That would’ve been hard to find, but thankfully Gabriel did the work to find one example. Thanks Gabriel!
If you go to Configurations and Amplitude and scroll down… then you’ll suddenly find this really amazingly huge thread, much much larger than anything around it. What is this wonderful huge thread, you wonder? Why, it’s this:
Finding this kind of conversation dominating Recent Comments, much less Top Comments, is something I find dishedonic and I don’t think it helps the site either.
I thought you had something different in mind, but if it is this, I don’t understand in what way is the solution of charging only for immediate replies to bad comments unsatisfactory. When I proposed this variant of the feature in the ticket, the thread you cited was exactly of the kind I was thinking about.
On the other hand, threads like this are rare, so (1) you seem to exaggerate their impact and (2) a month that you’ve suggested in the ticket won’t be enough to see whether the direct-reply-fee solution helps, as we only get a few of these in a year.
I saw that at the time. But as Vladimir_Nesov says, they seem rare enough to not much impair my reading experience. What is your estimate of their frequency per year or per month?
Of course this also indicates that the current countermeasure may be ineffective, or maybe it wasn’t below −3 when Yvain replied. But if the discussion cuts out after two steps, that might be good enough. Perhaps it should just be impossible to reply to anything if there’s more than two ancestors at −3 or below.
As far as I can tell, all three replies to that comment were made before it hit −3.
(I know that my reply was made with no penalty, and Yvain’s reply was already there at the time; wedrifid’s later comment also suggests that his reply wasn’t penalized.)
That would’ve been hard to find, but thankfully Gabriel did the work to find one example. Thanks Gabriel!
If you go to Configurations and Amplitude and scroll down… then you’ll suddenly find this really amazingly huge thread, much much larger than anything around it. What is this wonderful huge thread, you wonder? Why, it’s this:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/pd/configurations_and_amplitude/6bwo
Finding this kind of conversation dominating Recent Comments, much less Top Comments, is something I find dishedonic and I don’t think it helps the site either.
I thought you had something different in mind, but if it is this, I don’t understand in what way is the solution of charging only for immediate replies to bad comments unsatisfactory. When I proposed this variant of the feature in the ticket, the thread you cited was exactly of the kind I was thinking about.
On the other hand, threads like this are rare, so (1) you seem to exaggerate their impact and (2) a month that you’ve suggested in the ticket won’t be enough to see whether the direct-reply-fee solution helps, as we only get a few of these in a year.
I saw that at the time. But as Vladimir_Nesov says, they seem rare enough to not much impair my reading experience. What is your estimate of their frequency per year or per month?
Here’s a nice trollfeeding from today:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ece/rationality_quotes_september_2012/7bbl
Of course this also indicates that the current countermeasure may be ineffective, or maybe it wasn’t below −3 when Yvain replied. But if the discussion cuts out after two steps, that might be good enough. Perhaps it should just be impossible to reply to anything if there’s more than two ancestors at −3 or below.
You know what would have prevented this?
If you’d told me in June, when I asked you for moderation guidelines beyond “kill shoe ads”, that I should ban comments like that.
As far as I can tell, all three replies to that comment were made before it hit −3.
(I know that my reply was made with no penalty, and Yvain’s reply was already there at the time; wedrifid’s later comment also suggests that his reply wasn’t penalized.)
But not all the subcomments.
(paid a karma cost to respond to this comment)
But then, the circumvention will be to stop using threaded comments properly and start new comment threads to reply to comments below the threshold.