This comment is an experiment. I’m trying out a variant of the proposed idea of voting by headings/block quotes: this comment contains my comment, and the replies below contain claims extracted from my comment for agree/disagree voting.
Agree/disagree buttons incentivizes knee-jerk, low-effort reactions rather than deliberate, high-effort responses
Something I like about LW’s system of upvotes meaning “things you want to see more of” and having no agree/disagree button is that there’s no simple way of expressing agreement or disagreement. This means that when there’s something I disagree with, I’m more incentivized to write a comment to express it. That forces me to think more deeply because I need to be able to state clearly what it is I’m agreeing or disagreeing with, especially since it can be quite nuanced. It also feels fairer because if someone went to the effort of writing a comment, then surely it’s only fair that I do likewise when disagreeing. (Unless of course it was a low effort comment, in which case I could always just downvote.)
I suspect that if there’s an agree/disagree button, the emotional part of me would be satisfied with clicking the disagree button, whereas currently, it pushes me to express my disagreement as a (thought-through, reasoned) reply. I aspire to be someone who responds thoughtfully, but that is not an instinctive behavior. With the disagree button available, I would be fighting instinct rather than working with it. It encourages emotional, knee-jerk reactions rather than deliberate responses.
(It’s nice to be able to get a rough gauge of the community’s opinion of a statement though. It’s not of much practical use in terms of evaluating the truth of a statement, because I prefer to weight different people’s opinions differently based on the topic, but it does give a general sense of the community’s opinion.)
Agree/disagree buttons are confusing or even harmful for comments that are making multiple claims
There are Telegram channels by news agencies where they post messages for articles. Each message contains a headline and a link to the article, and people would then react to the chat message using emojis. It’s quite amusing when there are headlines like “Person X convicted of Y and sentenced to Z” and you see many thumbs up and thumbs down. It makes me wonder, are you showing approval/disapproval for the crime, the conviction, or the punishment? It also seems to contribute to typical mind fallacy/confirmation bias problems.
Similarly, having agree/disagree buttons on comments that have multiple claims doesn’t really make sense, because we can’t tell which part is being agreed/disagreed with and people might end up interpreting the votes according to their own beliefs.
Suggested alternative: agree/disagree buttons for claims created specifically for voting
Others have suggested allowing voting per heading or by block quote but I think that the way I phrase my comments is different from how I would craft a claim. Also, some statements aren’t meant for people to evaluate (e.g. sharing of personal stories, giving encouragement, sharing related posts).
Thus, one possibility I can think of is to let users create claims specifically for agree/disagree voting. Other users (besides the author) can also add in separate claims extracted from the comment. Hopefully, when claims are designed to be agreed/disagreed with, it makes the agree/disagree votes easier to interpret. (Ideally, there should probably be a third option that says “this is not a statement that can be meaningfully agreed/disagreed with” or “this is not a well-crafted statement”.)
Thoughts after trying it out
This is really, really hard. I’m not sure if my claims as well-formulated, and I’m not sure which claims are meaningful to extract from my comment. When there are many ways to disagree with a statement, I can’t tell which ways are more meaningful (i.e. where to draw the line for agree/disagreeing or which ones are worth creating separate claims for). It’s also very high effort to write compared with a typical comment.
I notice that a part of me seems to prefer uncontroversial claims to get that validation, while another part of me wants more controversial claims so that it’ll be more fun (i.e. won’t know what answer to expect).
Would it make sense to have a separate section where we can view all the claim comments for a post? (probably needs to support some form of sorting by relevance) Would that be a way to help the community reason something out collectively?
I wonder if it has a tendency to focus attention on a narrower set of ideas, simply because those are the options offered.
Claim 2: Agree/disagree buttons are confusing or even harmful for comments that are making multiple claims. This is significant enough that there should not be an agree/disagree button for comments where agree/disagree buttons are not suitable.
Agree: The negative consequences are significant enough that there should not be agree/disagree buttons for certain types of comments. For example, authors may be able to decide if they will allow agree/disagree votes on their comment.
Disagree: It is acceptable to have agree/disagree votes even for posts/comments where this does not make sense, e.g. because people will adjust accordingly. We can add in a feature to disable agree/disagree votes for certain comments, but it is also okay if we don’t.
Claim 1A: Agree/disagree buttons disincentivizes productive conversations because clicking the disagree button satisfies the need for expressing disagreement (or agreement) with lower cost (less effort & no reputational cost since votes are anonymous) than writing out a reply. This is a significant enough concern that we should consider its effects when deciding whether or not to go with the new voting system.
Agree: This matches my experience: I am less likely to write replies expressing agreement/disagreement because I am now able to vote agree/disagree.
Disagree: This does not match my experience: If I was already going to write a reply, I would still write one even if I can just vote agree/disagree.
Agree: I may or may not think that I/other users have this experience, but I think the effects are negative and significant enough, or have the potential to be significant enough that we should see if there are ways to address this when designing a new voting system.
Disagree: I may or may not think that I/other users have this experience, but I think that the effects are not negative or are negligible enough that we do not need to factor this into the design of a new voting system.
Agree: This may or may not match my experience, but I believe that for majority (>50%) of users on LW, they are less likely to write replies expressing agreement/disagreement because they can now vote agree/disagree.
Disagree: This may or may not match my experience, but I believe that majority (>50%) of users on LW, would still write a reply even if they can just vote agree/disagree.
This comment is an experiment. I’m trying out a variant of the proposed idea of voting by headings/block quotes: this comment contains my comment, and the replies below contain claims extracted from my comment for agree/disagree voting.
Agree/disagree buttons incentivizes knee-jerk, low-effort reactions rather than deliberate, high-effort responses
Something I like about LW’s system of upvotes meaning “things you want to see more of” and having no agree/disagree button is that there’s no simple way of expressing agreement or disagreement. This means that when there’s something I disagree with, I’m more incentivized to write a comment to express it. That forces me to think more deeply because I need to be able to state clearly what it is I’m agreeing or disagreeing with, especially since it can be quite nuanced. It also feels fairer because if someone went to the effort of writing a comment, then surely it’s only fair that I do likewise when disagreeing. (Unless of course it was a low effort comment, in which case I could always just downvote.)
I suspect that if there’s an agree/disagree button, the emotional part of me would be satisfied with clicking the disagree button, whereas currently, it pushes me to express my disagreement as a (thought-through, reasoned) reply. I aspire to be someone who responds thoughtfully, but that is not an instinctive behavior. With the disagree button available, I would be fighting instinct rather than working with it. It encourages emotional, knee-jerk reactions rather than deliberate responses.
(It’s nice to be able to get a rough gauge of the community’s opinion of a statement though. It’s not of much practical use in terms of evaluating the truth of a statement, because I prefer to weight different people’s opinions differently based on the topic, but it does give a general sense of the community’s opinion.)
Agree/disagree buttons are confusing or even harmful for comments that are making multiple claims
There are Telegram channels by news agencies where they post messages for articles. Each message contains a headline and a link to the article, and people would then react to the chat message using emojis. It’s quite amusing when there are headlines like “Person X convicted of Y and sentenced to Z” and you see many thumbs up and thumbs down. It makes me wonder, are you showing approval/disapproval for the crime, the conviction, or the punishment? It also seems to contribute to typical mind fallacy/confirmation bias problems.
Similarly, having agree/disagree buttons on comments that have multiple claims doesn’t really make sense, because we can’t tell which part is being agreed/disagreed with and people might end up interpreting the votes according to their own beliefs.
Suggested alternative: agree/disagree buttons for claims created specifically for voting
Others have suggested allowing voting per heading or by block quote but I think that the way I phrase my comments is different from how I would craft a claim. Also, some statements aren’t meant for people to evaluate (e.g. sharing of personal stories, giving encouragement, sharing related posts).
Thus, one possibility I can think of is to let users create claims specifically for agree/disagree voting. Other users (besides the author) can also add in separate claims extracted from the comment. Hopefully, when claims are designed to be agreed/disagreed with, it makes the agree/disagree votes easier to interpret. (Ideally, there should probably be a third option that says “this is not a statement that can be meaningfully agreed/disagreed with” or “this is not a well-crafted statement”.)
Thoughts after trying it out
This is really, really hard. I’m not sure if my claims as well-formulated, and I’m not sure which claims are meaningful to extract from my comment. When there are many ways to disagree with a statement, I can’t tell which ways are more meaningful (i.e. where to draw the line for agree/disagreeing or which ones are worth creating separate claims for). It’s also very high effort to write compared with a typical comment.
I notice that a part of me seems to prefer uncontroversial claims to get that validation, while another part of me wants more controversial claims so that it’ll be more fun (i.e. won’t know what answer to expect).
Would it make sense to have a separate section where we can view all the claim comments for a post? (probably needs to support some form of sorting by relevance) Would that be a way to help the community reason something out collectively?
I wonder if it has a tendency to focus attention on a narrower set of ideas, simply because those are the options offered.
Claim 2: Agree/disagree buttons are confusing or even harmful for comments that are making multiple claims. This is significant enough that there should not be an agree/disagree button for comments where agree/disagree buttons are not suitable.
Agree: The negative consequences are significant enough that there should not be agree/disagree buttons for certain types of comments. For example, authors may be able to decide if they will allow agree/disagree votes on their comment.
Disagree: It is acceptable to have agree/disagree votes even for posts/comments where this does not make sense, e.g. because people will adjust accordingly. We can add in a feature to disable agree/disagree votes for certain comments, but it is also okay if we don’t.
Claim 1A: Agree/disagree buttons disincentivizes productive conversations because clicking the disagree button satisfies the need for expressing disagreement (or agreement) with lower cost (less effort & no reputational cost since votes are anonymous) than writing out a reply. This is a significant enough concern that we should consider its effects when deciding whether or not to go with the new voting system.
Agree: This matches my experience: I am less likely to write replies expressing agreement/disagreement because I am now able to vote agree/disagree.
Disagree: This does not match my experience: If I was already going to write a reply, I would still write one even if I can just vote agree/disagree.
Claim 1C: See claim 1A.
Agree: I may or may not think that I/other users have this experience, but I think the effects are negative and significant enough, or have the potential to be significant enough that we should see if there are ways to address this when designing a new voting system.
Disagree: I may or may not think that I/other users have this experience, but I think that the effects are not negative or are negligible enough that we do not need to factor this into the design of a new voting system.
Claim 1B: See claim 1A.
Agree: This may or may not match my experience, but I believe that for majority (>50%) of users on LW, they are less likely to write replies expressing agreement/disagreement because they can now vote agree/disagree.
Disagree: This may or may not match my experience, but I believe that majority (>50%) of users on LW, would still write a reply even if they can just vote agree/disagree.