Given at least moderate quality, upvotes correlate much more tightly with accessibility / scope of audience than quality of writing. Remember, the article score isn’t an average of hundreds of scalar ratings—it’s the sum of thousands of ratings of [-1, 0, +1] -- and the default rating of anyone who doesn’t see, doesn’t care about, or doesn’t understand the thrust of a post is 0. If you get a high score, that says more about how many people bothered to process your post than about how many people thought it was the best post ever.
Yes, to counter this effect I tend to upvote the math-heavy decision theory posts and comment chains if I have even the slightest idea what’s going on, and the Vladimirs seem to think it’s not stupid.
Given at least moderate quality, upvotes correlate much more tightly with accessibility / scope of audience than quality of writing. Remember, the article score isn’t an average of hundreds of scalar ratings—it’s the sum of thousands of ratings of [-1, 0, +1] -- and the default rating of anyone who doesn’t see, doesn’t care about, or doesn’t understand the thrust of a post is 0. If you get a high score, that says more about how many people bothered to process your post than about how many people thought it was the best post ever.
Yes, to counter this effect I tend to upvote the math-heavy decision theory posts and comment chains if I have even the slightest idea what’s going on, and the Vladimirs seem to think it’s not stupid.
Ironically, this is my most-upvoted comment in several months.