This should be reserved to fight content which is offensive, spam, trolling, rampant crackpottery, blatant off-topic etc.
Not if you aim to enforce a level of discussion higher than mere absence of pathology. I like for there to be places that distance themselves from (particular kinds of) mediocrity...
I personally made a rule of upvoting any content with net negative score which doesn’t deserve a downvote
...which is made more difficult by egalitarian instincts.
I’d say it is an extension of the “Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.”
It’s not. Punishment is different enough from deciding who to talk with. See also Yvain on safe spaces.
Not if you aim to enforce a level of discussion higher than mere absence of pathology.
Downvotes are not the way to achieve it. The way to achieve it is by positive personal example and upvoting content which is exemplary. Why are downvotes bad? Because:
We want to allow “mediocre” people (some of which have an unrealized potential to be excellent) that want to learn from excellent people (I hope you agree). Such people can make innocent mistakes. There’s no reason to downvote them as long as they’re willing to listen and aren’t arrogant in their ignorance. Downvoting will only drive them away.
Even smart people occasionally say foolish things. Downvoting sends such a strong negative signal that it discourages even people that get much more upvotes than downvotes. By “discourages” I don’t mean “discourages from saying foolish things”, I mean discourages from participating in the community in general.
Most content is not voted upon by most of the community, therefore statistical variance is large. Again, since the discouragement of downvotes is not cancelled out by the encouragement of upvotes, you get much more discouragement than you want.
Downvotes transform arguments into sort of arena fights where the people in the crowd are throwing spoiled vegetables on the players they don’t like. The emotional aura this creates is very bad for rationality. It’s excellent for blue-green politics (downvote THEM!) and death spirals.
Punishment is different enough from deciding who to talk with.
If you don’t want to talk to someone, don’t upvote her and don’t reply to her. The psychological impact of downvoting is equivalent to punishment.
See also Yvain on safe spaces.
This is completely different. “Safe spaces” are about banning content which might offend someone’s sensibilities. My suggestion is about “banning” less content.
I agree with enough of this. I know there are immediate downsides and hypothetical dangers. But the upsides seem indispensable. The argument needs to consider the balance of the two.
If you don’t want to talk to someone, don’t upvote her and don’t reply to her.
They remain in the fabric of the forum, making it less fun to read. Not upvoting doesn’t address this issue.
“Safe spaces” are about banning content which might offend someone’s sensibilities. My suggestion is about “banning” less content.
Things that are not fun (for certain sense of “fun”) offend my sensibilities (for certain sense of “offend”). My suggestion is to discourage them by downvoting. (This is the intended analogy, which is strong enough to carry over a lot of Yvain’s discussion, even if the concept “safe spaces” doesn’t apply in detail, although I think it does to a greater extent than I think you think it does.)
Let me rephrase. I suggest downvoting a comment only when it makes you think “I don’t want this person in this community”. Don’t downvote comments which might be reasonably attributed to an OK person making an honest mistake.
This sabotages any chance of using karma to find and sort good comments from bad in the future. I want good content to be differentiated from bad regardless of source. I upvote known trolls when they say smart shit and I downvote eliezer when he’s being a douchebag.
I wasn’t at all suggesting to upvote / downvote on ad hominem basis. When someone is being a douchebag, downvote her by all means. When someone is stating an opinion you consider to be wrong while doing it in honest and respectful manner, don’t downvote. If you want to express your disagreement, reply and (politely) explain why you disagree.
We want to allow “mediocre” people (some of which have an unrealized potential to be excellent) that want to learn from excellent people (I hope you agree).
I have no problem with that, my problem is with the opposite—people learning from mediocre (or worse) folk, because they don’t realize that their content is flawed (which downvotes signal).
IMO on the Light side you learn from something when you can tell it’s correct, not when someone tells you it’s correct, much less when someone anonymous tells you it’s correct.
We want to allow “mediocre” people (some of which have an unrealized potential to be excellent) that want to learn from excellent people (I hope you agree).
To some extend yes, but we don’t want eternal September either. There concern about the average IQ that reported in the LW census dropping over time.
Downvoting sends such a strong negative signal that it discourages even people that get much more upvotes than downvotes.
If we would have less downvotes in general then every single downvote would create a much stronger negative signal than it does at the moment.
We want to allow “mediocre” people (some of which have an unrealized potential to be excellent) that want to learn from excellent people (I hope you agree).
To some extend yes, buat we don’t want eternal September either. There concern about the average IQ that reported in the LW census dropping over time.
I’m not that concerned about average IQ. The crucial questions here are what is the purpose you see in LW and how you envision its future. If you want LW to be an elitist discussion forum for high-IQ people comfortable with a relatively aggressive / competitive environment, then it makes sense for you to use downvotes relatively liberally.
I think that the greatest potential value in LW lies elsewhere. I think LW can become a community and a cultural movement that promotes rationality and humanist values. A movement that has the power to steer history into a direction more of our liking. If you accept this vision, then you should be aiming at a much broader group (while making sure the widening circle doesn’t water down our spirit and values). I envision LW as a place where people come to connect to other people that share similar worldview and values, not necessarily all of them being in the top IQ percentile. The “spiritual leadership” of the movement should consist predominantly of highly intelligent people that everyone can learn from, but it is not a necessary requirement for every member.
If we would have less downvotes in general then every single downvote would create a much stronger negative signal than it does at the moment.
This effect is only significant for people who spend sufficient time on the forum to get used to the “downvote background”. Moreover, I think it is far from strong enough to cancel the reduction in downvotes.
The LessWrong brand is not optimized for reaching a broad public. To the extend that’s the goal “effective altruism” is a more effective label under which to operate.
In my view the goal of LessWrong is to provide a forum for debating complex intellectual ideas. Specifically ideas about how to improve human thinking and the FAI problem.
Having a good signal-to-noise ratio matters for that purpose.
I think LW can become a community and a cultural movement that promotes rationality and humanist values. A movement that has the power to steer history into a direction more of our liking.
Steer history?
When you said “cultural movement”, did you really mean “social and political movement” for it is those which steer history?
And what gives you the idea that LW could become massively popular, anyway? There’s nothing here particularly interesting for hoi polloi.
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.)
Not if you aim to enforce a level of discussion higher than mere absence of pathology. I like for there to be places that distance themselves from (particular kinds of) mediocrity...
...which is made more difficult by egalitarian instincts.
It’s not. Punishment is different enough from deciding who to talk with. See also Yvain on safe spaces.
Downvotes are not the way to achieve it. The way to achieve it is by positive personal example and upvoting content which is exemplary. Why are downvotes bad? Because:
We want to allow “mediocre” people (some of which have an unrealized potential to be excellent) that want to learn from excellent people (I hope you agree). Such people can make innocent mistakes. There’s no reason to downvote them as long as they’re willing to listen and aren’t arrogant in their ignorance. Downvoting will only drive them away.
Even smart people occasionally say foolish things. Downvoting sends such a strong negative signal that it discourages even people that get much more upvotes than downvotes. By “discourages” I don’t mean “discourages from saying foolish things”, I mean discourages from participating in the community in general.
Most content is not voted upon by most of the community, therefore statistical variance is large. Again, since the discouragement of downvotes is not cancelled out by the encouragement of upvotes, you get much more discouragement than you want.
Downvotes transform arguments into sort of arena fights where the people in the crowd are throwing spoiled vegetables on the players they don’t like. The emotional aura this creates is very bad for rationality. It’s excellent for blue-green politics (downvote THEM!) and death spirals.
If you don’t want to talk to someone, don’t upvote her and don’t reply to her. The psychological impact of downvoting is equivalent to punishment.
This is completely different. “Safe spaces” are about banning content which might offend someone’s sensibilities. My suggestion is about “banning” less content.
I agree with enough of this. I know there are immediate downsides and hypothetical dangers. But the upsides seem indispensable. The argument needs to consider the balance of the two.
They remain in the fabric of the forum, making it less fun to read. Not upvoting doesn’t address this issue.
Things that are not fun (for certain sense of “fun”) offend my sensibilities (for certain sense of “offend”). My suggestion is to discourage them by downvoting. (This is the intended analogy, which is strong enough to carry over a lot of Yvain’s discussion, even if the concept “safe spaces” doesn’t apply in detail, although I think it does to a greater extent than I think you think it does.)
Let me rephrase. I suggest downvoting a comment only when it makes you think “I don’t want this person in this community”. Don’t downvote comments which might be reasonably attributed to an OK person making an honest mistake.
This sabotages any chance of using karma to find and sort good comments from bad in the future. I want good content to be differentiated from bad regardless of source. I upvote known trolls when they say smart shit and I downvote eliezer when he’s being a douchebag.
I wasn’t at all suggesting to upvote / downvote on ad hominem basis. When someone is being a douchebag, downvote her by all means. When someone is stating an opinion you consider to be wrong while doing it in honest and respectful manner, don’t downvote. If you want to express your disagreement, reply and (politely) explain why you disagree.
I have no problem with that, my problem is with the opposite—people learning from mediocre (or worse) folk, because they don’t realize that their content is flawed (which downvotes signal).
IMO on the Light side you learn from something when you can tell it’s correct, not when someone tells you it’s correct, much less when someone anonymous tells you it’s correct.
To some extend yes, but we don’t want eternal September either. There concern about the average IQ that reported in the LW census dropping over time.
If we would have less downvotes in general then every single downvote would create a much stronger negative signal than it does at the moment.
Hi Christian, thx for commenting!
I’m not that concerned about average IQ. The crucial questions here are what is the purpose you see in LW and how you envision its future. If you want LW to be an elitist discussion forum for high-IQ people comfortable with a relatively aggressive / competitive environment, then it makes sense for you to use downvotes relatively liberally.
I think that the greatest potential value in LW lies elsewhere. I think LW can become a community and a cultural movement that promotes rationality and humanist values. A movement that has the power to steer history into a direction more of our liking. If you accept this vision, then you should be aiming at a much broader group (while making sure the widening circle doesn’t water down our spirit and values). I envision LW as a place where people come to connect to other people that share similar worldview and values, not necessarily all of them being in the top IQ percentile. The “spiritual leadership” of the movement should consist predominantly of highly intelligent people that everyone can learn from, but it is not a necessary requirement for every member.
This effect is only significant for people who spend sufficient time on the forum to get used to the “downvote background”. Moreover, I think it is far from strong enough to cancel the reduction in downvotes.
The LessWrong brand is not optimized for reaching a broad public. To the extend that’s the goal “effective altruism” is a more effective label under which to operate.
In my view the goal of LessWrong is to provide a forum for debating complex intellectual ideas. Specifically ideas about how to improve human thinking and the FAI problem. Having a good signal-to-noise ratio matters for that purpose.
Steer history?
When you said “cultural movement”, did you really mean “social and political movement” for it is those which steer history?
And what gives you the idea that LW could become massively popular, anyway? There’s nothing here particularly interesting for hoi polloi.
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.)