I’m not sure if this is the right course of action. I’m just thinking about the impact of different voting systems on group behavior. I definitely don’t want to change anything important without considering negative impacts.
But I suspect that strong downvotes might quietly contribute to LW being more group thinky.
Consider a situation where a post strongly offends a small number of LW regulars, but is generally approved of by the median reader. A small number of regulars hard downvote the post, resulting in a suppression of the undesirable idea.
I think this is unhealthy. I think a small number of enthusiastic supporters should be able to push an idea (hence allowing strong upvotes) but that a small number of enthusiastic detractors should not be able to suppress a post.
For LW to do it’s job, posts must be downvoted because they are poorly-reasoned and badly-written.
I often write things which are badly written (which deserve to be downvoted) and also things which are merely offensive (which should not be downvoted). [I mean this in the sense of promoting heretical ideas. Name-calling absolutely deserves to be downvoted.] I suspect that strong downvotes are placed more on my offensive posts than my poorly-written posts, which is opposite the signal LW should be supporting.
There is a catch: abolishing strong downvotes might weaken community norms and potentially allow posts to become more political/newsy, which we don’t want. It may also weaken the filter against low quality comments.
Though, perhaps all of that is just self-interested confabulation. What’s really bothering me is that I feel like my more offensive/heretical posts get quickly strong downvoted by what I suspect is a small number of angry users. (My genuinely bad posts get soft downvoted by many users, and get very few upvotes.)
In the past, this has been followed by good argument. (Which is fine!) But recently, it hasn’t. Which makes me feel like it’s just been driven out of anger and offense i.e., a desire to suppress bad ideas rather than untangle why they’re wrong.
This is all very subjective and I don’t have any hard data. I’ve just been getting a bad feeling for a while. This dynamic (if real) has discouraged me from posting my most interesting (heretical) ideas on LW. It’s especially discouraged me from questioning the LW orthodoxy in top-level posts.
Soft downvotes make me feel “this is bad writing”. Strong downvotes make me feel “you’re not welcome here”.
That said, I am not a moderator. (And, as always, I appreciate the hard work you do to keep things wells gardened.) It’s entirely possible that my proposal has more negative effects that positive effects. I’m just one datapoint.
Consider a situation where a post strongly offends a small number of LW regulars, but is generally approved of by the median reader. A small number of regulars hard downvote the post, resulting in a suppression of the undesirable idea.
I believe that this is actually part of the design intent of strongvotes—to help make sure that LW rewards the kind of content that long-time regulars appreciate, avoiding an “Eternal September” scenario where an influx of new users starts upvoting the kind of content you might find anywhere else on the Internet and driving the old regulars out, until the thing that originally made LW unique is lost.
I’m not sure if this is the right course of action. I’m just thinking about the impact of different voting systems on group behavior. I definitely don’t want to change anything important without considering negative impacts.
But I suspect that strong downvotes might quietly contribute to LW being more group thinky.
Consider a situation where a post strongly offends a small number of LW regulars, but is generally approved of by the median reader. A small number of regulars hard downvote the post, resulting in a suppression of the undesirable idea.
I think this is unhealthy. I think a small number of enthusiastic supporters should be able to push an idea (hence allowing strong upvotes) but that a small number of enthusiastic detractors should not be able to suppress a post.
For LW to do it’s job, posts must be downvoted because they are poorly-reasoned and badly-written.
I often write things which are badly written (which deserve to be downvoted) and also things which are merely offensive (which should not be downvoted). [I mean this in the sense of promoting heretical ideas. Name-calling absolutely deserves to be downvoted.] I suspect that strong downvotes are placed more on my offensive posts than my poorly-written posts, which is opposite the signal LW should be supporting.
There is a catch: abolishing strong downvotes might weaken community norms and potentially allow posts to become more political/newsy, which we don’t want. It may also weaken the filter against low quality comments.
Though, perhaps all of that is just self-interested confabulation. What’s really bothering me is that I feel like my more offensive/heretical posts get quickly strong downvoted by what I suspect is a small number of angry users. (My genuinely bad posts get soft downvoted by many users, and get very few upvotes.)
In the past, this has been followed by good argument. (Which is fine!) But recently, it hasn’t. Which makes me feel like it’s just been driven out of anger and offense i.e., a desire to suppress bad ideas rather than untangle why they’re wrong.
This is all very subjective and I don’t have any hard data. I’ve just been getting a bad feeling for a while. This dynamic (if real) has discouraged me from posting my most interesting (heretical) ideas on LW. It’s especially discouraged me from questioning the LW orthodoxy in top-level posts.
Soft downvotes make me feel “this is bad writing”. Strong downvotes make me feel “you’re not welcome here”.
That said, I am not a moderator. (And, as always, I appreciate the hard work you do to keep things wells gardened.) It’s entirely possible that my proposal has more negative effects that positive effects. I’m just one datapoint.
I believe that this is actually part of the design intent of strongvotes—to help make sure that LW rewards the kind of content that long-time regulars appreciate, avoiding an “Eternal September” scenario where an influx of new users starts upvoting the kind of content you might find anywhere else on the Internet and driving the old regulars out, until the thing that originally made LW unique is lost.