I decided to downvote very short articles on LW that should be comments in Open Thread instead.
Previously I would downvote an article only if it had negative value, for example completely stupid, but I would leave positive-epsilon articles without a vote. This isn’t a problem if there is one such article. When there are two dozen new articles a week, it becomes obvious that those positive-epsilon articles create a negative value: they make the noise-to-signal ratio worse, and make the more useful articles scroll away from the front page fast. (So it is more difficult to find a recent Open Thread, for example.)
I realized that I dislike that such articles are becoming frequent on LW, and that the tools to prevent this are already there. It’s just that I don’t use them… and instead I wait and hope that some moderator will come and fix the problem.
I decided to downvote very short articles on LW that should be comments in Open Thread instead.
Previously I would downvote an article only if it had negative value, for example completely stupid, but I would leave positive-epsilon articles without a vote. This isn’t a problem if there is one such article. When there are two dozen new articles a week, it becomes obvious that those positive-epsilon articles create a negative value: they make the noise-to-signal ratio worse, and make the more useful articles scroll away from the front page fast. (So it is more difficult to find a recent Open Thread, for example.)
I realized that I dislike that such articles are becoming frequent on LW, and that the tools to prevent this are already there. It’s just that I don’t use them… and instead I wait and hope that some moderator will come and fix the problem.
At least at first, it would probably be useful to leave a comment on those articles explaining why you downvoted.