I would normally delete a post downvoted below zero; this one is relatively important [edit: in review, I think I mean is on a relatively important topic, though it could be improved upon], so I’ll leave it. though if it gets downvoted more, I will in fact delete it. comments about why it’s downvote-worthy/delete-worthy would be appreciated, if you’d like me to delete it.
I wouldn’t like you to delete it and haven’t downvoted it, but my guess is that the main reasons for downvoting it are (1) it’s not particularly LW-ish content, (2) it has rather a “here is a sociopolitical phenomenon I would like you all to be angry about, and look how some of the people involved are Bad People you ought to feel angry about too” vibe, which tends to be a thing LW tries to avoid, and (3) probably some downvoters have an opposed sociopolitical position and are angry in the opposite direction.
makes sense. 2. aha, I wondered if there was something like that going on. My “anger adblock” is very strong and generally takes verbal anger to be a statement, rather than a demand, in large part because verbal anger has no mechanical impact on me; as such I easily forget others do not respond the same way to reading others’ emotions. Clarification appreciated, edited!
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”.
edited. the post form requests that you copy the whole thing, so I figured it was probably a good idea to do that; I have gone back and forth on when to copy whole posts and not done it before, so this being the first time, I guess I won’t do it again. whoops!
My preference is that (1) you not delete it, even if it gets downvoted (2) you don’t have a copy of the whole essay here. (1) is the more important thing, the point being to preserve whatever discussion takes place.
All the comments at this moment are meta (whether it was or wasn’t okay to post this here, and whether it should be upvoted or downvotes or deleted), nothing about the article. So if you deleted this article with the comments, nothing of value would be lost.
Furthermore, the fact that no one discusses the article itself is a weak evidence against it belonging here.
I would normally delete a post downvoted below zero; this one is
relatively important[edit: in review, I think I mean is on a relatively important topic, though it could be improved upon], so I’ll leave it. though if it gets downvoted more, I will in fact delete it. comments about why it’s downvote-worthy/delete-worthy would be appreciated, if you’d like me to delete it.I wouldn’t like you to delete it and haven’t downvoted it, but my guess is that the main reasons for downvoting it are (1) it’s not particularly LW-ish content, (2) it has rather a “here is a sociopolitical phenomenon I would like you all to be angry about, and look how some of the people involved are Bad People you ought to feel angry about too” vibe, which tends to be a thing LW tries to avoid, and (3) probably some downvoters have an opposed sociopolitical position and are angry in the opposite direction.
makes sense. 2. aha, I wondered if there was something like that going on. My “anger adblock” is very strong and generally takes verbal anger to be a statement, rather than a demand, in large part because verbal anger has no mechanical impact on me; as such I easily forget others do not respond the same way to reading others’ emotions. Clarification appreciated, edited!
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”.
One point is that the convention is to link to other people’s content with some quotes and motivation for relevance to LW, not to copy it outright.
edited. the post form requests that you copy the whole thing, so I figured it was probably a good idea to do that; I have gone back and forth on when to copy whole posts and not done it before, so this being the first time, I guess I won’t do it again. whoops!
My preference is that (1) you not delete it, even if it gets downvoted (2) you don’t have a copy of the whole essay here. (1) is the more important thing, the point being to preserve whatever discussion takes place.
to clarify, now that there are substantive comments other than “this doesn’t belong on lw”, I wouldn’t delete.
All the comments at this moment are meta (whether it was or wasn’t okay to post this here, and whether it should be upvoted or downvotes or deleted), nothing about the article. So if you deleted this article with the comments, nothing of value would be lost.
Furthermore, the fact that no one discusses the article itself is a weak evidence against it belonging here.