I’ve been thinking a lot about karma, as any numerical incentive system risks people going down incentive gradients, checking numbers and otherwise aiming for the number rather than the thing we want to target. This is a Hard Problem, since we 100% need karma for LW to work at all. The first level solution (in addition to weighting, which likely will help) is for everyone to be thinking hard about this and vote accordingly rather than voting locally and instinctively, but that feels insufficient. I’m planting this flag to encourage others to think more about karma problems outside of the weighting and inflation questions, which I’ll address in a distinct comment while noting as an example that the Karma system encourages splitting comments in this way (which in this case I think is good).
I’ve been thinking a lot about karma, as any numerical incentive system risks people going down incentive gradients, checking numbers and otherwise aiming for the number rather than the thing we want to target. This is a Hard Problem, since we 100% need karma for LW to work at all. The first level solution (in addition to weighting, which likely will help) is for everyone to be thinking hard about this and vote accordingly rather than voting locally and instinctively, but that feels insufficient. I’m planting this flag to encourage others to think more about karma problems outside of the weighting and inflation questions, which I’ll address in a distinct comment while noting as an example that the Karma system encourages splitting comments in this way (which in this case I think is good).