How are you thinking about the time-value of such react tokens? Are you trying to fix a problem with votes, or to introduce a new mechanism for a purpose orthogonal to voting?
I’d like to see more signal in the voting: slashdot-style “why are you voting this way” would naively fit that, but I don’t actually like any implementation I know of, so I may be wrong in my understanding of my preference on that front.
One of the things about the current “votes” mechanism that consumes my mental energy with no value is that they’re summed up and kept forever, and impact your ability to give more of them (more karma = stronger votes). I want not to care, but I do. Adding another signal for my brain to goodheart on (caring about the metric rather than the signal) is a strict loss for me. If it’s intentionally lightweight and ephemeral, that solves this problem, but perhaps makes it less useful if it’s intended to motivate some behavior.
Separately, but also related to the signaling value of LW posts/comments/votes/reacts, I’m also totally flummoxed by recent comments that most of what I see in /allPosts aren’t “really” part of LW, and votes there should have different standards and meanings.
The way I’d implicitly been thinking is “Reacts would be added to a particular comment, and probably live on that comment forever, but not contribute to any kind of long term metrics.”
I was thinking of them mostly as “very lightweight comments, which are easier to see at a glance.”
In some cases I saw them as trying to provide an outlet for lightweight-feedback other than votes, for feedback (such as “yay/boo” that I don’t think should ideally be handled by the voting system)
Cool, I like having reacts tied to ideas and expressions rather than to people.
Your comment about feedback other than votes makes me wonder, though—wouldn’t it be in addition to votes? Do you expect people to react and not vote (or vote and not react) very often? I rarely (not never, but not usually) comment without voting.
Hmm. Don’t know the common use cases but once I’m having a conversation in a thread, I usually only upvote things if they seem particularly good or bad, or particularly standalone. (in particular when there’s a high volume of comments in the thread)
Ah, true. deep comment threads are different. I vote on most posts I comment on, and most top-level comments that I reply to. I generally only vote on deeper comments if that’s where I’m entering the conversation.
I’m also totally flummoxed by recent comments that most of what I see in /allPosts aren’t “really” part of LW, and votes there should have different standards and meanings.
Can I trouble you to say more about what you’re referring to with that sentence?
re-reading the comments makes me realize that “totally flummoxed” is a massive overstatement—I was surprised, but I kind of get it (and kind of don’t—there’s not enough separation to make me believe that they’re not mostly the same).
And we’ve also added some features the help clarify things a bit – personal blogposts now have a little “person” icon when you’re looking at lists of posts (such as the home page, or all posts). It also appears directly on the post itself (similar to how GreaterWrong does it).
In several places there are now tooltips that explain what sorts of things are good fits for personal blogpost and what is good for frontpage.
I’m not sure I’ve properly understood the complaint, but I think the recently posted Frontpage/Personal site guide post sheds light on what kind of content is welcome on LessWrong and where it goes.
Posts on practically any topic are welcomed on LessWrong [1]. I (and others on the team) feel it is important that members are able to “bring their entire selves” to LessWrong and are able to share all their thoughts, ideas, and experiences without fearing whether they are “on topic” for LessWrong. Rationality is not restricted to only specific domains of one’s life and neither should LessWrong be.
However, to maintain its overall focus while still allowing posts on any topic, LessWrong classifies posts as eitherPersonal blogpostsor asFrontpage posts.
If you go to the AllPosts page and apply no filter, you will see personal blogposts too on which there are few restrictions of topic.
I don’t think I would quite embrace a distinction of “really part of LW” vs “not really part of LW”, though I do expect the Frontpage vs Personal Blogpost distinction will map to a fair extent onto “is material representative of what people associate with LW” vs “material on lots of random topics.”
As with that recent post, we’re working to make it clear what material is welcome on LessWrong, where it can be seen, and how people can use the site to see what they want to see.
How are you thinking about the time-value of such react tokens? Are you trying to fix a problem with votes, or to introduce a new mechanism for a purpose orthogonal to voting?
I’d like to see more signal in the voting: slashdot-style “why are you voting this way” would naively fit that, but I don’t actually like any implementation I know of, so I may be wrong in my understanding of my preference on that front.
One of the things about the current “votes” mechanism that consumes my mental energy with no value is that they’re summed up and kept forever, and impact your ability to give more of them (more karma = stronger votes). I want not to care, but I do. Adding another signal for my brain to goodheart on (caring about the metric rather than the signal) is a strict loss for me. If it’s intentionally lightweight and ephemeral, that solves this problem, but perhaps makes it less useful if it’s intended to motivate some behavior.
Separately, but also related to the signaling value of LW posts/comments/votes/reacts, I’m also totally flummoxed by recent comments that most of what I see in /allPosts aren’t “really” part of LW, and votes there should have different standards and meanings.
The way I’d implicitly been thinking is “Reacts would be added to a particular comment, and probably live on that comment forever, but not contribute to any kind of long term metrics.”
I was thinking of them mostly as “very lightweight comments, which are easier to see at a glance.”
In some cases I saw them as trying to provide an outlet for lightweight-feedback other than votes, for feedback (such as “yay/boo” that I don’t think should ideally be handled by the voting system)
Cool, I like having reacts tied to ideas and expressions rather than to people.
Your comment about feedback other than votes makes me wonder, though—wouldn’t it be in addition to votes? Do you expect people to react and not vote (or vote and not react) very often? I rarely (not never, but not usually) comment without voting.
Hmm. Don’t know the common use cases but once I’m having a conversation in a thread, I usually only upvote things if they seem particularly good or bad, or particularly standalone. (in particular when there’s a high volume of comments in the thread)
Ah, true. deep comment threads are different. I vote on most posts I comment on, and most top-level comments that I reply to. I generally only vote on deeper comments if that’s where I’m entering the conversation.
Can I trouble you to say more about what you’re referring to with that sentence?
It came up in this thread: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WwTPSkNwC89g3Afnd/comment-section-from-05-19-2019#5wECFA9o8T6ohzrNE . I can’t easily find the other comments from people who say or strongly imply that they think of LessWrong being mostly promoted posts, and have different content and topic expectations for blog posts on the site.
re-reading the comments makes me realize that “totally flummoxed” is a massive overstatement—I was surprised, but I kind of get it (and kind of don’t—there’s not enough separation to make me believe that they’re not mostly the same).
One note is that since then we wrote this post:
Site Guide: Personal Blogposts vs Frontpage Posts
And we’ve also added some features the help clarify things a bit – personal blogposts now have a little “person” icon when you’re looking at lists of posts (such as the home page, or all posts). It also appears directly on the post itself (similar to how GreaterWrong does it).
In several places there are now tooltips that explain what sorts of things are good fits for personal blogpost and what is good for frontpage.
I would like to react to this in some positive way :)
I was away for a bit and had missed that post.
:)
I’m not sure I’ve properly understood the complaint, but I think the recently posted Frontpage/Personal site guide post sheds light on what kind of content is welcome on LessWrong and where it goes.
If you go to the AllPosts page and apply no filter, you will see personal blogposts too on which there are few restrictions of topic.
I don’t think I would quite embrace a distinction of “really part of LW” vs “not really part of LW”, though I do expect the Frontpage vs Personal Blogpost distinction will map to a fair extent onto “is material representative of what people associate with LW” vs “material on lots of random topics.”
As with that recent post, we’re working to make it clear what material is welcome on LessWrong, where it can be seen, and how people can use the site to see what they want to see.