Second, I learned LessWrongians don’t like rules on upvoting/downvoting. Either that or the fact that the comments here appeared in the comments section messed with my rules; which leads me to the major fault as I see it with this experiment -
It wasn’t fully quarantined. For good or for bad, the format of this site means comments have a tendency to leak out of their original context.
This limits, to my mind, the ability to have quarantined political debates here.
[Poll #2] Upvote here if you have a preference, considering how this experiment went, to start having quarantined (inasmuch as debate here can be quarantined) political debates on LessWrong
Extra karma dump for people who both want to vote -and- help me balance my poll karma against people who vote but don’t use the karma dump, since voting and balancing are otherwise mutually exclusive.
Extra karma dump for people who both want to vote -and- help me balance my poll karma against people who vote but don’t use the karma dump, since voting and balancing are otherwise mutually exclusive.
Where is the extra karma dump for people who want to do each of vote -and- help you balance your poll karma against people who vote but don’t use the karma dump -and- thwart those who would vote the parent up in order to themselves thwart those who wishes to ‘balance’ their karma gift?
[Poll #2] Upvote here if you have a preference, considering how this experiment went, to continue the community prohibition on political discussion on LessWrong.
The fact that this is currently at −3 makes me think that polls on LessWrong are not used correctly, so their results are not very telling.
Either that or people who want to discuss politics on LessWrong are overwhelmingly the kind of people for whom reading and understanding simple instructions requires too much effort.
Or the people who don’t want to discuss politics deliberately sabotaged this poll, or I irritated a few people enough that they downvoted stuff I created just to punish me. We can come up with explanations all day, but in the end have a limited set of options without simply ending the experiment and declaring it a failure:
Have a second poll and hope it turns out better. (Which seems unlikely.)
Do what the poll nominally suggests, and create the thread.
?
The second option has the strong benefit of being a second defacto poll. If the thread works, then the poll’s results are vindicated; if it fails, then the poll’s results are rejected as being biased. I’ve noticed the karma votes for the created post have gone up and down constantly since created, which I’m interpreting as being votes for and against politics being discussed here. The net result, thus far, has been neutral.
So… what conclusions can we draw from this experiment?
I learned a few things; first, http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/dsv/is_politics_the_mindkiller_an_inconclusive_test/73ug included a link to a more fully reducted form of the argument I was posing which I had previously been unaware of. (It relies on a metaphor, which I’m generally cautious of, but I think in this case it’s a good metaphor.)
Second, I learned LessWrongians don’t like rules on upvoting/downvoting. Either that or the fact that the comments here appeared in the comments section messed with my rules; which leads me to the major fault as I see it with this experiment -
It wasn’t fully quarantined. For good or for bad, the format of this site means comments have a tendency to leak out of their original context.
This limits, to my mind, the ability to have quarantined political debates here.
So I’ll formulate my poll with that in mind...
[Poll #2] Upvote here if you have a preference, considering how this experiment went, to start having quarantined (inasmuch as debate here can be quarantined) political debates on LessWrong
[Poll #1] Upvote here if you: [Edit] Found that this experiment demonstrated that useful political discussions are possible here.
[Poll #1] Karma dump
[Poll #1] Upvote here if you: [Edit] Do not find that this experiment demonstrated that useful political discussions are possible here.
You mean Poll #1, right?
Yes I did.
Extra karma dump for people who both want to vote -and- help me balance my poll karma against people who vote but don’t use the karma dump, since voting and balancing are otherwise mutually exclusive.
Where is the extra karma dump for people who want to do each of vote -and- help you balance your poll karma against people who vote but don’t use the karma dump -and- thwart those who would vote the parent up in order to themselves thwart those who wishes to ‘balance’ their karma gift?
Uh… this is officially the karma dump for people who want to engage in recursive karma fighting?
[Poll #2] Upvote here if you have a preference, considering how this experiment went, to continue the community prohibition on political discussion on LessWrong.
The fact that this is currently at −3 makes me think that polls on LessWrong are not used correctly, so their results are not very telling.
Either that or people who want to discuss politics on LessWrong are overwhelmingly the kind of people for whom reading and understanding simple instructions requires too much effort.
Or the people who don’t want to discuss politics deliberately sabotaged this poll, or I irritated a few people enough that they downvoted stuff I created just to punish me. We can come up with explanations all day, but in the end have a limited set of options without simply ending the experiment and declaring it a failure: Have a second poll and hope it turns out better. (Which seems unlikely.) Do what the poll nominally suggests, and create the thread. ?
The second option has the strong benefit of being a second defacto poll. If the thread works, then the poll’s results are vindicated; if it fails, then the poll’s results are rejected as being biased. I’ve noticed the karma votes for the created post have gone up and down constantly since created, which I’m interpreting as being votes for and against politics being discussed here. The net result, thus far, has been neutral.
[Poll #2] Karma dump