Considering that some posts are getting hundreds of comments, not that many people have the time to read them all (especially if you have to search a bit to find what you have and haven’t read), it may be better for everyone to have fewer comments, but of higher quality.
Or, to put it another way, considering that you’re writing once to be read dozens of times, it’s nice to your readers to take a bit of effort to polish up your prose, it costs a few seconds to you but can save a few seconds to a lot of people. This may feel unusual if we are used to situations like conversation (or online chat) where the listener/talker ratio isn’t as skewed.
The real risk is when certain forms of comment (approval, disapproval) are discouraged, because the community’s standards of “quality” are skewed.
The real risk is when certain forms of comment (approval, disapproval) are discouraged, because the community’s standards of “quality” are skewed.
Agreed. I strongly feel that comments of a few words expressing thanks, agreement, apology, sympathy, approval, acknowledgement, etc. should simply hover at zero. Such remarks are part of the native architecture by which we communicate, and I think we lose something if we discourage them.
I agree with the descriptive content of what you wrote, but not the normative content. I agree that we do lose something if we discourage these sorts of comments. However, short comments that don’t add anything to the discussion (like the ones you mention) do add a significant amount to what gets displayed on the screen. If someone is reading this with a screen reader, a text browser, an iphone, or even just a small laptop or old, low-res display, then they will have to wade through “MBlume 22 April 2009 07:55:59AM* 8 points [-] Thanks—I agree. Vote up | Vote down | Permalink | Parent | Report | Reply”, for no good reason. Much better to discourage this sort of noise that adds nothing to the pursuit of rationality as such.
Might be bad—in principle, it would be nice if we could sift through many comments as a community, so as to increase the number of good ones that can float to the top. If everyone who reads a bad comment votes it down, not that many will be inconvenienced by additional mediocre comments, and allowing folks to attempt comments they think might be good (and might not be) would plausibly increase the absolute quantity of good comments. (This depends on our ability to sort good comments to the top and mediocre ones to not-much-read locations, though.)
A second reason it might be bad is that commenting, and engaging with LW content more generally, increases the chances that the commenter will learn from it and do something with it. But, again, the costs may be prohibitive if such comments stay mixed with the best of LW.
It’s not a matter of polished prose. I’m not paranoid because I think I might make a grammatical error or abuse semicolons. It’s a matter of what ideas I commit to words and send out to the community. My thought process when I was debating whether to scrap my original comment was anxious and convoluted: “There aren’t any other comments yet, do I really want this to set the tone for the entire discussion? This idea relies on the kind of personal anecdote that’s gotten me poor results before. But it’s still relevant, and I’ve been mistaken in the past about whether a comment would be well received...” At which point I decided that even if the original comment wasn’t good enough, my internal agonizing probably was.
Is that bad?
Considering that some posts are getting hundreds of comments, not that many people have the time to read them all (especially if you have to search a bit to find what you have and haven’t read), it may be better for everyone to have fewer comments, but of higher quality.
Or, to put it another way, considering that you’re writing once to be read dozens of times, it’s nice to your readers to take a bit of effort to polish up your prose, it costs a few seconds to you but can save a few seconds to a lot of people. This may feel unusual if we are used to situations like conversation (or online chat) where the listener/talker ratio isn’t as skewed.
The real risk is when certain forms of comment (approval, disapproval) are discouraged, because the community’s standards of “quality” are skewed.
Agreed. I strongly feel that comments of a few words expressing thanks, agreement, apology, sympathy, approval, acknowledgement, etc. should simply hover at zero. Such remarks are part of the native architecture by which we communicate, and I think we lose something if we discourage them.
I agree with the descriptive content of what you wrote, but not the normative content. I agree that we do lose something if we discourage these sorts of comments. However, short comments that don’t add anything to the discussion (like the ones you mention) do add a significant amount to what gets displayed on the screen. If someone is reading this with a screen reader, a text browser, an iphone, or even just a small laptop or old, low-res display, then they will have to wade through “MBlume 22 April 2009 07:55:59AM* 8 points [-] Thanks—I agree. Vote up | Vote down | Permalink | Parent | Report | Reply”, for no good reason. Much better to discourage this sort of noise that adds nothing to the pursuit of rationality as such.
Might be bad—in principle, it would be nice if we could sift through many comments as a community, so as to increase the number of good ones that can float to the top. If everyone who reads a bad comment votes it down, not that many will be inconvenienced by additional mediocre comments, and allowing folks to attempt comments they think might be good (and might not be) would plausibly increase the absolute quantity of good comments. (This depends on our ability to sort good comments to the top and mediocre ones to not-much-read locations, though.)
A second reason it might be bad is that commenting, and engaging with LW content more generally, increases the chances that the commenter will learn from it and do something with it. But, again, the costs may be prohibitive if such comments stay mixed with the best of LW.
It’s not a matter of polished prose. I’m not paranoid because I think I might make a grammatical error or abuse semicolons. It’s a matter of what ideas I commit to words and send out to the community. My thought process when I was debating whether to scrap my original comment was anxious and convoluted: “There aren’t any other comments yet, do I really want this to set the tone for the entire discussion? This idea relies on the kind of personal anecdote that’s gotten me poor results before. But it’s still relevant, and I’ve been mistaken in the past about whether a comment would be well received...” At which point I decided that even if the original comment wasn’t good enough, my internal agonizing probably was.