I suspect that as with site modifications, those of us suggesting ways to find downvote stalkers would do best to figure out how LW works and do as much of the work as possible ourselves. So in this case, that’d probably mean downloading LW source code, figuring out the database structure, thinking of approaches to finding downvote stalkers, formalising them as database queries, then trying to get someone with database access to security check then run those queries. I suspect this because from what I gather Eliezer and those with database access (e.g. presumably Trike) tend to be busy enough or doing important enough other things that they are not willing to or it is not worth their time to do all this themselves, so we should do as much of it as possible to make things quicker for them.
Small amount of money to mouth: I did read through some of the webpages surrounding LW’s source code, downloaded it, and spent a little time trying to figure out how the site and database work. But by the time I got to the point of looking at the code, I had little enough temporary motivation left and the relation of the scripts to each other and the difficulty of figuring out where to start was enough that I didn’t get very far before I burned out for that night and haven’t looked again since. :z
A guide to (learning) LW’s code and database (even if just a few paragraphs along the lines of ‘Start by looking at the main article display script, then move on to...’ or commenting the scripts or something) might be higher leverage at this point with respect to improving the site than submitting small code improvements, since it might encourage several others to submit improvements. On the other hand, part of me suspects that the set of people held back just by that might actually be quite small (polarisation of would-be contributors into hardcore and indifferent with few in the middle—‘if they were going to do it, they would have done it by now’).
Given the distribution of coding ability here, it certainly seems ridiculous how slow stuff like this gets done, and I think it’s due to trivial inconveniences, ugh fields, etc., of which figuring out the site and how to submit code etc. is possibly a large part.
Since Eliezer’s response, I have slightly decreased my distribution over the level of downvote stalking, but there is still way too much evidence for me to honestly believe that there aren’t any downvote stalkers; it would take at least an explanation of exactly what had been tried and possibly significant knowledge of database structure to convince me it’s not happening at this point. So at present I defy the data.
I suspect that as with site modifications, those of us suggesting ways to find downvote stalkers would do best to figure out how LW works and do as much of the work as possible ourselves. So in this case, that’d probably mean downloading LW source code, figuring out the database structure, thinking of approaches to finding downvote stalkers, formalising them as database queries, then trying to get someone with database access to security check then run those queries. I suspect this because from what I gather Eliezer and those with database access (e.g. presumably Trike) tend to be busy enough or doing important enough other things that they are not willing to or it is not worth their time to do all this themselves, so we should do as much of it as possible to make things quicker for them.
Small amount of money to mouth: I did read through some of the webpages surrounding LW’s source code, downloaded it, and spent a little time trying to figure out how the site and database work. But by the time I got to the point of looking at the code, I had little enough temporary motivation left and the relation of the scripts to each other and the difficulty of figuring out where to start was enough that I didn’t get very far before I burned out for that night and haven’t looked again since. :z
A guide to (learning) LW’s code and database (even if just a few paragraphs along the lines of ‘Start by looking at the main article display script, then move on to...’ or commenting the scripts or something) might be higher leverage at this point with respect to improving the site than submitting small code improvements, since it might encourage several others to submit improvements. On the other hand, part of me suspects that the set of people held back just by that might actually be quite small (polarisation of would-be contributors into hardcore and indifferent with few in the middle—‘if they were going to do it, they would have done it by now’).
Given the distribution of coding ability here, it certainly seems ridiculous how slow stuff like this gets done, and I think it’s due to trivial inconveniences, ugh fields, etc., of which figuring out the site and how to submit code etc. is possibly a large part.
Since Eliezer’s response, I have slightly decreased my distribution over the level of downvote stalking, but there is still way too much evidence for me to honestly believe that there aren’t any downvote stalkers; it would take at least an explanation of exactly what had been tried and possibly significant knowledge of database structure to convince me it’s not happening at this point. So at present I defy the data.