I downvote more than most commenters, but I’m worried about demotivating people and impeding the growth of the community. Do you think the good/bad feelings people get from an upvote/downvote are more relative to other people’s karma (in which case there should be no net demotivating effect), or do you think they’re more independent of other people’s karma?
I agree with you that LW hands out too much free karma on average, but my main gripe is that it’s bad at valuing different subjects. In particular, Harry Potter comments are overvalued relative to meaty comments about subjects like singularity strategy.
Another overvalued category of comments is those that many people agree with, but that aren’t worth incentivizing because they would have been made anyway.
Two points where I disagree with you on what to downvote are very short comments (I would like to see more of them; they tend to be dense in content) and what you call “signals of pseudo-modesty” (which I think often are genuine and useful expressions of incomplete confidence that improve the tone of the discussion).
Do you think the good/bad feelings people get from an upvote/downvote are more relative to other people’s karma [...], or do you think they’re more independent of other people’s karma?
I have no one’s experience to go on but my own, but here was mine: when I first started commenting on LW, I was nervous and afraid of downvotes and I didn’t care at all about other people’s karma; I just wanted to not look terribly stupid. Now that I have been here for a long time and made probably many more comments than I should have (for my health), the main things that bother me are when a downvote is unexpected or when I make a comment and a reply is contradicting me and that reply has more karma than the comment I made. And other times when my comments seem to me to be just as good as other comments in the thread, but get nowhere near as much karma. And also, I’m not entirely sure if we want to encourage the type of person who is hypersensitive to downvotes to come here. My gut says we do, but it also says we relax our desire to not have bad comments too much relative to this type of person’s actual value. Complex question.
In particular, Harry Potter comments
I know! If total karma were hidden, though, it wouldn’t as much of a problem. People could just weight against the inflation in ‘fun’ threads like that. (Ever notice how fun-typethreadsinflate karma?) I also agree with you that posts in Main should have 3x karma instead of 10x. (I was pretty shocked when I found out it was 10x after writing this; if it had gotten the same score (though it wouldn’t have)...)
Two points where I disagree with you on what to downvote are very short comments
This is one place where you and I just seem to have different preferences. Maybe it’s because you have an easier time understanding dense material, but I seem to require more words. As an unfair analogy, compare reading the Twelve Virtues of Rationality to the entire Sequences. Many lessons from the latter are in the former, but it’s really hard to get them out of the former without the latter. I made a modest effort at this and actually surprised myself at how much I got right, but most people do not do this.
and what you call “signals of pseudo-modesty”
I have since changed my opinion of this slightly; since underconfidence is a rare enough sin I usually respond to it with a private message with inquiry rather than a downvote (note also that I mentioned this in the context of thinking a comment is looking for karma; I acknowledge how low the base rate is on this[!]).
Edit: Generally, karma has gotten massively inflated lately. Looking at both Top Comments sections, nearly all of the first 600 are from the last five months.
I wonder what would happen if we split the downvote button into “I’m voting you down but please don’t feel bad” and “I’m voting you down and you should feel bad”.
I downvote more than most commenters, but I’m worried about demotivating people and impeding the growth of the community. Do you think the good/bad feelings people get from an upvote/downvote are more relative to other people’s karma (in which case there should be no net demotivating effect), or do you think they’re more independent of other people’s karma?
I agree with you that LW hands out too much free karma on average, but my main gripe is that it’s bad at valuing different subjects. In particular, Harry Potter comments are overvalued relative to meaty comments about subjects like singularity strategy.
Another overvalued category of comments is those that many people agree with, but that aren’t worth incentivizing because they would have been made anyway.
Two points where I disagree with you on what to downvote are very short comments (I would like to see more of them; they tend to be dense in content) and what you call “signals of pseudo-modesty” (which I think often are genuine and useful expressions of incomplete confidence that improve the tone of the discussion).
I have no one’s experience to go on but my own, but here was mine: when I first started commenting on LW, I was nervous and afraid of downvotes and I didn’t care at all about other people’s karma; I just wanted to not look terribly stupid. Now that I have been here for a long time and made probably many more comments than I should have (for my health), the main things that bother me are when a downvote is unexpected or when I make a comment and a reply is contradicting me and that reply has more karma than the comment I made. And other times when my comments seem to me to be just as good as other comments in the thread, but get nowhere near as much karma. And also, I’m not entirely sure if we want to encourage the type of person who is hypersensitive to downvotes to come here. My gut says we do, but it also says we relax our desire to not have bad comments too much relative to this type of person’s actual value. Complex question.
I know! If total karma were hidden, though, it wouldn’t as much of a problem. People could just weight against the inflation in ‘fun’ threads like that. (Ever notice how fun-type threads inflate karma?) I also agree with you that posts in Main should have 3x karma instead of 10x. (I was pretty shocked when I found out it was 10x after writing this; if it had gotten the same score (though it wouldn’t have)...)
This is one place where you and I just seem to have different preferences. Maybe it’s because you have an easier time understanding dense material, but I seem to require more words. As an unfair analogy, compare reading the Twelve Virtues of Rationality to the entire Sequences. Many lessons from the latter are in the former, but it’s really hard to get them out of the former without the latter. I made a modest effort at this and actually surprised myself at how much I got right, but most people do not do this.
I have since changed my opinion of this slightly; since underconfidence is a rare enough sin I usually respond to it with a private message with inquiry rather than a downvote (note also that I mentioned this in the context of thinking a comment is looking for karma; I acknowledge how low the base rate is on this[!]).
Edit: Generally, karma has gotten massively inflated lately. Looking at both Top Comments sections, nearly all of the first 600 are from the last five months.
I wonder what would happen if we split the downvote button into “I’m voting you down but please don’t feel bad” and “I’m voting you down and you should feel bad”.
As of right now, 9 out of the top 10 discussion comments for last week are in the Harry Potter threads.
And for all that I enjoy discussing HPMoR, I can’t say I feel that this deserves to be my most upvoted comment ever.