I’m pretty sure ‘upvote’ is not supposed to mean ‘agree’, and ‘downvote’ is not supposed to mean ‘disagree’. Note the discussion earlier about possibly adding these options for voting. High-quality comments that you disagree with (or don’t) should be upvoted, and low-quality comments that you agree with (or don’t) should be downvoted.
Either way, a technical discussion about the quality of the comment is probably off-topic, and so not warranted. If someone says “shmoo” as a comment, I want to be able to just click “Vote down” and not have to write an explanation.
I interpret an upvote as “I want to see more comments / posts like this” and a downvote as saying the opposite. It really does seem like a separate agree/disagree button would be a good idea, but there are other LW improvements with higher priorities.
Ah, I see why I was getting the downvotes, it was cryptic for a bit. I meant “agree with the reasoning”. (And if you read it that way my comment probably makes more sense.) Sloppy of me. Oops.
My excuse is that to me “agree” and “agree with the logic” seem almost identical. If I’m disagreeing, it’s because I think the person has made a mistake somewhere. “Your reasoning is valid and I don’t agree” would mean.. what?
Since we’re not constraining ourselves to something like symbolic logic here, we should only be looking at good arguments on all sides that are not easily refuted. There should be good arguments that lead to interesting discussion involving conflicting arguments that are also good. For bonus points, there can be references or links to additional material, or the comment can even be well-written.
If the comment inspires a response at all, you should probably upvote it. If you want to respond and downvote it, you should probably either reconsider downvoting it, or consider that the comment was merely a troll, in which case you should downvote it and not respond.
Perhaps anonymous votes should have less weight, say 0.5 points or even 0.3 points compared to a ‘personalized’ vote which gives a full 1 point. This would keep the ‘cost’ of upvotes and downvotes equal while discouraging anonymous voting.
I also tend to dislike anonymous votes and wouldn’t mind being asked to justify my own upvotes and downvotes.
Upvotes might deserve a little more relaxed regime. “Me too” is a valid rationalist response, and an upvote keeps it from being spelled out tediously.
Upvote = agree (so the original is the explanation)
Downvote = disagree (so the original is not a sufficient explanation)
I’m pretty sure ‘upvote’ is not supposed to mean ‘agree’, and ‘downvote’ is not supposed to mean ‘disagree’. Note the discussion earlier about possibly adding these options for voting. High-quality comments that you disagree with (or don’t) should be upvoted, and low-quality comments that you agree with (or don’t) should be downvoted.
Either way, a technical discussion about the quality of the comment is probably off-topic, and so not warranted. If someone says “shmoo” as a comment, I want to be able to just click “Vote down” and not have to write an explanation.
I interpret an upvote as “I want to see more comments / posts like this” and a downvote as saying the opposite. It really does seem like a separate agree/disagree button would be a good idea, but there are other LW improvements with higher priorities.
Ah, I see why I was getting the downvotes, it was cryptic for a bit. I meant “agree with the reasoning”. (And if you read it that way my comment probably makes more sense.) Sloppy of me. Oops.
My excuse is that to me “agree” and “agree with the logic” seem almost identical. If I’m disagreeing, it’s because I think the person has made a mistake somewhere. “Your reasoning is valid and I don’t agree” would mean.. what?
Since we’re not constraining ourselves to something like symbolic logic here, we should only be looking at good arguments on all sides that are not easily refuted. There should be good arguments that lead to interesting discussion involving conflicting arguments that are also good. For bonus points, there can be references or links to additional material, or the comment can even be well-written.
If the comment inspires a response at all, you should probably upvote it. If you want to respond and downvote it, you should probably either reconsider downvoting it, or consider that the comment was merely a troll, in which case you should downvote it and not respond.
Perhaps anonymous votes should have less weight, say 0.5 points or even 0.3 points compared to a ‘personalized’ vote which gives a full 1 point. This would keep the ‘cost’ of upvotes and downvotes equal while discouraging anonymous voting.