Suggestion: notes should come with “report” buttons/links, just like comments. That gives the user who receives the note the ability to notify admins of harassment if it occurs, but ey can otherwise keep them private.
This seems like a really bad idea. If people sacrifice karma in this fashion it will make them more invested in the proposition that the other person’s ideas are just bad in general. Since they’ve given up something (somewhat) tangible in accordance with that standard cognitive biases such as reduction of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias could have very bad results.
Ability to destroy some amount of someone’s Karma by sacrificing some of your own.
No to a general destruction of karma. That would be nearly pointless. Especially since it is (more or less) free to downvote comments.
i would like the ability to up or downvote an individual comment more significantly that 1 karma but with a cost. Either a limitation of how often you can do it or at karma cost to self. The difference between ‘yeah, decent’ and ‘Wow! That was the most fascinating thing I read all week!’
The ability to transfer Karma between users would be nice.
Ability to specify reason for upvote/downvote with a feedback note visible only to the person being upvoted.
Why not just send them a PM?
I thought of that too, but in the end I upvoted the suggestion because it lowers the barrier to such feedback, and I’m in favor of that.
You could even have a dropdown menu or one-line-pithy-comment-section that appears when you click a “vote” button.
Now that I think of it, comparing explanations for up/downvotes to properly commented code could help increase support for such explanations...
Extremely good idea, though admins should also probably be able to see the notes to prevent harassment.
Suggestion: notes should come with “report” buttons/links, just like comments. That gives the user who receives the note the ability to notify admins of harassment if it occurs, but ey can otherwise keep them private.
Solid. I honestly forgot that function was there, since I’ve never had to use it before—that probably says something about this community. :)
Ability to destroy some amount of someone’s Karma by sacrificing some of your own.
This seems like a really bad idea. If people sacrifice karma in this fashion it will make them more invested in the proposition that the other person’s ideas are just bad in general. Since they’ve given up something (somewhat) tangible in accordance with that standard cognitive biases such as reduction of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias could have very bad results.
Thanks for pointing this out. Would it make a difference if it were a temporary/reversible cancellation instead?
I could see the appeal of a rationalist text-based RPG, but please let’s not turn Less Wrong into one.
Adding game mechanics to serious endeavors seems to be a popular idea these days. One book about this is Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal.
What good do you think that would do?
No to a general destruction of karma. That would be nearly pointless. Especially since it is (more or less) free to downvote comments.
i would like the ability to up or downvote an individual comment more significantly that 1 karma but with a cost. Either a limitation of how often you can do it or at karma cost to self. The difference between ‘yeah, decent’ and ‘Wow! That was the most fascinating thing I read all week!’