A question regarding polls: I have used the polls feature quite a bit now and I got the feeling that many more people vote on the poll options than on the poll comment. Given that there mostly is an option “just show me” which could be taken to interpreted as “I don’t care about this poll but want to satisfy my curiosity” we could estimate the number of people who like the poll. Shouldn’t these also up-vote the poll-comment as a whole? Is it just lazyness to not up-vote or is there same higher standard for LW comments than I think?
I think it’s the same phenomenon where a top-level comment can get a single upvote (or no upvotes) but still spark a pretty long comment thread. Seems a bit strange to me, as I feel that most non-troll comments that spark or contribute to a good discussion are worthy of an upvote, but I think the answer is that there is some higher standard for LW comments than (for example) reddit comments. Jokes and playful misinterpretation don’t seem to do well here, even when they’re funny.
As far as I can tell, the phenomenon is self-reinforcing; the sparsity of upvotes in general on LW probably discourages people from upvoting things unless they meet a higher threshold. It seems to me that people upvote based not just on whether they agree or see value in the discussion, but on whether they think it matches with the ethos of the community. The end result is that the top-voted comments are almost always either “Very Less Wrong” things to say or very well-though-out and well-said.
The end result is that the top-voted comments are almost always either “Very Less Wrong” things to say or very well-though-out and well-said.
That sounds like a good result. Reddit rather has a problem with how top-voted things always are contentless fluff because contentless fluff takes less time to consume and most people downvote much less than they upvote.
I don’t think there’s any valid inference from “thinks the poll worth voting on” to “thinks the comment with a poll in worth upvoting”.
Suppose I see a poll, think it’s a reasonable question to ask but no more, and am feeling helpful. Then I’ll likely fill it in. But why does that mean I should be upvoting it? I mean, if I see a comment, think it’s a reasonable thing to say but no more, should I be upvoting that? That would seem to lead to the conclusion that most people should be upvoting most comments, which seems waaaay off to me.
I upvote things that seem to me especially interesting or insightful or useful or witty or whatever. A poll can easily be worth filling in (if only because whoever posted it presumably is interested in the answers) without meeting that condition.
A question regarding polls: I have used the polls feature quite a bit now and I got the feeling that many more people vote on the poll options than on the poll comment. Given that there mostly is an option “just show me” which could be taken to interpreted as “I don’t care about this poll but want to satisfy my curiosity” we could estimate the number of people who like the poll. Shouldn’t these also up-vote the poll-comment as a whole? Is it just lazyness to not up-vote or is there same higher standard for LW comments than I think?
I think it’s the same phenomenon where a top-level comment can get a single upvote (or no upvotes) but still spark a pretty long comment thread. Seems a bit strange to me, as I feel that most non-troll comments that spark or contribute to a good discussion are worthy of an upvote, but I think the answer is that there is some higher standard for LW comments than (for example) reddit comments. Jokes and playful misinterpretation don’t seem to do well here, even when they’re funny.
As far as I can tell, the phenomenon is self-reinforcing; the sparsity of upvotes in general on LW probably discourages people from upvoting things unless they meet a higher threshold. It seems to me that people upvote based not just on whether they agree or see value in the discussion, but on whether they think it matches with the ethos of the community. The end result is that the top-voted comments are almost always either “Very Less Wrong” things to say or very well-though-out and well-said.
That sounds like a good result. Reddit rather has a problem with how top-voted things always are contentless fluff because contentless fluff takes less time to consume and most people downvote much less than they upvote.
I don’t think there’s any valid inference from “thinks the poll worth voting on” to “thinks the comment with a poll in worth upvoting”.
Suppose I see a poll, think it’s a reasonable question to ask but no more, and am feeling helpful. Then I’ll likely fill it in. But why does that mean I should be upvoting it? I mean, if I see a comment, think it’s a reasonable thing to say but no more, should I be upvoting that? That would seem to lead to the conclusion that most people should be upvoting most comments, which seems waaaay off to me.
I upvote things that seem to me especially interesting or insightful or useful or witty or whatever. A poll can easily be worth filling in (if only because whoever posted it presumably is interested in the answers) without meeting that condition.
It’s possible to be interested in / get value from a poll without approving of the fact that it’s being conducted.
There is also the hypothesis that they don’t like the poll, but still think that one result is worse than another.