What do you mean by “fighting mediocrity”? Should I interpret it literally as “I don’t like mediocre people”? Or as “I want to reward excellence”? If it is the latter you are aiming it, use upvotes, not downvotes (for ideal rational agents the two might be symmetric, but for people they aren’t: the emotional signal from getting a downvoting is very different from the emotional signal of not getting an upvote).
the emotional signal from getting a downvoting is very different from the emotional signal of not getting an upvote
Exactly, and this is a reason why downvoting is important (and shouldn’t be systematically countered): it allows scaring people away (who are not of our tribe). A forum culture that would merely abstain from upvoting is worse at scaring people away than one that actively downvotes.
Should I interpret it literally as “I don’t like mediocre people”? Or as “I want to reward excellence”?
Neither, it’s not about what I like (in the sense of emotional response), or about what other people experience, but about what to encourage on the forum to make it a better place.
(Right now it’s not particularly relevant, at least as an intervention on the level of social norms, because the main current issue seems to be that too little meaningful discussion is happening lately, and that doesn’t seem fixable by changing/maintaining voting attitudes.)
What do you mean by “fighting mediocrity”? Should I interpret it literally as “I don’t like mediocre people”? Or as “I want to reward excellence”? If it is the latter you are aiming it, use upvotes, not downvotes (for ideal rational agents the two might be symmetric, but for people they aren’t: the emotional signal from getting a downvoting is very different from the emotional signal of not getting an upvote).
Exactly, and this is a reason why downvoting is important (and shouldn’t be systematically countered): it allows scaring people away (who are not of our tribe). A forum culture that would merely abstain from upvoting is worse at scaring people away than one that actively downvotes.
(Sorry, I heavily edited the grandparent since the first revision.)
Neither, it’s not about what I like (in the sense of emotional response), or about what other people experience, but about what to encourage on the forum to make it a better place.
(Right now it’s not particularly relevant, at least as an intervention on the level of social norms, because the main current issue seems to be that too little meaningful discussion is happening lately, and that doesn’t seem fixable by changing/maintaining voting attitudes.)