I don’t see how it’s fair of you to encourage others to downvote a comment. If people agree with you on the evaluation of this comment, they will vote accordingly. If not, not.
By explicitly requesting downvotes, you are encouraging people that would not have taken this decision otherwise to downvote, circumventing the normal thought process. The Karma system allows each user one up/downvote per item, and you’re supposed to up/downvote if you personally consider something worthwhile or not. By encouraging others to downvote, you are converting personal influence into a multi-downvote right for yourself.
You might of course believe that you, as founder and admin, represent the true volition of LessWrong, which is fair enough. You already are the judge of what gets promoted to the front page, which I don’t have a problem with, as it is clearly stated. But in that case, you might as well directly access the database and bring the downvote level to what you’d like it to be. By inducing a downvote mob, turning the community against certain users, you are corroding community spirit. What you just did is analogous to the popular kid saying to another “Go away, we don’t like you. Right everybody?”. Again, if you don’t want certain users here, as you have indicated with timtyler, you are free to ban them outright. But if you don’t want to assert such a right, then you shouldn’t be doing it indirectly either. This is dealing with the problem at the wrong level of abstraction.
This community has been built around your writings and contains a large amount of people who take your opinion as authority. I urge you to refrain from using this power as a community management tool.
I think that asking the community to downvote timtyler is a good deal less disruptive than an outright ban would be. It makes it clear that I am not speaking only for myself, which may or may not have an effect on certain types of trolls and trolling. And doing nothing is not a viable option..
I know wellkept gardens die by pacifism. Notice I did not say you shouldn’t moderate. They also die by micromanagement and pitting users against each other. I’ve been running forums (some wellkept, others not so much) for over 10 years now so believe me I’ve had similar conversations from the opposite side more than I care to remember. My intention is not to cause you grief. However, soliciting up/downvotes would be called gaming/voting-rings if done by anybody else. And by prompting downvotes, it’s not clear that ‘you are not speaking only for yourself’. If the community was against timtyler, they would downvote spontaneously, without the prodding. Now the community’s signal has been muddied, which is part of the problem.
All I’m saying is ammend the rules or uphold them. Sidestepping them is not a good place to go. In any case, I think I’ve communicated my point as clear as I could have, so I’ll leave it here.
It’s too inconvenient to downvote everything. At some point, it just feels like not being worth the trouble, you’ve already done it too many times, besides you won’t even read what the user writes. A community analogue of banning a user must be a judgment about the user, not a judgment about specific comments. The number of users who disapprove of the user, not of specific comments. This requires a new feature to do well. Could be as simple as vote up/down buttons on the user page.
I don’t see how it’s fair of you to encourage others to downvote a comment. If people agree with you on the evaluation of this comment, they will vote accordingly. If not, not.
By explicitly requesting downvotes, you are encouraging people that would not have taken this decision otherwise to downvote, circumventing the normal thought process. The Karma system allows each user one up/downvote per item, and you’re supposed to up/downvote if you personally consider something worthwhile or not. By encouraging others to downvote, you are converting personal influence into a multi-downvote right for yourself.
You might of course believe that you, as founder and admin, represent the true volition of LessWrong, which is fair enough. You already are the judge of what gets promoted to the front page, which I don’t have a problem with, as it is clearly stated. But in that case, you might as well directly access the database and bring the downvote level to what you’d like it to be. By inducing a downvote mob, turning the community against certain users, you are corroding community spirit. What you just did is analogous to the popular kid saying to another “Go away, we don’t like you. Right everybody?”. Again, if you don’t want certain users here, as you have indicated with timtyler, you are free to ban them outright. But if you don’t want to assert such a right, then you shouldn’t be doing it indirectly either. This is dealing with the problem at the wrong level of abstraction.
This community has been built around your writings and contains a large amount of people who take your opinion as authority. I urge you to refrain from using this power as a community management tool.
Please upvote this comment.
Truly yours,
/Irony
:)
I think that asking the community to downvote timtyler is a good deal less disruptive than an outright ban would be. It makes it clear that I am not speaking only for myself, which may or may not have an effect on certain types of trolls and trolling. And doing nothing is not a viable option..
I know wellkept gardens die by pacifism. Notice I did not say you shouldn’t moderate. They also die by micromanagement and pitting users against each other. I’ve been running forums (some wellkept, others not so much) for over 10 years now so believe me I’ve had similar conversations from the opposite side more than I care to remember. My intention is not to cause you grief. However, soliciting up/downvotes would be called gaming/voting-rings if done by anybody else. And by prompting downvotes, it’s not clear that ‘you are not speaking only for yourself’. If the community was against timtyler, they would downvote spontaneously, without the prodding. Now the community’s signal has been muddied, which is part of the problem.
All I’m saying is ammend the rules or uphold them. Sidestepping them is not a good place to go. In any case, I think I’ve communicated my point as clear as I could have, so I’ll leave it here.
I was persuaded by your comments and actually changed my votes accordingly. I am surprised.
It’s too inconvenient to downvote everything. At some point, it just feels like not being worth the trouble, you’ve already done it too many times, besides you won’t even read what the user writes. A community analogue of banning a user must be a judgment about the user, not a judgment about specific comments. The number of users who disapprove of the user, not of specific comments. This requires a new feature to do well. Could be as simple as vote up/down buttons on the user page.