Another approach would be not allowing downvote to be open to all users. On the Stackexchage network for example, you need a certain amount of reputation to downvote someone. I’d bet that a very large majority of the discouraging/unnecessary/harmful downvotes come from users who don’t have above, say, 5-15 karma in the last month. Perhaps official downvote policies messaged to a user the first time they pass that would help too.
This way involved users can still downvote bad posts, and the bulk of the problem is solved.
But it requires technical work, which may be an issue.
Perhaps official downvote policies messaged to a user the first time they pass that would help too.
Anything with messages could be implemented by a bot account, right? That could be made without having to change the Less Wrong code itself.
Maybe we could send a message to users with guidelines on downvoting every time they downvote something? This would gently discourage heavy and/or poorly reasoned downvoting, likely without doing too much damage to the kind of downvoting we want. One issue with this is it would likely be very difficult or practically impossible for a bot account to know when someone downvotes something without changing the LW code. (Though it probably wouldn’t require a very big change, and things could be limited to just the bot account(s).)
Every time someone downvotes would probably be too much, but maybe the first time, or if we restrict downvotes only for users with some amount of karma then when they hit that level of karma?
Another approach would be not allowing downvote to be open to all users. On the Stackexchage network for example, you need a certain amount of reputation to downvote someone. I’d bet that a very large majority of the discouraging/unnecessary/harmful downvotes come from users who don’t have above, say, 5-15 karma in the last month. Perhaps official downvote policies messaged to a user the first time they pass that would help too.
This way involved users can still downvote bad posts, and the bulk of the problem is solved.
But it requires technical work, which may be an issue.
Anything with messages could be implemented by a bot account, right? That could be made without having to change the Less Wrong code itself.
Maybe we could send a message to users with guidelines on downvoting every time they downvote something? This would gently discourage heavy and/or poorly reasoned downvoting, likely without doing too much damage to the kind of downvoting we want. One issue with this is it would likely be very difficult or practically impossible for a bot account to know when someone downvotes something without changing the LW code. (Though it probably wouldn’t require a very big change, and things could be limited to just the bot account(s).)
[pollid:989]
Every time someone downvotes would probably be too much, but maybe the first time, or if we restrict downvotes only for users with some amount of karma then when they hit that level of karma?