I wonder what the downvote pattern here would be if people wouldn’t see the existing downvotes in the −20 range along with the post, but would actually need to read the text and individually decide whether to downvote, upvote or abstain with no knowledge of the other votes.
What if the displayed karma, at least to anyone else other than the author, would be shown as just 0 or −1 if it was any amount into the negative? Then there wouldn’t be an invitation to join the happy fun massive downvote pile-on party without even reading the post.
My model predicts the opposite of what you seem to be suggesting, actually. Downvotes are a limited resource, even if the limit isn’t a restrictive one, so I expect that at least some users will decline to downvote in order to conserve that resource if they see that the point has been made. Even without that particular pressure, it seems likely to me that some people just won’t bother to downvote if it’s already clear that something isn’t approved of. The latter is a bit like the bystander effect—if one knows that someone else has already taken care of the problem, one won’t feel much pressure to do so as well.
We’re probably both right, in a sense—when this kind of question has come up before, there have tended to be a mix of responses, so both things are probably happening. I do think that on net we’d see more downvotes if the existing balance wasn’t public until people voted, though, even if ‘abstain’ counted as a vote so that people who were just curious weren’t forced to weigh in.
Yeah, I don’t actually have a very solid anticipation on what would happen, though I would be more surprised if the result was even more downvotes. Still, you do make a case why it might well be.
I’m not sure I’d mind a lot of people reading something and individually deciding to downvote it, that would just do what the score is originally supposed to and sum a lot of individual assessments. What I don’t like is getting the pile-on effect from both showing the current score and the downvote options. It makes downvoting stuff already in the negative further feel icky. It also makes it feel a lot more symbolic to upvote something you see far in the negative or downvote something far in the positive.
And I didn’t even know downvotes cost something. I see a mention of a cap on an old thread, but I don’t see my downvote mana score anywhere in the UI.
What I don’t like is getting the pile-on effect from both showing the current score and the downvote options. It makes downvoting stuff already in the negative further feel icky. It also makes it feel a lot more symbolic to upvote something you see far in the negative or downvote something far in the positive.
I’m not sure I’m parsing this properly—it sounds to me like you’re saying that seeing a very low score along with the option to lower it further makes you less likely to actually downvote, because it feels like ganging up on someone, and more likely to upvote it, compared to not seeing the existing score?
Does it change anything if you specifically focus on the fact that upvotes and downvotes are supposed to mean “I want to see more/less like this” rather than “I think this is good/bad” or “I think this is right/wrong” or “I like/dislike the point being made”?
And I didn’t even know downvotes cost something. I see a mention of a cap on an old thread, but I don’t see my downvote mana score anywhere in the UI.
The downvote limit isn’t displayed anywhere, until you hit it. (And I’m not sure you get a proper notification then, either.) But the algorithm is that you can make four times as many downvotes as your karma score, and then you can’t make any more downvotes until your karma goes up. It’s not something that most people will ever run into, I suspect, but knowing that it’s possible seems likely to have an effect—and possibly a stronger one given the uncertainty of the size of one’s buffer, in fact.
I’m not sure I’m parsing this properly—it sounds to me like you’re saying that seeing a very low score along with the option to lower it further makes you less likely to actually downvote, because it feels like ganging up on someone, and more likely to upvote it, compared to not seeing the existing score?
Pretty much. And yeah, looks like I’m saying that I like behave the opposite way that I expect the most of the group to behave. But then again, I’m imagining both reacting more to a big, shiny sign saying “Look! This is what Us People are expected to think about this thing!” than the actual thing itself. I’m just generally reacting to anything with that sort of mindless, mob-like tone with “screw You People.”
Does it change anything if you specifically focus on the fact that upvotes and downvotes are supposed to mean “I want to see more/less like this” rather than “I think this is good/bad” or “I think this is right/wrong” or “I like/dislike the point being made”?
It’s easy enough to imagine that when I’m the one doing or receiving the voting. When I’m seeing this stuff unfold elsewhere, I need to imagine that the downvoters and the downvotees are also seeing things in that way. Given that this requires extra thought, and the simple, instant interpretation is upvote good, downvote bad, I’m not having a very easy time imagining that’s the case.
Also given how human group psychology works, I’m not sure there’s that much of a difference there. Saying that you’d like to see less of the sort of thing the author implicitly thought people are interested in seeing by posting it doesn’t sound like that much less of a rebuke than just saying the thing was bad or wrong. You could probably make a case for it being a bigger rebuke, since it implies the author is too incompetent to figure out what’s good content, and the social inferior whom the downvoters can pass judgment on, rather than someone with equal social standing having a dispute with the others on whether something is good and right or bad and wrong.
Does it change anything if you specifically focus on the fact that upvotes and downvotes are supposed to mean “I want to see more/less like this” rather than “I think this is good/bad” or “I think this is right/wrong” or “I like/dislike the point being made”?
This is at most only true in one respect: many implementors of the system primarily had such intent.
Count me among those who saw downvoting this as pointless. It was already downvoted enough to be removed from the main page, and downvotes are limited. Also, all else equal, I feel bad when engaging in piling on. This post is what I think of as ideal: it responds to the OP by finding the limited case for which an argument resembling that of the OP would be right, so the OP can see the contrast without feeling attacked.
I read the post in the RSS feed, clicked through to downvote, and then didn’t because I thought “s/he’s suffered enough”. Arguably, with a monumentally wrong post like the OP, we might see more people downvoting if they didn’t know others had.
Before reading the post, I skimmed the comments. I see that the author’s replies to comments are clear evidence of failure. I don’t know, or care, if it’s trolling or merely defensiveness (I guess the latter is by far more likely).
As for the claim that the particular questions are designed to elicit wrong answers (and yes, the wrong answers are objectively wrong), so as to sex up the results, that’s obviously true. That obviousness is probably the reason for the initial downvotes.
I think the author has completely misunderstood the intent of “conjunction fallacy”. It’s not that people are more prone to favor a conjunction as more plausible in general, just because it’s a conjunction, it’s that it’s obviously wrong to consider a conjunction more likely than any one of its components.
I don’t know about front page posts, but a lot of comments stop getting downvotes at −2 or −3. I think they turn invisible for some people by default, so that’s why, rather than people thinking the point is already made.
On Hacker News, early voting trends usually continued to inspire more votes of the same kind. Except someones when someone would comment “Why is this getting downvoted” which could reverse it. They capped things to −4 points minimum now. Upvote orgies are still common. Some are due to quality, sure—some things deserve a lot of upvotes—but not all of them.
Hacker News seems to have a definite idea on curbing downvote sports by capping the point display when things go to negative. This might be a good idea. Another intentional thing they have is having no downvoting at all on the toplevel posts, but their posts are more links and short questions than original articles, so this might not fit LW that well.
Spurious upvoting is probably also going on, but I don’t see it as problematic as downvotes since it doesn’t come with a direct effect of anonymously telling people that they don’t belong on the forum.
I wonder what the downvote pattern here would be if people wouldn’t see the existing downvotes in the −20 range along with the post, but would actually need to read the text and individually decide whether to downvote, upvote or abstain with no knowledge of the other votes.
What if the displayed karma, at least to anyone else other than the author, would be shown as just 0 or −1 if it was any amount into the negative? Then there wouldn’t be an invitation to join the happy fun massive downvote pile-on party without even reading the post.
My model predicts the opposite of what you seem to be suggesting, actually. Downvotes are a limited resource, even if the limit isn’t a restrictive one, so I expect that at least some users will decline to downvote in order to conserve that resource if they see that the point has been made. Even without that particular pressure, it seems likely to me that some people just won’t bother to downvote if it’s already clear that something isn’t approved of. The latter is a bit like the bystander effect—if one knows that someone else has already taken care of the problem, one won’t feel much pressure to do so as well.
We’re probably both right, in a sense—when this kind of question has come up before, there have tended to be a mix of responses, so both things are probably happening. I do think that on net we’d see more downvotes if the existing balance wasn’t public until people voted, though, even if ‘abstain’ counted as a vote so that people who were just curious weren’t forced to weigh in.
Yeah, I don’t actually have a very solid anticipation on what would happen, though I would be more surprised if the result was even more downvotes. Still, you do make a case why it might well be.
I’m not sure I’d mind a lot of people reading something and individually deciding to downvote it, that would just do what the score is originally supposed to and sum a lot of individual assessments. What I don’t like is getting the pile-on effect from both showing the current score and the downvote options. It makes downvoting stuff already in the negative further feel icky. It also makes it feel a lot more symbolic to upvote something you see far in the negative or downvote something far in the positive.
And I didn’t even know downvotes cost something. I see a mention of a cap on an old thread, but I don’t see my downvote mana score anywhere in the UI.
I’m not sure I’m parsing this properly—it sounds to me like you’re saying that seeing a very low score along with the option to lower it further makes you less likely to actually downvote, because it feels like ganging up on someone, and more likely to upvote it, compared to not seeing the existing score?
Does it change anything if you specifically focus on the fact that upvotes and downvotes are supposed to mean “I want to see more/less like this” rather than “I think this is good/bad” or “I think this is right/wrong” or “I like/dislike the point being made”?
The downvote limit isn’t displayed anywhere, until you hit it. (And I’m not sure you get a proper notification then, either.) But the algorithm is that you can make four times as many downvotes as your karma score, and then you can’t make any more downvotes until your karma goes up. It’s not something that most people will ever run into, I suspect, but knowing that it’s possible seems likely to have an effect—and possibly a stronger one given the uncertainty of the size of one’s buffer, in fact.
Pretty much. And yeah, looks like I’m saying that I like behave the opposite way that I expect the most of the group to behave. But then again, I’m imagining both reacting more to a big, shiny sign saying “Look! This is what Us People are expected to think about this thing!” than the actual thing itself. I’m just generally reacting to anything with that sort of mindless, mob-like tone with “screw You People.”
It’s easy enough to imagine that when I’m the one doing or receiving the voting. When I’m seeing this stuff unfold elsewhere, I need to imagine that the downvoters and the downvotees are also seeing things in that way. Given that this requires extra thought, and the simple, instant interpretation is upvote good, downvote bad, I’m not having a very easy time imagining that’s the case.
Also given how human group psychology works, I’m not sure there’s that much of a difference there. Saying that you’d like to see less of the sort of thing the author implicitly thought people are interested in seeing by posting it doesn’t sound like that much less of a rebuke than just saying the thing was bad or wrong. You could probably make a case for it being a bigger rebuke, since it implies the author is too incompetent to figure out what’s good content, and the social inferior whom the downvoters can pass judgment on, rather than someone with equal social standing having a dispute with the others on whether something is good and right or bad and wrong.
This is at most only true in one respect: many implementors of the system primarily had such intent.
“It doesn’t even seem to have occurred to them that a voter might attach their own meaning to a vote for Stephen Colbert—that a voter might have their own thoughts about whether a vote for Stephen Colbert was “wasted” or not.”
Count me among those who saw downvoting this as pointless. It was already downvoted enough to be removed from the main page, and downvotes are limited. Also, all else equal, I feel bad when engaging in piling on. This post is what I think of as ideal: it responds to the OP by finding the limited case for which an argument resembling that of the OP would be right, so the OP can see the contrast without feeling attacked.
I read the post in the RSS feed, clicked through to downvote, and then didn’t because I thought “s/he’s suffered enough”. Arguably, with a monumentally wrong post like the OP, we might see more people downvoting if they didn’t know others had.
Before reading the post, I skimmed the comments. I see that the author’s replies to comments are clear evidence of failure. I don’t know, or care, if it’s trolling or merely defensiveness (I guess the latter is by far more likely).
As for the claim that the particular questions are designed to elicit wrong answers (and yes, the wrong answers are objectively wrong), so as to sex up the results, that’s obviously true. That obviousness is probably the reason for the initial downvotes.
I think the author has completely misunderstood the intent of “conjunction fallacy”. It’s not that people are more prone to favor a conjunction as more plausible in general, just because it’s a conjunction, it’s that it’s obviously wrong to consider a conjunction more likely than any one of its components.
I don’t know about front page posts, but a lot of comments stop getting downvotes at −2 or −3. I think they turn invisible for some people by default, so that’s why, rather than people thinking the point is already made.
On Hacker News, early voting trends usually continued to inspire more votes of the same kind. Except someones when someone would comment “Why is this getting downvoted” which could reverse it. They capped things to −4 points minimum now. Upvote orgies are still common. Some are due to quality, sure—some things deserve a lot of upvotes—but not all of them.
Hacker News seems to have a definite idea on curbing downvote sports by capping the point display when things go to negative. This might be a good idea. Another intentional thing they have is having no downvoting at all on the toplevel posts, but their posts are more links and short questions than original articles, so this might not fit LW that well.
Spurious upvoting is probably also going on, but I don’t see it as problematic as downvotes since it doesn’t come with a direct effect of anonymously telling people that they don’t belong on the forum.
Similar thing happens on reddit. I think it’s widespread across vote-based sites. Any counterexamples?