When I vote, I basically know the full effect this has on what is shown to other users or to myself.
Mindblowing moment: It has been a private pet peeve of mine that it was very unclear what policy I should follow for voting.
In practice, I vote mostly on vibes (and expect most people to), but given my own practices for browsing LW, I also considered alternative approaches. - Voting in order to assign a specific score (weighted for inflation by time and author) to the post. Related uses: comparing karma of articles, finding desirable articles on a given topic. - Voting in order to match an equivalent-value article. Related uses: same; perhaps effective as a community norm but more effortful. - Voting up if the article is good, down if it’s bad (after memetic/community/bias considerations) (regardless of current karma). Related uses: karma as indicator of community opinion.
In the end, making my votes consistent turned out to be too much effort in every case for extensive calculations, which is why I came back to vibes, amended by implicit considerations of consistent ways to vote.
I was trying to figure out ways to vote which would put me in a class of voters that marginally improved my personal browsing experience. It never occurred to me to model the impact it would have on others and to optimize for their experience. This sounds like an obviously better way to vote.
So for anyone who was in the same case as me, please optimize for others’ browsing experience (or your own) directly rather than overcalculate decision-theoretic whatevers.
Mindblowing moment: It has been a private pet peeve of mine that it was very unclear what policy I should follow for voting.
In practice, I vote mostly on vibes (and expect most people to), but given my own practices for browsing LW, I also considered alternative approaches.
- Voting in order to assign a specific score (weighted for inflation by time and author) to the post. Related uses: comparing karma of articles, finding desirable articles on a given topic.
- Voting in order to match an equivalent-value article. Related uses: same; perhaps effective as a community norm but more effortful.
- Voting up if the article is good, down if it’s bad (after memetic/community/bias considerations) (regardless of current karma). Related uses: karma as indicator of community opinion.
In the end, making my votes consistent turned out to be too much effort in every case for extensive calculations, which is why I came back to vibes, amended by implicit considerations of consistent ways to vote.
I was trying to figure out ways to vote which would put me in a class of voters that marginally improved my personal browsing experience.
It never occurred to me to model the impact it would have on others and to optimize for their experience.
This sounds like an obviously better way to vote.
So for anyone who was in the same case as me, please optimize for others’ browsing experience (or your own) directly rather than overcalculate decision-theoretic whatevers.