Since you explicitly asked for feedback regarding your downvotes, the “oh, woe is me, my views are so unpopular and my posts keep getting downvoted” lamentations you’ve included in a few of your posts get grating, and might end up self-fulfilling. If you’re saying unpopular things, my advice is to own it, and adopt the “haters gonna hate” attitude: ignore the downvotes completely.
(To be clear, we do have automatic regimes that restrict posting and commenting privileges for downvoted users, since we can’t really keep up with the moderation load otherwise, so there are some limits to your ability to ignore them)
Counter, I think the restriction is too loose. There are enough people out there making posts that the real issue is lack of quality, not lack of quantity.
The problem is a long time contributor can be heavily downvoted once and become heavily rate limited, and then it relies on them earning back their points to be able to post again. I wouldn’t say such a thing is necessarily terrible, but it seems to me to have driven away a number of people I was optimistic about who were occasionally saying something many people disagree with and getting heavily downvoted.
I’m not sure I understand this concern. For someone who posts a burst of unpopular (whether for the topic, for the style, or for other reasons) posts, rate limiting seems ideal. It prevents them from digging deeper, while still allowing them to return to positive contribution, and to focus on quality rather than quantity.
I understand it’s annoying to the poster (and I’ve been caught and annoyed myself), but I haven’t seen any that seem like a complete error. I kind of expect the mods would intervene if it were a clear problem, but I also expect the base intervention is advice to slow down.
So yes, “quite a few”, especially if upvotes are scarcer than downvotes for the poster. But remember, during this time, they ARE posting, just not at the quantity that wasn’t working.
The real question is whether the poster actually changes behavior based on the downvotes and throttling. I do think it’s unfortunate that some topics could theoretically be good for LW, but end up not working. I don’t think it’s problematic that many topics and presentation styles are not possible on LW.
My understanding of the current situation with me is that I am not in fact rate-limited purely by automatic processes currently, but rather by some sort of policy decision on the part of LessWrong’s moderators.
Which is fine, I’ll just continue to post my alignment research on my substack, and occasionally dump linkposts to them in my shortform, which the mods have allowed me continued access to.
And now I have my own Sequence! I predict that it will be as unpopular as the rest of my work.
Since you explicitly asked for feedback regarding your downvotes, the “oh, woe is me, my views are so unpopular and my posts keep getting downvoted” lamentations you’ve included in a few of your posts get grating, and might end up self-fulfilling. If you’re saying unpopular things, my advice is to own it, and adopt the “haters gonna hate” attitude: ignore the downvotes completely.
Oh, I do.
(To be clear, we do have automatic regimes that restrict posting and commenting privileges for downvoted users, since we can’t really keep up with the moderation load otherwise, so there are some limits to your ability to ignore them)
I think your automatic restriction is currently too tight. I would suggest making it decay faster.
Agreed. I haven’t suffered from this but the limits seem pretty extreme right now.
Counter, I think the restriction is too loose. There are enough people out there making posts that the real issue is lack of quality, not lack of quantity.
The problem is a long time contributor can be heavily downvoted once and become heavily rate limited, and then it relies on them earning back their points to be able to post again. I wouldn’t say such a thing is necessarily terrible, but it seems to me to have driven away a number of people I was optimistic about who were occasionally saying something many people disagree with and getting heavily downvoted.
I’m not sure I understand this concern. For someone who posts a burst of unpopular (whether for the topic, for the style, or for other reasons) posts, rate limiting seems ideal. It prevents them from digging deeper, while still allowing them to return to positive contribution, and to focus on quality rather than quantity.
I understand it’s annoying to the poster (and I’ve been caught and annoyed myself), but I haven’t seen any that seem like a complete error. I kind of expect the mods would intervene if it were a clear problem, but I also expect the base intervention is advice to slow down.
the rate limiting doesn’t decay until they’ve been upvoted for quite a number of additional comments afterwards.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hHyYph9CcYfdnoC5j/automatic-rate-limiting-on-lesswrong claims it’s net karma on last 20 posts (and last 20 within a month). And total karma, but that’s not an issue for a long-term poster who’s just gotten sidetracked to an unpopular few posts.
So yes, “quite a few”, especially if upvotes are scarcer than downvotes for the poster. But remember, during this time, they ARE posting, just not at the quantity that wasn’t working.
The real question is whether the poster actually changes behavior based on the downvotes and throttling. I do think it’s unfortunate that some topics could theoretically be good for LW, but end up not working. I don’t think it’s problematic that many topics and presentation styles are not possible on LW.
My understanding of the current situation with me is that I am not in fact rate-limited purely by automatic processes currently, but rather by some sort of policy decision on the part of LessWrong’s moderators.
Which is fine, I’ll just continue to post my alignment research on my substack, and occasionally dump linkposts to them in my shortform, which the mods have allowed me continued access to.
Perhaps it is about right, then.
The votes on this comment imply long vol on LW rate limiting.
I am painfully aware of this. I get awfully bored when I’m rate-limited.
And now I am officially rate-limited to one post per week. Be sure to go to my substack if you are curious about what I am up to.