People respond to incentives. Especially loss-related incentives. I do not give homeless people nickels even though I can afford to give a nearly arbitrary number of homeless people nickels. The set of people with karma less than five will be outright unable to reply—the set of people with karma greater than five will just be disincentivized, and that’s still something.
The prior probability of someone being able to explain negative-value Will_Newsome’s comments in a way that provides value for LW readers is already epsilon. Even without the disincentives.
I think that people less responding to intentionally meaningless comments is a good thing. Therefore, trivial disincentives for doing this are a good thing. Therefore, removing them in this specific situation is a bad thing.
People respond to incentives. Especially loss-related incentives. I do not give homeless people nickels even though I can afford to give a nearly arbitrary number of homeless people nickels. The set of people with karma less than five will be outright unable to reply—the set of people with karma greater than five will just be disincentivized, and that’s still something.
The prior probability of someone being able to explain negative-value Will_Newsome’s comments in a way that provides value for LW readers is already epsilon. Even without the disincentives.
I think that people less responding to intentionally meaningless comments is a good thing. Therefore, trivial disincentives for doing this are a good thing. Therefore, removing them in this specific situation is a bad thing.