Replying to people who are wrong or systematically wrong is not a problem, so long as we keep the good Less Wrong tradition of addressing the statements with excruciating seriousness, like this.
The problem appears when people who systematically produce wrong or low-quality content don’t slow down in modes in which they get downvoted. Global Karma level and 10 minute delay don’t address this problem directly.
Perhaps downvotes should act as a cooler measure, temporary ban points, for example:
Count the total Karma K of all comments published within the last 2 days that have total negative Karma.
If K is less than −10, and the last comment with total negative Karma was made at time T, you’re not allowed to comment before time T+(|K|*30 min).
This would be too harsh sometimes, but it would automatically prevent escalation of negatively-judged discussions.
That system would also ban people for some time after they set up a poll. Perhaps it would be better to let K bet the total Karma of all comments, not just negative Karma comments, so good comments could offset bad ones.
This could just make implementation of a polling system a dependence. Total Karma probably wouldn’t work, most of the edge cases where it’s not totally obvious that the user should be removed allow for a positive average balance. Also, one of the use cases applies to established contributors going into a wrong mode, in which case they’d be quite capable of offsetting the downvotes.
My $0.02 - I’d be OK with extending the current “impose delay on negative karma” policy into a tiered solution with longer delays for more negative scores (either using the algorithm you sketch or some other), if someone were highly motivated to code that, but I don’t think it would be a particularly valuable use of anyone’s time.
I worry that a measure like this would encourage trolls or people with trollish tendencies to start PMing their interlocutors, which would be a public good but a private nuisance with no outlet for moderation.
I’m not sure. When a comment is reported, I can see how many reports it’s accumulated when viewing the comment in some ordinary context, and then I can “ignore” the reports (making them evaporate), or ban the comment, or leave it alone for someone else to deal with. It doesn’t send me a message notifying me that a report has been lodged. I can’t see other people’s PMs so I’m not sure how I’d become aware of reports on them.
These links collect reported items on main section and in discussion (they work for moderators, not visible if not logged in, not sure about other users):
Well, there goes my apparently silly theory that moderators would have access to a list of pending reports, which would obviously let them see reported PM’s that they wouldn’t be able to see otherwise.
Replying to people who are wrong or systematically wrong is not a problem, so long as we keep the good Less Wrong tradition of addressing the statements with excruciating seriousness, like this.
The problem appears when people who systematically produce wrong or low-quality content don’t slow down in modes in which they get downvoted. Global Karma level and 10 minute delay don’t address this problem directly.
Perhaps downvotes should act as a cooler measure, temporary ban points, for example:
Count the total Karma K of all comments published within the last 2 days that have total negative Karma.
If K is less than −10, and the last comment with total negative Karma was made at time T, you’re not allowed to comment before time T+(|K|*30 min).
This would be too harsh sometimes, but it would automatically prevent escalation of negatively-judged discussions.
That system would also ban people for some time after they set up a poll. Perhaps it would be better to let K bet the total Karma of all comments, not just negative Karma comments, so good comments could offset bad ones.
This could just make implementation of a polling system a dependence. Total Karma probably wouldn’t work, most of the edge cases where it’s not totally obvious that the user should be removed allow for a positive average balance. Also, one of the use cases applies to established contributors going into a wrong mode, in which case they’d be quite capable of offsetting the downvotes.
I agree, provided we really do add a poll feature first.
My $0.02 - I’d be OK with extending the current “impose delay on negative karma” policy into a tiered solution with longer delays for more negative scores (either using the algorithm you sketch or some other), if someone were highly motivated to code that, but I don’t think it would be a particularly valuable use of anyone’s time.
I worry that a measure like this would encourage trolls or people with trollish tendencies to start PMing their interlocutors, which would be a public good but a private nuisance with no outlet for moderation.
Throttle PMs too, then.
There is a “report” link on PM’s. What does it do? We could also add a feature to allow a user to block another user’s PM’s.
Goes straight to Santa Claus.
I’m not sure. When a comment is reported, I can see how many reports it’s accumulated when viewing the comment in some ordinary context, and then I can “ignore” the reports (making them evaporate), or ban the comment, or leave it alone for someone else to deal with. It doesn’t send me a message notifying me that a report has been lodged. I can’t see other people’s PMs so I’m not sure how I’d become aware of reports on them.
These links collect reported items on main section and in discussion (they work for moderators, not visible if not logged in, not sure about other users):
http://lesswrong.com/r/lesswrong/about/reports
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/about/reports
I get the message “The page you requested does not exist”.
That is because you are not Englightened.
Oh, neat, thank you.
Well, there goes my apparently silly theory that moderators would have access to a list of pending reports, which would obviously let them see reported PM’s that they wouldn’t be able to see otherwise.