I agree. Winning and losing karma makes spending time on Less Wrong entertaining, and is useful feedback, but a sense of community and belonging is what makes it rewarding. I don’t think people care about losing karma here and there (or even a huge chunk all at once) if they feel their presence here is generally welcome.
Part of the problem is that we are probably—admittedly—somewhat ambivalent about whether each new person is welcome when they make a comment or post that is voted down. The newcomers feel tested, and are being tested, and it’s not clear how long they have until they haven’t passed.
To this end, I suggest formalizing a norm where a newcomer never fails but has a special ‘prentice’ status until they have something like 200 karma. Being a prentice would mean that you receive karma feedback as usual but any non-prentices should consider themselves mentors and make sure that in the case of any negative karma feedback, there is also constructive comment feedback.
In my first 200 points, there were a handful of people that I felt were especially helpful in making me feel welcome (through their patience and constructive feedback), and this made a big difference.
This sounds reasonable to me, but I’ve never been that nervous about LW. I’d really like to hear from lurkers about how it sounds to them.
And even so, how such a change will work in practice is not entirely predictable, partly because people are hard to model, and partly because it will be dependent on individual decisions about helpful feedback.
It would be bad-ass if we had a system where (maybe in addition to some karma total) advancing past prentice status required a nomination and a second from posters with higher karma (maybe those with 400+ have the power to nominate and second).
Maybe that would make participation more intimidating, and maybe this is too pseudo-caste making and would undermine our collective rationality. But it would make things more fun, create a sense of accomplishment and belonging, and if we’re going to be a rationality dojo maybe we should really embrace the dojo thing.
I agree. Winning and losing karma makes spending time on Less Wrong entertaining, and is useful feedback, but a sense of community and belonging is what makes it rewarding. I don’t think people care about losing karma here and there (or even a huge chunk all at once) if they feel their presence here is generally welcome.
Part of the problem is that we are probably—admittedly—somewhat ambivalent about whether each new person is welcome when they make a comment or post that is voted down. The newcomers feel tested, and are being tested, and it’s not clear how long they have until they haven’t passed.
To this end, I suggest formalizing a norm where a newcomer never fails but has a special ‘prentice’ status until they have something like 200 karma. Being a prentice would mean that you receive karma feedback as usual but any non-prentices should consider themselves mentors and make sure that in the case of any negative karma feedback, there is also constructive comment feedback.
In my first 200 points, there were a handful of people that I felt were especially helpful in making me feel welcome (through their patience and constructive feedback), and this made a big difference.
This sounds reasonable to me, but I’ve never been that nervous about LW. I’d really like to hear from lurkers about how it sounds to them.
And even so, how such a change will work in practice is not entirely predictable, partly because people are hard to model, and partly because it will be dependent on individual decisions about helpful feedback.
It would be bad-ass if we had a system where (maybe in addition to some karma total) advancing past prentice status required a nomination and a second from posters with higher karma (maybe those with 400+ have the power to nominate and second).
Maybe that would make participation more intimidating, and maybe this is too pseudo-caste making and would undermine our collective rationality. But it would make things more fun, create a sense of accomplishment and belonging, and if we’re going to be a rationality dojo maybe we should really embrace the dojo thing.
Yes.