Fluffy comments wouldn’t have upvote and downvote arrows/thumbs.
The hide fluff button changes to a view of the comment database that omits them.
Once the reader gets bored of being all serious, all the time a simple click on the show fluff button brings them all back, until the reader gets their fill of candy-floss comments.
There may be many unforeseen consequences with such a change:
Do you allow normal comments in response to fluff comments? 1) Yes—you’ll need to reenable fluff to follow what the “serious” replies are referring to. 2) No—the responding comments would by necessity also be labelled fluff, even if intended seriously (just to enable being able to follow up on some throw-away remark), which would lead to a continuing incentive for fluff comments—actual fluff and otherwise—to supplant actual comments. 3) No replies allowed to fluff comments—weird circumvention effects e.g. by replying to the grandparent while referring to the fluff comment
Don’t you want to read all the content some specific authors provide on LW, regardless of whether they consider it serious or just “candy-floss”? Do you then have an option for “hide fluff—except for fluff from users 1..n”? Yes—keeping such a list up to date could quickly become tedious. No—have to reenable all fluff unless you want to miss e.g. Nesov’s fluff-labelled comments, which will probably still be more valuable than most people’s serious comments.
The list goes on. (Eventually some may even wish for a way of rating fluff comments, leading to a secondary karma system, which may lead to a regress until someone pulls the plug and goes back to the current system.)
Depends on how it would be used. It’s not just the features, but also the social conventions that develop around them. I imagine using “fluff” comments specifically for abusing other people. Or just trolling. Or spamming.
Like this:
Non-karmic discussions are for idiots. Buy your online diploma. (this comment was marked as “fluff”, you cannot downvote it)
How does this proposal differ from those that would result from replacing the word “fluff” throughout by “boring”, “genius”, “Sanskrit”, or “Islamic theology”?
The poster is in control of a trade. The poster can choose to avoid negative karma, but only by taking the risk of the comment being hidden from many readers. (Perhaps hide fluff = fewer comments and show fluff = more comments).
It is only a little like an “evil bit”. It allows the poster to escape the consequences of evil (ie no down votes) by setting the evil bit. But that makes their attempts at evil easy to filter out.
What I was getting at, though, is that labelling it a fluff tag doesn’t make it one. People could use it for anything they like, and I predict it would end up being the resort of people resentful at getting heavily downvoted for their hobbyhorses.
That is an interesting prediction. If true, then the fluff tag will not work as I expected. If true, what else follows?
Perhaps those with hobbyhorses to ride will tag them fluff and not end up bitter at getting heavily downvoted. Meanwhile, most LessWrong’uns hide fluff and are unaware of the various strange obsessions. Perhaps that is a small improvement to the site?
If I make a fine distinction between “soft exclusion of people with hobbyhorses” and “soft exclusion of hobbyhorses” am I reading your comment too closely?
The current system offers individuals a choice: talk about your hobbyhorse and get down voted, or just shut up already! That strikes me as the “soft exclusion of people with hobbyhorses”. Having the option to talk about it, under the protection of the fluff tag is more friendly. It is soft inclusion of people.
But if most people read the site with the fluff hidden, the hobbyhorses are mostly invisible. I call that “soft exclusion of hobbyhorses”. Is it a feature or a bug? I don’t know.
You really think noone would mark own posts as fluff? I would mark some of my posts which are more conversations than public comments but relevant for some people enough not to make them PM.
Actually, maybe 3 fluff votes to mark as fuff would be a better alternative to current three-downvotes rule.
Idea: have an option to tag a comment as fluff.
Fluffy comments wouldn’t have upvote and downvote arrows/thumbs.
The hide fluff button changes to a view of the comment database that omits them.
Once the reader gets bored of being all serious, all the time a simple click on the show fluff button brings them all back, until the reader gets their fill of candy-floss comments.
There may be many unforeseen consequences with such a change:
Do you allow normal comments in response to fluff comments? 1) Yes—you’ll need to reenable fluff to follow what the “serious” replies are referring to. 2) No—the responding comments would by necessity also be labelled fluff, even if intended seriously (just to enable being able to follow up on some throw-away remark), which would lead to a continuing incentive for fluff comments—actual fluff and otherwise—to supplant actual comments. 3) No replies allowed to fluff comments—weird circumvention effects e.g. by replying to the grandparent while referring to the fluff comment
Don’t you want to read all the content some specific authors provide on LW, regardless of whether they consider it serious or just “candy-floss”? Do you then have an option for “hide fluff—except for fluff from users 1..n”? Yes—keeping such a list up to date could quickly become tedious. No—have to reenable all fluff unless you want to miss e.g. Nesov’s fluff-labelled comments, which will probably still be more valuable than most people’s serious comments.
The list goes on. (Eventually some may even wish for a way of rating fluff comments, leading to a secondary karma system, which may lead to a regress until someone pulls the plug and goes back to the current system.)
I ventured a short way down that rabbit hole 3 years ago. If my wretched health were to improve, that the project I would most like to work on.
I like, but do not know how hard this would be to implement.
Slrn would get into the neighborhood—it’s a system for scoring comments by author, strings in the text and subject line, etc.
Depends on how it would be used. It’s not just the features, but also the social conventions that develop around them. I imagine using “fluff” comments specifically for abusing other people. Or just trolling. Or spamming.
Like this:
How does this proposal differ from those that would result from replacing the word “fluff” throughout by “boring”, “genius”, “Sanskrit”, or “Islamic theology”?
Reminds me of the “evil bit” RFC.
The poster is in control of a trade. The poster can choose to avoid negative karma, but only by taking the risk of the comment being hidden from many readers. (Perhaps hide fluff = fewer comments and show fluff = more comments).
It is only a little like an “evil bit”. It allows the poster to escape the consequences of evil (ie no down votes) by setting the evil bit. But that makes their attempts at evil easy to filter out.
What I was getting at, though, is that labelling it a fluff tag doesn’t make it one. People could use it for anything they like, and I predict it would end up being the resort of people resentful at getting heavily downvoted for their hobbyhorses.
That is an interesting prediction. If true, then the fluff tag will not work as I expected. If true, what else follows?
Perhaps those with hobbyhorses to ride will tag them fluff and not end up bitter at getting heavily downvoted. Meanwhile, most LessWrong’uns hide fluff and are unaware of the various strange obsessions. Perhaps that is a small improvement to the site?
Well, is soft exclusion of people with hobbyhorses a feature, or a bug?
I’m leaning towards “feature” for identity maintenance reasons, but this seems like an issue on which reasonable people could reasonably disagree.
If I make a fine distinction between “soft exclusion of people with hobbyhorses” and “soft exclusion of hobbyhorses” am I reading your comment too closely?
The current system offers individuals a choice: talk about your hobbyhorse and get down voted, or just shut up already! That strikes me as the “soft exclusion of people with hobbyhorses”. Having the option to talk about it, under the protection of the fluff tag is more friendly. It is soft inclusion of people.
But if most people read the site with the fluff hidden, the hobbyhorses are mostly invisible. I call that “soft exclusion of hobbyhorses”. Is it a feature or a bug? I don’t know.
You really think noone would mark own posts as fluff? I would mark some of my posts which are more conversations than public comments but relevant for some people enough not to make them PM.
Actually, maybe 3 fluff votes to mark as fuff would be a better alternative to current three-downvotes rule.