Look at mwaser: he complains a lot about being downvoted, but he also got a lot of feedback for what people found lacking in his post. Yes, a portion of the downvotes he gets may be due to factors unrelated to the quality of his arguments (he repeatedly promotes his own blog, and complains about the downvotes being a proof of community irrationality—both can get under people’s skin), which is a bit unfortunate, but not a fatal flaw of the karma system.
I did. The feedback that actually told him something came as replies. I’m not seeing how the use of downvotes actually helped there, and it did seem to add unnecessary nastiness to the exchange.
I agree it’s a bit harsh, and not always useful. It’s a bit of a pity that the karma system doesn’t allow to make a difference between “5 people found this post not-that-great” and “5 people found this post absolutely terrible”.
Maybe it would be nice to have a system that would allow for more nuance, but it would also have to be easy enough to understand and use, and not be easy to game.
Also, I would say that the downvotes did have some utility, by expressing “you should pay more attention to criticism, most people here disagree with you”.
Maybe it would be nice to have a system that would allow for more nuance, but it would also have to be easy enough to understand and use, and not be easy to game.
What about the ability to mark a comment as obsolete if you changed your mind? It will then be under the fold but people won’t be able to downvote it anymore. Or should people who changed their mind be punished infinitely? I noticed that I often delete comments that get downvoted if I changed my mind, e.g. understood where I was wrong, because they keep getting downvoted long after the discussion ended. By deleting it I destroy the context and consistency of the discussion. But I also do not want to be downvoted anymore for something I don’t believe and I want to signal that I changed my mind.
People here tend to reward humility vigorously. (Humility including the strong non-submissive kind that doesn’t base the ego on attachment to being right, not just signals of lower status.)
As Richard suggests editing your comment, leaving the original while adding a retraction is a good idea (and somewhat of a convention). You can make it bold by using two asterices on both sides.
It is also worth adding a reply later on in the discussion explaining your new position and why you changed it. Unless I confuse you with someone else (quite possible) I think I recall you once before changing your mind and acknowleding it publicly. By reading that I gained a lot of respect for your judgement (or that of whoever else it was if I mistake your identity).
Not a bad idea; having all votes public may also be an improvement.
Still, I suspect that whatever the system, there would be someone to argue that it sucks, which isnt’t an excuse to not improve it, but a reason to be cautious.
having all votes public may also be an improvement.
The purpose of implementing voting, as opposed to (for example) soliciting critical/praising comments, is to get more information about people’s attitude towards individual comments, by lifting reasons not to signal (and thus lock the community focus better, protecting it from watering down). Commenting would be less frequent because (1) it’s more difficult to comment; (2) if you have little to say, or what you’d say has already been said, you don’t want to create more noise.
Requiring that votes are made public will discourage some of the voters from signaling their attitude, or otherwise distort the signal for image purposes. I’m not even sure whether voluntary public voting is a good idea, because of the image-driven distortion effect, but since it’s presumably no worse than with commenting, it might not be that bad.
Not a bad idea; having all votes public may also be an improvement.
I will oppose that option for as long as I have breath. If it is implemented then I recommend to all participants that they find a way to game that system so as to minimize the damage.
(I’ll not repeat the reasons here but I have mentioned them previously.)
Metafilter has a pretty simple system. Users can favorite posts and comments. The favorite count and the names of the favoriters are public. There are no corresponding unfavorites. Instead, the users may silently flag the post, indicating that it seems to be bad enough that a moderator should probably take a look. The moderators clean up crap comments manually, guided by the flags.
I haven’t read the above thread. But here’s an idea I had about the Karma system: If you want to downvote someone you’re asked to provide a reply explaining why you downvoted the comment. If you downvote 5 times without explaining yourself you’ll lose 1 Karma point.
It always really bothers me if I get downvoted without getting feedback because without feedback I’m unable to improve, refine my writing skills or rationality. What’s the point then? Merely losing Karma score will led people to conclude (unjustified) that they are downvoted for various reasons but not that they may be wrong or that their comment simply does not add anything valuable to the debate. Negative Karma without feedback causes resentment in all people except those who already acquired enough rationality skills and realization to infer that there might be something wrong with their comment and not with the person downvoting it. The Karma system as it is will therefore discourage newcomers and make them conclude that LW is merely an echo-chamber and does not tolerate their precious critique.
It always really bothers me if I get downvoted without getting feedback. … The Karma system as it is will therefore discourage newcomers and make them conclude that LW is merely an echo-chamber and does not tolerate their precious critique.
I felt the same way when I first started posting here. Particularly when I was challenging the local conventional wisdom. But now I realize that anonymous unexplained downvotes are a form of feedback, and a particularly valuable form of feedback to someone prepared to take advantage of it.
Because feedback in the form of comments simply provokes an automatic verbal response from you. You learn nothing from the experience. You just get some practice at constructing rationalizations. But feedback in the form of anonymous downvotes forces you to stop and reflect: Just what does this mean? What do I need to change so as to prevent this? What experiments should I undertake?”
ETA:
Negative Karma without feedback causes resentment in all people except those who already acquired enough rationality skills and realization to infer that there might be something wrong with their comment and not with the person downvoting it. The Karma system as it is will therefore discourage newcomers …
A good point. So for LW regulars, it may be worth remembering that it is more informative to upvote explicit criticism of newbie mistakes than to downvote the mistakes themselves.
So for LW regulars, it may be worth remembering that it is more informative to upvote explicit criticism of newbie mistakes than to downvote the mistakes themselves.
A good suggestion. I expect whether I follow it or not will depend on how arrogant the newbie is. Unless, of course the explicit criticism is ‘you are being arrogant and annoying. We are more fussy about that sort of thing here than in many other places on the internet’. Then I suppose the same principle would apply. :)
But now I realize that anonymous unexplained downvotes are a form of feedback, and a particularly valuable form of feedback to someone prepared to take advantage of it.
But if you were posting a comment about cooking wouldn’t you weigh the Karma of a chef differently than that of someone who has merely joint your culinary community to read up on some recipe?
But feedback in the form of anonymous downvotes forces you to stop and reflect: Just what does this mean? What do I need to change so as to prevent this? What experiments should I undertake?”
I don’t expect most of all people to conclude this naturally. I believe there is some evidence for this, as for example this Wiki entry states:
It’s unclear whether Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz would have lasted a day without being voted down into oblivion.
And that is actually from a ‘Rationality Wiki’, so what might John Doe conclude?
It’s unclear whether Descartes, Spinoza or Leibniz would have lasted a day without being voted down into oblivion.
I loved that line. It was put in there among ‘the ugly’ but I consider it one of the best features of lesswrong. Just because they talk about some guy in high school doesn’t mean their thinking is any good! Eat downvote burn until your thinking gets up to scratch Descartes. Read the damn sequences!
(I wonder if Descartes would end up getting into arguments with Mitchell… “I thought I was me, I still think I’m me, therefore I am still me!”)
But if you were posting a comment about cooking wouldn’t you weigh the Karma of a chef differently than that of someone who has merely joint your culinary community to read up on some recipe?
My experience with comments has been that it is wisest to ignore the reputation of the source and simply focus on the words. (One exception: interpreting irony).
So I doubt that knowing the source of up- and down- votes would be particularly useful either. If I know that a great chef has downvoted my chili recipe, I still don’t know whether it is because he doesn’t like my spelling, doesn’t like my ingredients, or simply doesn’t care for chili.
If a chef downvotes your chili recipe, it could be because he doesn’t like your spelling, your ingredients, or chili.
If a random person downvotes your chili recipe, it could also be because she doesn’t like your spelling, your ingredients, or chili.
The first downvote is still more informative even given any particular reason for downvoting, because the chef is more likely than a random person to know how to spell “roux”, cook a perfect pot of pinto beans, or have good reasons to dislike chili as a class of food (e.g. “tried seven versions, don’t like any” v. “had it when I was a kid and didn’t like it”).
I personally believe I am usually better off not knowing who downvoted me. Quite often (although not always) when people downvote my comments I hold their judgement in contempt. This includes those comments that receive initial downvotes but rebound to become significantly positive once the better (and less impassioned) judgement of the broader community sets in.
If the comments justifying their downvote disgust me then I just end up losing respect for the individual. Since it isn’t all that much of a benefit to me to know who has objectionable judgement in such matters and it is far more pleasant to converse with people I respect I prefer to not know.
(Oh, and if I had to comment every time I downvoted things would get downright spammy!)
Negative Karma without feedback causes resentment in all people except those who already acquired enough rationality skills and realization to infer that there might be something wrong with their comment and not with the person downvoting it. The Karma system as it is will therefore discourage newcomers and make them conclude that LW is merely an echo-chamber and does not tolerate their precious critique.
This is a very good point. I upvoted your comment for this point even though I don’t believe your suggestion would work well as a general practice. I agree that there are times when explanations are beneficial and in the case of new users this is definitely something to remember.
Example—while I was writing this my previous comment went to −1. This is not a big deal at all and nor is it particularly surprising. But all the same I am glad I don’t know who the culprit was (‘culprit’ framing intended to convey perspective) and have no difficulty at all in inferring either what their actual motivations likely are or what reasons they would actually express.
The mere fact of a downvote is of some use to me in as much as it informs me that it is a topic on which it will be beneficial to me to replace personal sincerity with political optimisation. ie. Use the kind of language that makes critics look bad for criticizing (instead of casually leaving a wide open target). Present whatever statements are most likely to achieve a desired outcome rather than just saying what I believe.
I don’t think anyone would benefit if someone went and justified their voting decision and I would be surprised if I found it much more informative than the integer representation.
EDIT: While I was writing this comment the ‘-1’ in question changed to ‘+2’. That did surprise me!
I’m aware that you do not support making votes public, so forcing people to comment is something you don’t support either. I haven’t read up on your reasons yet. But consider that as any community grows more popular the number of people that do not indentify with its motto will grow too. This might ultimately result in a reputation system that does not reflect the base and therefore the intended standards of the community, in this case the refinement of rationality. More so if the number of people previously equipped with the sufficient skills required in any given community is very low. And for those reasons I believe that making votes public gives people a chance to spot unreasonable votes based on differing matters of taste or bias.
Any resentment is better directed at certain individuals, as you are able to inquire about their reasons, than the community as a whole, as people will rather just leave.
The biggest downside I see to public voting would be the emergence of a pattern of reciprocity—both “you downvoted my post, so I’ll downvote yours” and “you upvoted my post, so I’ll upvote yours”.
Any resentment is better directed at certain individuals, as you are able to inquire about their reasons, than the community as a whole, as people will rather just leave.
I don’t think so -- 10 downvotes from one single individual is much harder to forget than 10 downvotes from the community in general. 100 downvotes from the community in general might make you want to leave, but 100 downvotes from a single guy might have the same effect too (and you’ll start hating him way before that).
I’m aware that you do not support making votes public, so forcing people to comment is something you don’t support either.
I suppose it does at that. Although I note that I wouldn’t like explanations to be forced even if comments are public. The main reason is that it makes things more personal and emphasizes disagreement. I also anticipate that I will quite often not believe the explanation! People’s justifications for their opinions and particularly their social judgments are generated by a different mechanism to what gives them that opinion. The question “is that their excuse or their real reason?” will always apply and quite often warrant the answer ‘excuse’.
This might ultimately result in a reputation system that does not reflect the base and therefore the intended standards of the community, in this case the refinement of rationality.
But consider that as any community grows more popular the number of people that do not indentify with its motto will grow too.
What do you suggest I do to discourage this? ;)
(I note that it is also likely true that the number of people who agree with me may increase too, particularly if it is a position I expect people to appreciate more as they gain a more sophisticated grasp of lesswrong social dynamics.)
More so if the number of people previously equipped with the sufficient skills required in any given community is very low.
Errr.… that seems to suggest that-which-is-lesswrong has already been lost!
And for those reasons I believe that making votes public gives people a chance to spot unreasonable votes based on differing matters of taste or bias.
Err… that isn’t ‘for those reasons’ so much as it is an independent point. But it is a good point and something that would be the most prominent advantage to sacrificing anonymity. For related reasons some forums make the karma impact of votes dependent on the karma of the voter (stepped approximately logarithmically proportional).
A possible alternative is to have only manually approved voters (like moderators, but more numerous), with other things staying the same. Requiring commenting is not a good option.
Slightly OT, but it might be wise to have some sort of automatic limit on voting too often just after acquiring an account here. If LW should happen to attract the negative attention of Pharyngula, or the chan hordes, or the Conservapedia crowd, or yaoi fangirls, or tea partiers, or some other populous constituency, they could vote each other up in karma and then be pretty disruptive.
That’s mostly a community reanimation measure. If quality of voting merely starts to deteriorate, a moderate karma cutoff that enables voting might do the trick.
I’d like to see total upvotes and downvotes, not just the sum.
I thought for a minute that votes made using the kibitzer could count for more. But this would be a feature that would favor dishonest users (who could game it) over honest users.
A notion for a slightly more informative karma system. Each person can apply 1, 2, or 3 karma points (plus or minus).
Instead of just giving the number of points, the slot after the date has total points, number of plus points, number of minus points, and number of voters.
I realize there’s a little redundancy, but I think that would be alright to make it more convenient for anyone who doesn’t want to be constantly doing routine arithmetic.
The idea would probably be a little graph showing point accumulation over time, but that seems like too much added work for the site.
I did. The feedback that actually told him something came as replies. I’m not seeing how the use of downvotes actually helped there, and it did seem to add unnecessary nastiness to the exchange.
I agree it’s a bit harsh, and not always useful. It’s a bit of a pity that the karma system doesn’t allow to make a difference between “5 people found this post not-that-great” and “5 people found this post absolutely terrible”.
Maybe it would be nice to have a system that would allow for more nuance, but it would also have to be easy enough to understand and use, and not be easy to game.
Also, I would say that the downvotes did have some utility, by expressing “you should pay more attention to criticism, most people here disagree with you”.
For example, make ‘terrible’ votes cost karma.
What about the ability to mark a comment as obsolete if you changed your mind? It will then be under the fold but people won’t be able to downvote it anymore. Or should people who changed their mind be punished infinitely? I noticed that I often delete comments that get downvoted if I changed my mind, e.g. understood where I was wrong, because they keep getting downvoted long after the discussion ended. By deleting it I destroy the context and consistency of the discussion. But I also do not want to be downvoted anymore for something I don’t believe and I want to signal that I changed my mind.
If you change your mind, just edit the comment to say so.
Preferably by adding that statement, without changing the original comment, so that existing discussion doesn’t break.
People here tend to reward humility vigorously. (Humility including the strong non-submissive kind that doesn’t base the ego on attachment to being right, not just signals of lower status.)
As Richard suggests editing your comment, leaving the original while adding a retraction is a good idea (and somewhat of a convention). You can make it bold by using two asterices on both sides.
It is also worth adding a reply later on in the discussion explaining your new position and why you changed it. Unless I confuse you with someone else (quite possible) I think I recall you once before changing your mind and acknowleding it publicly. By reading that I gained a lot of respect for your judgement (or that of whoever else it was if I mistake your identity).
Not a bad idea; having all votes public may also be an improvement.
Still, I suspect that whatever the system, there would be someone to argue that it sucks, which isnt’t an excuse to not improve it, but a reason to be cautious.
The purpose of implementing voting, as opposed to (for example) soliciting critical/praising comments, is to get more information about people’s attitude towards individual comments, by lifting reasons not to signal (and thus lock the community focus better, protecting it from watering down). Commenting would be less frequent because (1) it’s more difficult to comment; (2) if you have little to say, or what you’d say has already been said, you don’t want to create more noise.
Requiring that votes are made public will discourage some of the voters from signaling their attitude, or otherwise distort the signal for image purposes. I’m not even sure whether voluntary public voting is a good idea, because of the image-driven distortion effect, but since it’s presumably no worse than with commenting, it might not be that bad.
I will oppose that option for as long as I have breath. If it is implemented then I recommend to all participants that they find a way to game that system so as to minimize the damage.
(I’ll not repeat the reasons here but I have mentioned them previously.)
Metafilter has a pretty simple system. Users can favorite posts and comments. The favorite count and the names of the favoriters are public. There are no corresponding unfavorites. Instead, the users may silently flag the post, indicating that it seems to be bad enough that a moderator should probably take a look. The moderators clean up crap comments manually, guided by the flags.
I haven’t read the above thread. But here’s an idea I had about the Karma system: If you want to downvote someone you’re asked to provide a reply explaining why you downvoted the comment. If you downvote 5 times without explaining yourself you’ll lose 1 Karma point.
It always really bothers me if I get downvoted without getting feedback because without feedback I’m unable to improve, refine my writing skills or rationality. What’s the point then? Merely losing Karma score will led people to conclude (unjustified) that they are downvoted for various reasons but not that they may be wrong or that their comment simply does not add anything valuable to the debate. Negative Karma without feedback causes resentment in all people except those who already acquired enough rationality skills and realization to infer that there might be something wrong with their comment and not with the person downvoting it. The Karma system as it is will therefore discourage newcomers and make them conclude that LW is merely an echo-chamber and does not tolerate their precious critique.
I felt the same way when I first started posting here. Particularly when I was challenging the local conventional wisdom. But now I realize that anonymous unexplained downvotes are a form of feedback, and a particularly valuable form of feedback to someone prepared to take advantage of it.
Because feedback in the form of comments simply provokes an automatic verbal response from you. You learn nothing from the experience. You just get some practice at constructing rationalizations. But feedback in the form of anonymous downvotes forces you to stop and reflect: Just what does this mean? What do I need to change so as to prevent this? What experiments should I undertake?”
ETA:
A good point. So for LW regulars, it may be worth remembering that it is more informative to upvote explicit criticism of newbie mistakes than to downvote the mistakes themselves.
A good suggestion. I expect whether I follow it or not will depend on how arrogant the newbie is. Unless, of course the explicit criticism is ‘you are being arrogant and annoying. We are more fussy about that sort of thing here than in many other places on the internet’. Then I suppose the same principle would apply. :)
But if you were posting a comment about cooking wouldn’t you weigh the Karma of a chef differently than that of someone who has merely joint your culinary community to read up on some recipe?
I don’t expect most of all people to conclude this naturally. I believe there is some evidence for this, as for example this Wiki entry states:
And that is actually from a ‘Rationality Wiki’, so what might John Doe conclude?
I loved that line. It was put in there among ‘the ugly’ but I consider it one of the best features of lesswrong. Just because they talk about some guy in high school doesn’t mean their thinking is any good! Eat downvote burn until your thinking gets up to scratch Descartes. Read the damn sequences!
(I wonder if Descartes would end up getting into arguments with Mitchell… “I thought I was me, I still think I’m me, therefore I am still me!”)
My experience with comments has been that it is wisest to ignore the reputation of the source and simply focus on the words. (One exception: interpreting irony).
So I doubt that knowing the source of up- and down- votes would be particularly useful either. If I know that a great chef has downvoted my chili recipe, I still don’t know whether it is because he doesn’t like my spelling, doesn’t like my ingredients, or simply doesn’t care for chili.
If a chef downvotes your chili recipe, it could be because he doesn’t like your spelling, your ingredients, or chili.
If a random person downvotes your chili recipe, it could also be because she doesn’t like your spelling, your ingredients, or chili.
The first downvote is still more informative even given any particular reason for downvoting, because the chef is more likely than a random person to know how to spell “roux”, cook a perfect pot of pinto beans, or have good reasons to dislike chili as a class of food (e.g. “tried seven versions, don’t like any” v. “had it when I was a kid and didn’t like it”).
I personally believe I am usually better off not knowing who downvoted me. Quite often (although not always) when people downvote my comments I hold their judgement in contempt. This includes those comments that receive initial downvotes but rebound to become significantly positive once the better (and less impassioned) judgement of the broader community sets in.
If the comments justifying their downvote disgust me then I just end up losing respect for the individual. Since it isn’t all that much of a benefit to me to know who has objectionable judgement in such matters and it is far more pleasant to converse with people I respect I prefer to not know.
(Oh, and if I had to comment every time I downvoted things would get downright spammy!)
This is a very good point. I upvoted your comment for this point even though I don’t believe your suggestion would work well as a general practice. I agree that there are times when explanations are beneficial and in the case of new users this is definitely something to remember.
Example—while I was writing this my previous comment went to −1. This is not a big deal at all and nor is it particularly surprising. But all the same I am glad I don’t know who the culprit was (‘culprit’ framing intended to convey perspective) and have no difficulty at all in inferring either what their actual motivations likely are or what reasons they would actually express.
The mere fact of a downvote is of some use to me in as much as it informs me that it is a topic on which it will be beneficial to me to replace personal sincerity with political optimisation. ie. Use the kind of language that makes critics look bad for criticizing (instead of casually leaving a wide open target). Present whatever statements are most likely to achieve a desired outcome rather than just saying what I believe.
I don’t think anyone would benefit if someone went and justified their voting decision and I would be surprised if I found it much more informative than the integer representation.
EDIT: While I was writing this comment the ‘-1’ in question changed to ‘+2’. That did surprise me!
I’m aware that you do not support making votes public, so forcing people to comment is something you don’t support either. I haven’t read up on your reasons yet. But consider that as any community grows more popular the number of people that do not indentify with its motto will grow too. This might ultimately result in a reputation system that does not reflect the base and therefore the intended standards of the community, in this case the refinement of rationality. More so if the number of people previously equipped with the sufficient skills required in any given community is very low. And for those reasons I believe that making votes public gives people a chance to spot unreasonable votes based on differing matters of taste or bias.
Any resentment is better directed at certain individuals, as you are able to inquire about their reasons, than the community as a whole, as people will rather just leave.
The biggest downside I see to public voting would be the emergence of a pattern of reciprocity—both “you downvoted my post, so I’ll downvote yours” and “you upvoted my post, so I’ll upvote yours”.
I don’t think so -- 10 downvotes from one single individual is much harder to forget than 10 downvotes from the community in general. 100 downvotes from the community in general might make you want to leave, but 100 downvotes from a single guy might have the same effect too (and you’ll start hating him way before that).
I suppose it does at that. Although I note that I wouldn’t like explanations to be forced even if comments are public. The main reason is that it makes things more personal and emphasizes disagreement. I also anticipate that I will quite often not believe the explanation! People’s justifications for their opinions and particularly their social judgments are generated by a different mechanism to what gives them that opinion. The question “is that their excuse or their real reason?” will always apply and quite often warrant the answer ‘excuse’.
What do you suggest I do to discourage this? ;)
(I note that it is also likely true that the number of people who agree with me may increase too, particularly if it is a position I expect people to appreciate more as they gain a more sophisticated grasp of lesswrong social dynamics.)
Errr.… that seems to suggest that-which-is-lesswrong has already been lost!
Err… that isn’t ‘for those reasons’ so much as it is an independent point. But it is a good point and something that would be the most prominent advantage to sacrificing anonymity. For related reasons some forums make the karma impact of votes dependent on the karma of the voter (stepped approximately logarithmically proportional).
A possible alternative is to have only manually approved voters (like moderators, but more numerous), with other things staying the same. Requiring commenting is not a good option.
Slightly OT, but it might be wise to have some sort of automatic limit on voting too often just after acquiring an account here. If LW should happen to attract the negative attention of Pharyngula, or the chan hordes, or the Conservapedia crowd, or yaoi fangirls, or tea partiers, or some other populous constituency, they could vote each other up in karma and then be pretty disruptive.
I suspect I’m not the only one who would be instinctively averse to that. :)
That’s mostly a community reanimation measure. If quality of voting merely starts to deteriorate, a moderate karma cutoff that enables voting might do the trick.
That would be worth a shot at least.
I’d like to see total upvotes and downvotes, not just the sum.
I thought for a minute that votes made using the kibitzer could count for more. But this would be a feature that would favor dishonest users (who could game it) over honest users.
A notion for a slightly more informative karma system. Each person can apply 1, 2, or 3 karma points (plus or minus).
Instead of just giving the number of points, the slot after the date has total points, number of plus points, number of minus points, and number of voters.
I realize there’s a little redundancy, but I think that would be alright to make it more convenient for anyone who doesn’t want to be constantly doing routine arithmetic.
The idea would probably be a little graph showing point accumulation over time, but that seems like too much added work for the site.