How should I interpret this? I could say that I’m the most-controversial poster on the top 15 list, and be proud of that.
I think it matters why you’re controversial. When wedrifid is controversial, it seems like it’s for different reasons than when you’re controversial, and it might be worthwhile to contemplate that. It also seems worthwhile to break apart what sort of posts and comments have led to the most downvotes.
For example, my total is 91% upvotes. My book reviews have gotten 100% upvotes, as well as my recent comments on controversial topics. The lowest one of my DA sequence posts got 92% upvotes. On the low side, my MLP fanfic got 70% upvotes, and my attempt to recast a Biblical story as a Bayesian parable got 67% upvotes, and a link supporting adversarial debating got 60% upvotes. I don’t have the time to investigate my comments, but I imagine there would be systematic differences between types.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that some people get downvoted for bike shed reasons; if you’re making an opaque technical point, your comment’s score will sometimes be more indicative of its politeness (which everyone feels competent at assessing) rather than your comment’s correctness (which only a few feel competent at assessing).
Before checking, would you guess that the top 15 have higher, or lower, % positive scores than most users?
Most users measured how? I think it would be most meaningful to look at people weighted by karma- I imagine there are lots of people who post a few times, get downvoted a bunch, and then never come back, who you wouldn’t want to be a significant part of the analysis.
Regardless of that effect, we know that the top posters have the highest number of gross upvotes (modulo a person or two). That strikes me as strong reason to suspect they have higher percentages of upvotes- but it would be interesting to look at the upvote and downvote numbers for the top ~100 posters and see if the rankings change significantly when you move from sorting by net upvotes to sorting by gross upvotes.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that some people get downvoted for bike shed reasons; if you’re making an opaque technical point, your comment’s score will sometimes be more indicative of its politeness (which everyone feels competent at assessing) rather than your comment’s correctness (which only a few feel competent at assessing).
On a similar note, the established voting pattern in a thread that you join matters a lot—people establish ‘sides’. If you are willing to rebut particular arguments from the side that is already winning socially, expect downvotes regardless of merit (even if the comment on net ends up positive there will still be some downvotes according to existing trend.)
The articles of mine that get the most downvotes are the ones like this that are provably correct. The more rigorous and logical a post is, the more down-votes it gets, because people will down-vote it if they think they detect a single error in it, and a sizable percentage of readers will misunderstand the argument.
The thing where people down-vote links because they think there’s a community consensus that we should down-vote links—I don’t like that. If a link is useful and relevant, I want to see it. I’m not here to give out brownie points for original contributions; I’m here to learn.
That is similar to the bike shed observation I noted.
One of the things I have noticed about your posting style is that you don’t seem to go out of your way to prevent or reverse misunderstandings. Simply telling someone that they are wrong, and telling them to work it out on their own, is not particularly persuasive, and you should not expect it to either be persuasive or earn you status.
Stating negative claims about others carefully and politely does much to improve others’ reaction to them. In particular, the many contrarians on LW dramatically increase the value of carefulness.
But I do go out of my way to respond to comments and correct misunderstandings, or correct my post if they have found an error in it, more than most posters on this site do. And I try to anticipate prevent misunderstandings; it just isn’t possible.
Much of the difference that I see is attitude, but some of it is tactics. The attitude difference is important for status reasons: others may be much more willing to listen to a “let’s figure out what went wrong” than a “listen harder.” The tactics difference is in trying out more angles of approach, as well as trying to figure out how what you said sounds to others, like you’ve done recently. Changing presentation errors is often as useful as changing factual errors.
Would more be helpful, or do you think that’s enough?
I think it matters why you’re controversial. When wedrifid is controversial, it seems like it’s for different reasons than when you’re controversial, and it might be worthwhile to contemplate that. It also seems worthwhile to break apart what sort of posts and comments have led to the most downvotes.
For example, my total is 91% upvotes. My book reviews have gotten 100% upvotes, as well as my recent comments on controversial topics. The lowest one of my DA sequence posts got 92% upvotes. On the low side, my MLP fanfic got 70% upvotes, and my attempt to recast a Biblical story as a Bayesian parable got 67% upvotes, and a link supporting adversarial debating got 60% upvotes. I don’t have the time to investigate my comments, but I imagine there would be systematic differences between types.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that some people get downvoted for bike shed reasons; if you’re making an opaque technical point, your comment’s score will sometimes be more indicative of its politeness (which everyone feels competent at assessing) rather than your comment’s correctness (which only a few feel competent at assessing).
Most users measured how? I think it would be most meaningful to look at people weighted by karma- I imagine there are lots of people who post a few times, get downvoted a bunch, and then never come back, who you wouldn’t want to be a significant part of the analysis.
Regardless of that effect, we know that the top posters have the highest number of gross upvotes (modulo a person or two). That strikes me as strong reason to suspect they have higher percentages of upvotes- but it would be interesting to look at the upvote and downvote numbers for the top ~100 posters and see if the rankings change significantly when you move from sorting by net upvotes to sorting by gross upvotes.
On a similar note, the established voting pattern in a thread that you join matters a lot—people establish ‘sides’. If you are willing to rebut particular arguments from the side that is already winning socially, expect downvotes regardless of merit (even if the comment on net ends up positive there will still be some downvotes according to existing trend.)
The articles of mine that get the most downvotes are the ones like this that are provably correct. The more rigorous and logical a post is, the more down-votes it gets, because people will down-vote it if they think they detect a single error in it, and a sizable percentage of readers will misunderstand the argument.
The thing where people down-vote links because they think there’s a community consensus that we should down-vote links—I don’t like that. If a link is useful and relevant, I want to see it. I’m not here to give out brownie points for original contributions; I’m here to learn.
That is similar to the bike shed observation I noted.
One of the things I have noticed about your posting style is that you don’t seem to go out of your way to prevent or reverse misunderstandings. Simply telling someone that they are wrong, and telling them to work it out on their own, is not particularly persuasive, and you should not expect it to either be persuasive or earn you status.
Stating negative claims about others carefully and politely does much to improve others’ reaction to them. In particular, the many contrarians on LW dramatically increase the value of carefulness.
This is especially amusing in light of the recent reverse situation between Phil and Eliezer in a recent rerun.
Can you give a link or a title? I don’t remember what it was.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/5v/church_vs_taskforce/44x
(I didn’t vote on those posts, though I did comment already)
But I do go out of my way to respond to comments and correct misunderstandings, or correct my post if they have found an error in it, more than most posters on this site do. And I try to anticipate prevent misunderstandings; it just isn’t possible.
I think there is a perceptible difference between correcting and reversing misunderstandings. Is that the impression you have?
Can you elaborate?
Much of the difference that I see is attitude, but some of it is tactics. The attitude difference is important for status reasons: others may be much more willing to listen to a “let’s figure out what went wrong” than a “listen harder.” The tactics difference is in trying out more angles of approach, as well as trying to figure out how what you said sounds to others, like you’ve done recently. Changing presentation errors is often as useful as changing factual errors.
Would more be helpful, or do you think that’s enough?
Do you think this applies to all posts of this type, or only to yours? Can you think of an example from another normally well-received poster?