I think this roughly summarizes my perspective on this. Karma seems to work well for a very large range of online forums and applications. We didn’t really have any problems with collusion on LW outside of Eugine, and that was a result of a lack of moderator tools, not a problem with the karma system itself.
I agree that you should never fully delegate your decision making process to a simple algorithm, that’s what the value-loading problem is all about, but that’s what we have moderators and admins for. If we see suspicious behavior in the voting patterns we investigate and if we find someone is gaming the system we punish them. This is how practically all social rules and systems get enforced.
I think this roughly summarizes my perspective on this. Karma seems to work well for a very large range of online forums and applications. We didn’t really have any problems with collusion on LW outside of Eugine, and that was a result of a lack of moderator tools, not a problem with the karma system itself.
I agree that you should never fully delegate your decision making process to a simple algorithm, that’s what the value-loading problem is all about, but that’s what we have moderators and admins for. If we see suspicious behavior in the voting patterns we investigate and if we find someone is gaming the system we punish them. This is how practically all social rules and systems get enforced.