I only happened to be appointed a moderator because I was in the list of top 10 posters at a particular time, and I don’t feel like I should have any particular authority to make the rules.
You are selling yourself short. The fact that you have a 94% positive karma rating counts in your favor. Being a MIRI research associate also means that you have a former affiliation which qualifies you.
But if you don’t want the job, I think the straightforward way is to have a procedure where differently people volunteer to be moderators and then Eliezer as main person responsible for this website picks on of those people to transfer to them moderator powers. Preferably a person with >1000 karma and a high positive karma rating.
Good idea. But this volunteering shouldn’t happen here in some subthread. Instead somebody—probably Kaj—should create a volunteering post where anybody can volunteer and with one top-level comment to discuss the voting or candidates.
I was one of Eugine’s targets (though to a lesser extent than some). I have ~6200 karma and ~90% positive.
I think David Gerard was one of Eugine’s targets. He has >8000 karma and ~75% positive.
Stuart Armstrong was (so at least one of his comments suggests) one of Eugine’s targets for a bit. He has >13000 karma and ~90% positive.
Cyan says he was one of Eugine’s targets. He has ~5000 karma and ~90% positive.
Ialdabaoth was one of the first people (maybe the first?) to complain of Eugine’s abuse. He has ~2000 karma and ~75% positive.
In the course of looking out prominent contributors who were hit by Eugine, I didn’t find anyone who looked like they might have been high-karma and high-positive-proportion without Eugine’s attacks.
[EDITED to add: For the avoidance of doubt, the above is not intended to be a complete list, nor a list of the highest-karma, best-positive-fraction, most-abused-by-Eugine, or any other such selection. It’s just some examples I noticed.]
I currently have 685 karma at 65% positive. Assuming 200 downvotes from Eugine, upvotes of X, and legitimate downvotes of Y, then X/(X+Y+200) = 65% and X-Y-200=685. Solving gives Y=599, X=1484. So without Eugine I would have had 885 karma at 71% positive.
If I had 300 downvotes from Eugine, that would be Y=511, X=1496 which is 985 karma at 75% positive.
Not necessarily. There is only so much influence a surge of undeserved downvotes can have over a consistently high-quality, long-term contributor. After all most people do vote more or less fairly, otherwise we wouldn’t bother with a karma system.
As gjm summarizes that’s not the case. I don’t think it should automatically be the case the the people downvoted by Eugene are ineligible for moderator. However having been the candidate of a downvote attack doesn’t make you the best person to objectively decide how to punish the next mass downvoter, so it’s okay that people downvoted by Eugene score less well on that metric.
I want a moderator who’s not a controversial figure and who’s trusted to make objective decisions.
Either one. Of course, I have no way to know if the statement is literally true, since I don’t have access to other people’s karma scores and downvote records, but Eugene downvoted enough that the effect is plausible. You should at least consider, when selecting moderators, whether the potential moderator was mass-downvoted and adjust the karma and karma ratio cutoffs appropriately.
You are selling yourself short. The fact that you have a 94% positive karma rating counts in your favor. Being a MIRI research associate also means that you have a former affiliation which qualifies you.
But if you don’t want the job, I think the straightforward way is to have a procedure where differently people volunteer to be moderators and then Eliezer as main person responsible for this website picks on of those people to transfer to them moderator powers. Preferably a person with >1000 karma and a high positive karma rating.
Good idea. But this volunteering shouldn’t happen here in some subthread. Instead somebody—probably Kaj—should create a volunteering post where anybody can volunteer and with one top-level comment to discuss the voting or candidates.
If you do this, you’ve just declared people downvoted by Eugene to be ineligible for moderator.
I was one of Eugine’s targets (though to a lesser extent than some). I have ~6200 karma and ~90% positive.
I think David Gerard was one of Eugine’s targets. He has >8000 karma and ~75% positive.
Stuart Armstrong was (so at least one of his comments suggests) one of Eugine’s targets for a bit. He has >13000 karma and ~90% positive.
Cyan says he was one of Eugine’s targets. He has ~5000 karma and ~90% positive.
Ialdabaoth was one of the first people (maybe the first?) to complain of Eugine’s abuse. He has ~2000 karma and ~75% positive.
In the course of looking out prominent contributors who were hit by Eugine, I didn’t find anyone who looked like they might have been high-karma and high-positive-proportion without Eugine’s attacks.
[EDITED to add: For the avoidance of doubt, the above is not intended to be a complete list, nor a list of the highest-karma, best-positive-fraction, most-abused-by-Eugine, or any other such selection. It’s just some examples I noticed.]
I currently have 685 karma at 65% positive. Assuming 200 downvotes from Eugine, upvotes of X, and legitimate downvotes of Y, then X/(X+Y+200) = 65% and X-Y-200=685. Solving gives Y=599, X=1484. So without Eugine I would have had 885 karma at 71% positive.
If I had 300 downvotes from Eugine, that would be Y=511, X=1496 which is 985 karma at 75% positive.
Not necessarily. There is only so much influence a surge of undeserved downvotes can have over a consistently high-quality, long-term contributor. After all most people do vote more or less fairly, otherwise we wouldn’t bother with a karma system.
As gjm summarizes that’s not the case. I don’t think it should automatically be the case the the people downvoted by Eugene are ineligible for moderator. However having been the candidate of a downvote attack doesn’t make you the best person to objectively decide how to punish the next mass downvoter, so it’s okay that people downvoted by Eugene score less well on that metric.
I want a moderator who’s not a controversial figure and who’s trusted to make objective decisions.
Do you mean a hypothetical future mass-downvoter, or actual Eugene?
Either one. Of course, I have no way to know if the statement is literally true, since I don’t have access to other people’s karma scores and downvote records, but Eugene downvoted enough that the effect is plausible. You should at least consider, when selecting moderators, whether the potential moderator was mass-downvoted and adjust the karma and karma ratio cutoffs appropriately.