Add me to the list of people for whom the incentives go the exact other way: I see this obviously-April-fool thing being done with LW karma, I see it’s even called “Goodhart”, and it all makes me feel rather ugh about posting or commenting. (This isn’t about the money for me, which I see it is for a couple of other people on Team Disincentive; I thought yesterday that more likely than not the bit about paying out money was part of the joke, and that didn’t stop me feeling ugh about the whole thing.)
To be clear, this doesn’t mean I think it was a bad April fool, and it doesn’t mean I think continuing it a few days would have bad outcomes overall. Almost all of what I do is commenting rather than posting, and while I think my comments are generally pretty good they’re never game-changing; if the tradeoff is that I comment a lot less and someone else posts a bit more then it’s probably a good tradeoff.
Yeah, to be clear, I would also feel pretty terrible about the site if this is the kind of thing that would happen normally. But I feel like April Fool’s is a good time to gather data on some more out-there ideas, and my guess is a short-lived experiment is unlikely to destroy the whole site, or leave too much lasting damage.
Since it turns out that there is a bit of real money on the line here, I am consciously attempting to go against that ugh-field and be reasonably active on LW while the experiment is ongoing. It is possible that the net effect is that I am commenting more. (I don’t think I have anything I’ve contemplated posting that’s little enough effort to get done during the week.)
Add me to the list of people for whom the incentives go the exact other way: I see this obviously-April-fool thing being done with LW karma, I see it’s even called “Goodhart”, and it all makes me feel rather ugh about posting or commenting. (This isn’t about the money for me, which I see it is for a couple of other people on Team Disincentive; I thought yesterday that more likely than not the bit about paying out money was part of the joke, and that didn’t stop me feeling ugh about the whole thing.)
To be clear, this doesn’t mean I think it was a bad April fool, and it doesn’t mean I think continuing it a few days would have bad outcomes overall. Almost all of what I do is commenting rather than posting, and while I think my comments are generally pretty good they’re never game-changing; if the tradeoff is that I comment a lot less and someone else posts a bit more then it’s probably a good tradeoff.
Yeah, to be clear, I would also feel pretty terrible about the site if this is the kind of thing that would happen normally. But I feel like April Fool’s is a good time to gather data on some more out-there ideas, and my guess is a short-lived experiment is unlikely to destroy the whole site, or leave too much lasting damage.
In case there’s any doubt, I repeat: I’m not saying this was a bad idea, either as an April fool or as a thing to continue for a few more days.
Since it turns out that there is a bit of real money on the line here, I am consciously attempting to go against that ugh-field and be reasonably active on LW while the experiment is ongoing. It is possible that the net effect is that I am commenting more. (I don’t think I have anything I’ve contemplated posting that’s little enough effort to get done during the week.)