“Karma is a strong correlate of quality (whether or not the bounty is paid out is not strictly contingent on the karma it gets, but is influenced by it).
Importantly, quality is not the automatic result of effort. Someone could expend a lot of effort writing an extremely long and detailed review that no one wants to read because it’s tedious or because the English is grating. ”
Before anyone gets sad:
While Karma is certainly a useful measure for the probability that a book review will be seen as rewardworthy by the LW team, nobody really knows how strongly it correlates with “quality” as defined by what non-LW readers would see as high-quality. Saying that “Karma is a strong correlate of quality” is not an objective description, but a belief.
Unreadable book reviews would probably be seen as having low quality both on LW and on goodreads or other review sites. Readability is only one factor leading to more Karma points, however, and I assume that obvious things like topical fit with things the typical LW reader likes and less obvious things like being close to the center of the social network of LW will lead to higher Karma points. Therefore, we could say that Karma measures quality in the same sense that IQ measures intelligence: It would then just measure what it’s defined to measure, so the word “quality” could just as well stand for “Karma points” without mixing words and associations. The correlation betwee Karma points and quality in this sense then is 1.
Before anyone gets sad:
While Karma is certainly a useful measure for the probability that a book review will be seen as rewardworthy by the LW team, nobody really knows how strongly it correlates with “quality” as defined by what non-LW readers would see as high-quality. Saying that “Karma is a strong correlate of quality” is not an objective description, but a belief.
Unreadable book reviews would probably be seen as having low quality both on LW and on goodreads or other review sites. Readability is only one factor leading to more Karma points, however, and I assume that obvious things like topical fit with things the typical LW reader likes and less obvious things like being close to the center of the social network of LW will lead to higher Karma points. Therefore, we could say that Karma measures quality in the same sense that IQ measures intelligence: It would then just measure what it’s defined to measure, so the word “quality” could just as well stand for “Karma points” without mixing words and associations. The correlation betwee Karma points and quality in this sense then is 1.