I am voting on this post in such a manner as to keep the karma as close as possible to 0.
On the one hand, I don’t think this content is exactly suitable for lesswrong (for reasons mentioned by gjm).
On the other hand, I do wish there was a sort of… less competitive, higher slack version/section of lesswrong, where people can air their honesty, babble, compose speculative hot takes, shitpost, share cool stuff they made or found online, etc., without having to incur extrinsic incentives but still interact with a culture that is close to the personality of lesswrong. Your post would be fine in that sort of community, and since there is no such community I don’t want to hurt your karma.
(I tried the ACX discord server for those purposes. It was and continues to be a very bad experience; that place is full of sneery sarcastic jerks, and at this time such jerks occupy the moderation positions (with some exceptions; I think Zenbu is nice); it’s a festering wasteland of bullying and uncharitability and I really think Scott Siskind should pay closer attention.)
I am voting on this post in such a manner as to keep the karma as close as possible to 0.
Oh, please do not do this! If you think something is good, upvote. If you think something is bad, downvote. That’s what the votes are for. If you have no preference either way, abstain from voting.
The way you described it, your vote is equivalent to “my opinion is the opposite of other people’s opinion, whatever that is”. That’s just throwing sand into the gears. Other people express their preferences, and you are just trying to cancel that. Imagine if many people started doing the same thing.
Also, this kind of voting is time-sensitive. Imagine that there are 5 people who want to upvote an article and 3 people who want to downvote it. Regardless of the order, the final karma will be +2. Now add three more people who want to make the result close to zero. Now, depending on the order of the votes, the result can be anything between −1 and +5.
If there is an article on an important topic written in a bad way, I think a good approach would be to write a summary (written in a good way) and a link to the article.
Posts like “this is an article that does not belong to LW, and I do not even bother to write a summary” should be downvoted without a second thought. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to post the article again, with the summary.
relative voting—disagree; if I want to state preferences in terms of what a posts karma should be, not in terms of what direction it should move, that seems to me like a reasonable thing to say.
re: don’t belong on lw—sure, but commenting to say it needed a summary is honorable. in general I think it’s slightly dishonorable to downvote without explanation if you push a post further below zero, and I make sure to comment on posts I heavy downvote with an explanation of what would have changed my vote. being reviewer #2 is bad enough, I don’t want to be reviewer #3!
wait that’s actually great, if you ask me. that’s exactly what I do, it’s exactly what I’d suggest, and I don’t think karma 0 should be shameful. I have a habit of deleting heavily downvoted posts because in my emotional view, “downvoted far below zero” means (and in particular, mechanically causes) go-away, whereas “downvoted to zero” means “oh geez I’m not sure about that one chief”.
I am voting on this post in such a manner as to keep the karma as close as possible to 0.
On the one hand, I don’t think this content is exactly suitable for lesswrong (for reasons mentioned by gjm).
On the other hand, I do wish there was a sort of… less competitive, higher slack version/section of lesswrong, where people can air their honesty, babble, compose speculative hot takes, shitpost, share cool stuff they made or found online, etc., without having to incur extrinsic incentives but still interact with a culture that is close to the personality of lesswrong. Your post would be fine in that sort of community, and since there is no such community I don’t want to hurt your karma.
(I tried the ACX discord server for those purposes. It was and continues to be a very bad experience; that place is full of sneery sarcastic jerks, and at this time such jerks occupy the moderation positions (with some exceptions; I think Zenbu is nice); it’s a festering wasteland of bullying and uncharitability and I really think Scott Siskind should pay closer attention.)
Oh, please do not do this! If you think something is good, upvote. If you think something is bad, downvote. That’s what the votes are for. If you have no preference either way, abstain from voting.
The way you described it, your vote is equivalent to “my opinion is the opposite of other people’s opinion, whatever that is”. That’s just throwing sand into the gears. Other people express their preferences, and you are just trying to cancel that. Imagine if many people started doing the same thing.
Also, this kind of voting is time-sensitive. Imagine that there are 5 people who want to upvote an article and 3 people who want to downvote it. Regardless of the order, the final karma will be +2. Now add three more people who want to make the result close to zero. Now, depending on the order of the votes, the result can be anything between −1 and +5.
If there is an article on an important topic written in a bad way, I think a good approach would be to write a summary (written in a good way) and a link to the article.
Posts like “this is an article that does not belong to LW, and I do not even bother to write a summary” should be downvoted without a second thought. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to post the article again, with the summary.
relative voting—disagree; if I want to state preferences in terms of what a posts karma should be, not in terms of what direction it should move, that seems to me like a reasonable thing to say.
re: don’t belong on lw—sure, but commenting to say it needed a summary is honorable. in general I think it’s slightly dishonorable to downvote without explanation if you push a post further below zero, and I make sure to comment on posts I heavy downvote with an explanation of what would have changed my vote.
being reviewer #2 is bad enough, I don’t want to be reviewer #3!wait that’s actually great, if you ask me. that’s exactly what I do, it’s exactly what I’d suggest, and I don’t think karma 0 should be shameful. I have a habit of deleting heavily downvoted posts because in my emotional view, “downvoted far below zero” means (and in particular, mechanically causes) go-away, whereas “downvoted to zero” means “oh geez I’m not sure about that one chief”.