Agreed. Tolerating dreck kills communities. We’d be better off if the bottom 70% of comments were invisible. But the ratio of negative to positive feedback Less Wrong is already enough to turn good people away, so I rarely downvote.
I would trim the fat far more aggressively if pruning comments didn’t feel like punishing people.
Tolerating dreck kills communities. We’d be better off if the bottom 70% of comments were invisible
That’s easy to test. Make a private club—an online community where you have to be invited to join and will be kicked out if you don’t measure up. Do you expect such a private club to be a good replacement for LW?
Come to think of it, do you happen to know ANY active, vibrant, useful communities which aggressively expel people not only for being trolls or assholes, but just because they aren’t good enough?
Come to think of it, do you happen to know ANY active, vibrant, useful communities which aggressively expel people not only for being trolls or assholes, but just because they aren’t good enough?
Yes… but I’m not allowed to talk about them on the wide open internet where random people might hear about them.
I’m not suggesting that removing 70% of commenters would lead to a more vibrant community. I am suggesting that removing (or hiding) 70% of comments would lead to a more vibrant community. Intelligent commentary and discussion drown when articles accumulate more than hundreds of comments, for example.
My grandparent thread was inspired by Eliezer’s, but after I pared it down to a couple of sentences it really isn’t about attracting elites anymore. I’ll flesh the idea of it out on a comment in the Open Thread (and later link to it here), if you’d like to continue discussion.
ETA I’ve fleshed out the idea on the Open Thread, so lets please move discussion there.
I’m not suggesting that removing 70% of commenters would lead to a more vibrant community. I am suggesting that removing (or hiding) 70% of comments would lead to a more vibrant community.
I think after you make a habit of removing 70% of comments, about 70% of your commenters would decamp for better pastures. Not to mention the quis custodiet ipsos custodes? problem.
Let me offer you an alternative: an ignore list. Anyone can make invisible any comment or any commenter he dislikes or thinks not worth his time, but the vanishing act is for his eyes only, the rest of the visitors still see everything there is. Each can tailor the the appearance of the site to his individual taste.
That’s not a perfect solution for a variety of reasons, but I think it’s better than site-wide pruning of “unworthy” comments.
Not to mention the quis custodiet ipsos custodes? problem.
You can’t create an algorithm for generally promoting good comments—that would have to be an artificial intelligence that would recognize a good comment from a bad one. You can only create algorithms that make it more easy or more difficult to protect the community values… whatever they are.
Imagine a website with 10 people, where 11th person comes a writes a good comment. But for some irrational reasons, the original 10 people all dislike the comment. Does the system allow them to remove the comment? Yes or no?
If you say “yes”, you have the “quis custodiet ipsos custodes” situation. But if you say “no”, then the situation will be exactly the same if the 11th persons posts a genuinely bad comment… the original 10 people will not be allowed to remove it. Which is bad, and much more frequent.
the rest of the visitors still see everything there is.
That’s not a good solution! It means that if there are hundreds of trollish comments on the website, regardless of how all my friends downvote them, I still have to see all of them. Too much noise.
That’s not a good solution! It means that if there are hundreds of trollish comments on the website, regardless of how all my friends downvote them, I still have to see all of them.
We will have to disagree about that.
I explicitly do NOT want other people to filter my information input. Don’t take this as an absolute—I’m fine with spam filters—but at this point in this particular context we do not have ” hundreds of trollish comments” and what’s often downvoted is what the local population disagrees with.
at this point in this particular context we do not have ” hundreds of trollish comments”
I believe it’s because we are a relatively unknown website. We had a few trolls in the past, but they gradually went away or had their accounts deleted. With more fame, this could change… although until that happens, I cannot provide exact data.
Private bittorrent trackers come to mind. Though over there, “good enough” is not measured by quality of conversation, but by your ability to keep up a decent ratio.
Agreed. Tolerating dreck kills communities. We’d be better off if the bottom 70% of comments were invisible. But the ratio of negative to positive feedback Less Wrong is already enough to turn good people away, so I rarely downvote.
I would trim the fat far more aggressively if pruning comments didn’t feel like punishing people.
That’s easy to test. Make a private club—an online community where you have to be invited to join and will be kicked out if you don’t measure up. Do you expect such a private club to be a good replacement for LW?
Come to think of it, do you happen to know ANY active, vibrant, useful communities which aggressively expel people not only for being trolls or assholes, but just because they aren’t good enough?
Yes… but I’m not allowed to talk about them on the wide open internet where random people might hear about them.
You could talk about ones that used to be active and useful in the past but have since died.
Good on you.
I’m not suggesting that removing 70% of commenters would lead to a more vibrant community. I am suggesting that removing (or hiding) 70% of comments would lead to a more vibrant community. Intelligent commentary and discussion drown when articles accumulate more than hundreds of comments, for example.
My grandparent thread was inspired by Eliezer’s, but after I pared it down to a couple of sentences it really isn’t about attracting elites anymore. I’ll flesh the idea of it out on a comment in the Open Thread (and later link to it here), if you’d like to continue discussion.
ETA I’ve fleshed out the idea on the Open Thread, so lets please move discussion there.
I think after you make a habit of removing 70% of comments, about 70% of your commenters would decamp for better pastures. Not to mention the quis custodiet ipsos custodes? problem.
Let me offer you an alternative: an ignore list. Anyone can make invisible any comment or any commenter he dislikes or thinks not worth his time, but the vanishing act is for his eyes only, the rest of the visitors still see everything there is. Each can tailor the the appearance of the site to his individual taste.
That’s not a perfect solution for a variety of reasons, but I think it’s better than site-wide pruning of “unworthy” comments.
You can’t create an algorithm for generally promoting good comments—that would have to be an artificial intelligence that would recognize a good comment from a bad one. You can only create algorithms that make it more easy or more difficult to protect the community values… whatever they are.
Imagine a website with 10 people, where 11th person comes a writes a good comment. But for some irrational reasons, the original 10 people all dislike the comment. Does the system allow them to remove the comment? Yes or no?
If you say “yes”, you have the “quis custodiet ipsos custodes” situation. But if you say “no”, then the situation will be exactly the same if the 11th persons posts a genuinely bad comment… the original 10 people will not be allowed to remove it. Which is bad, and much more frequent.
That’s not a good solution! It means that if there are hundreds of trollish comments on the website, regardless of how all my friends downvote them, I still have to see all of them. Too much noise.
We will have to disagree about that.
I explicitly do NOT want other people to filter my information input. Don’t take this as an absolute—I’m fine with spam filters—but at this point in this particular context we do not have ” hundreds of trollish comments” and what’s often downvoted is what the local population disagrees with.
I don’t want another echo chamber.
I believe it’s because we are a relatively unknown website. We had a few trolls in the past, but they gradually went away or had their accounts deleted. With more fame, this could change… although until that happens, I cannot provide exact data.
Private bittorrent trackers come to mind. Though over there, “good enough” is not measured by quality of conversation, but by your ability to keep up a decent ratio.
The problem is that this isn’t as well correlated with karma score as one would like.