Hm. In theory, I agree with you—I think a good equilibrium (ignoring the cost of taking the time to vote on stuff all the time) would be lots and lots of voting to express views on how worthwhile the content is.
Let me articulate a little bit more of how I perceive karma being used in practice on LW.
Sometimes, it’s a scout-mindset way of saying “this is a worthwhile comment. It should be more visible, I think people widely agree on that, and I’m going to help it out by upvoting.” It’s a similar function to what Kriss describes as the old function of hipsters. This is good and I would want this sort of voting to continue unrestricted.
Sometimes, it’s a soldier-mindset way of saying “I’m on the side that’s for/against this point, and I have to up/downvote it lest it appear that the other side is more popular!” In soldier-mindset situations where the post supports the majority view, this looks like a lot of upvotes, but with many more total votes than upvotes. If the post supports a minority view, this looks like a post with a decent number of downvotes, a couple upvotes, never getting much oxygen because the soldier-mindset majority has inevitably suppressed it. Overall, this seems bad for site epistemics, and I would want to see zero or rate-limited voting in these situations.
Sometimes, it’s a more intimate way of expressing warmth/appreciation/encouragement or saying “I read this,” or coldness/discouragement, where you often can guess exactly who upvoted/downvoted you. Here, upvotes seem good (a signal of a valuable discussion), whereas downvotes seem bad (by creating bad feelings while not actually terminating an unproductive discussion, and potentially catalyzing demon thread formation).
I think that if LW implemented rate-limited voting, we’d still get the scout-mindset form of voting, and my intuition is that most people, especially established users, would mainly choose to spend their upvotes on rewarding quality content, punishing unusually bad content, and encouraging conversations they’d like to have. And they would reallocate votes away from sides-taking contests and demon threads.
I could be very wrong about that, but it’s these intuitions that make me support rate-limited voting.
Hm. In theory, I agree with you—I think a good equilibrium (ignoring the cost of taking the time to vote on stuff all the time) would be lots and lots of voting to express views on how worthwhile the content is.
Let me articulate a little bit more of how I perceive karma being used in practice on LW.
Sometimes, it’s a scout-mindset way of saying “this is a worthwhile comment. It should be more visible, I think people widely agree on that, and I’m going to help it out by upvoting.” It’s a similar function to what Kriss describes as the old function of hipsters. This is good and I would want this sort of voting to continue unrestricted.
Sometimes, it’s a soldier-mindset way of saying “I’m on the side that’s for/against this point, and I have to up/downvote it lest it appear that the other side is more popular!” In soldier-mindset situations where the post supports the majority view, this looks like a lot of upvotes, but with many more total votes than upvotes. If the post supports a minority view, this looks like a post with a decent number of downvotes, a couple upvotes, never getting much oxygen because the soldier-mindset majority has inevitably suppressed it. Overall, this seems bad for site epistemics, and I would want to see zero or rate-limited voting in these situations.
Sometimes, it’s a more intimate way of expressing warmth/appreciation/encouragement or saying “I read this,” or coldness/discouragement, where you often can guess exactly who upvoted/downvoted you. Here, upvotes seem good (a signal of a valuable discussion), whereas downvotes seem bad (by creating bad feelings while not actually terminating an unproductive discussion, and potentially catalyzing demon thread formation).
I think that if LW implemented rate-limited voting, we’d still get the scout-mindset form of voting, and my intuition is that most people, especially established users, would mainly choose to spend their upvotes on rewarding quality content, punishing unusually bad content, and encouraging conversations they’d like to have. And they would reallocate votes away from sides-taking contests and demon threads.
I could be very wrong about that, but it’s these intuitions that make me support rate-limited voting.