of responding to upvoted comments” to make the site much worse. “Getting annoying comments that miss the point” is one of the most cited things people dislike about LW, and forcing authors to engage with them seems like it’d exacerbate it.)
Generally, people are busy, don’t have time to reply to everything, and commenters should just assume they won’t necessarily get a response unless the author/their-conversation-partner continues to thinks a conversation is rewarding.
I’d at least want to see a second established user asking for it before I considered prioritizing it more.
I doubt you’ll ever see this, because when you’re an established / high status member, ignoring other people feels pretty natural and right, and few people ignore you so you don’t notice any problems. I made the request back when I had lower status on this forum. I got ignored by others way more than I do now, and ignored others way less than I do now. (I had higher motivation to “prove” myself to my critics and the audience.)
If I hadn’t written down my request back then, in all likelihood I would have forgotten my old perspective and wouldn’t be talking about this today.
“Getting annoying comments that miss the point” is one of the most cited things people dislike about LW, and forcing authors to engage with them seems like it’d exacerbate it.)
In my original feature request, I had a couple of “agreement statuses” that require only minimal engagement, like “I don’t understand this. I give up.” and “I disagree, but don’t want to bother writing out why.” We could easily add more, like “I think further engagement won’t be productive.” or “This isn’t material to my main point.” And then we could experiment with setting norms for how much social reward or punishment to give out for such responses (if people’s natural reactions to them cause bad consequences). I wouldn’t be surprised that such a system ends up making authors more willing or more comfortable to engage less with annoying critics, and makes their LW experience better, by making it more explicit that it’s ok to engage with such critics minimally.
Hmm. On one hand, I do think it’s moderately likely we experiment with Reacts, which can partially address your desire here.
But it seems like the problem you’re mostly trying to solve is not that big a problem to me (i.e I think it’s totally fine for conversations to just peter out, nobody is entitled to being responded to. I’d at least want to see a second established user asking for it before I considered prioritizing it more. I personally expect a “there is a norm of responding to upvoted comments” to make the site much worse. “Getting annoying comments that miss the point” is one of the most cited things people dislike about LW, and forcing authors to engage with them seems like it’d exacerbate it.)
Generally, people are busy, don’t have time to reply to everything, and commenters should just assume they won’t necessarily get a response unless the author/their-conversation-partner continues to thinks a conversation is rewarding.
I doubt you’ll ever see this, because when you’re an established / high status member, ignoring other people feels pretty natural and right, and few people ignore you so you don’t notice any problems. I made the request back when I had lower status on this forum. I got ignored by others way more than I do now, and ignored others way less than I do now. (I had higher motivation to “prove” myself to my critics and the audience.)
If I hadn’t written down my request back then, in all likelihood I would have forgotten my old perspective and wouldn’t be talking about this today.
In my original feature request, I had a couple of “agreement statuses” that require only minimal engagement, like “I don’t understand this. I give up.” and “I disagree, but don’t want to bother writing out why.” We could easily add more, like “I think further engagement won’t be productive.” or “This isn’t material to my main point.” And then we could experiment with setting norms for how much social reward or punishment to give out for such responses (if people’s natural reactions to them cause bad consequences). I wouldn’t be surprised that such a system ends up making authors more willing or more comfortable to engage less with annoying critics, and makes their LW experience better, by making it more explicit that it’s ok to engage with such critics minimally.