Doesn’t it intuitively make sense that feedback about feedback is good for the same reasons that feedback is good? If my intuitions are bad, the least someone could do is offer an argument to prove the flaws of my intuition. I could have clarified this, I guess, but I felt no real reason to do so given the stunning absence of actual substantive criticisms of what I was doing.
People weren’t responding rationally to my comments, so I pointed out that those people were being dumb. That seems like something that is okay, and like something that might improve feedback mechanisms and which should thus be praised rather than downvoted. ArisKatsaris’ one sentence statement about her karma habits didn’t have any justifications behind it, so it didn’t deserve a detailed and warranted response. I did describe in general terms the substance of my objection, that’s enough in the absence of warranted counterarguments
All of the above listed reasons seem like valid arguments to me, if they’re flawed I would like to know. But I would like actual reasons, not just vague statements that appeal to unjustified personal preferences.
People weren’t responding rationally to my comments, so I pointed out that those people were being dumb.
Listen to yourself.
I’m not interested in having arguments with you; you don’t make that look like a remotely productive use of my time. I’m trying to point out the things you are saying that sound juvenile and cause people to downvote you; it seems to bother you, so maybe if you can figure out the pattern, you will stop saying those things.
Announcing that you are making a valid point does not add anything to a point, however valid it may or may not be.
Declaring unilaterally without support that people weren’t responding “rationally”, and then pointing out that this makes them “dumb”, is not any kind of worthwhile behavior.
I am not upset by receiving negative reputation in itself. I am annoyed that people are not giving justifications for their negative reputations, and I was also trying to give reasons that their negative reputations were unjustified. I don’t even know that I’m annoyed so much as I’m trying to point out the flawed behavior on this site so that third parties or intelligent but silent viewers within the community are aware of the danger.
Give a reason that my overall position or the above list is logically flawed, please. Or shut up.
Chaosmosis has had a significant number of upvoted comments. Some of his conduct has been very obnoxious and counterproductive, but I don’t think he’s reached a point where it’s reasonable to write him off as unable to learn from his mistakes. At the least, I think his continued presence is more likely to be fruitful than a couple of other recently active members whose contributions have been uniformly downvoted.
Point of clarification: does banning a user on LW do anything but force them to create a new user account if they wish to keep contributing?
I have been using Wei_Dai’s awesome greasemonkey script for a while now to filter out some of the users I find valueless, so having them create multiple usernames to dodge the banhammer would be a mild nuisance for me.
So if that’s all it does, I’m somewhat opposed to it, but willing to remain neutral for the sake of not inconveniencing other people who don’t use that script for whatever reason.
OTOH, the responses to those users are themselves mildly annoying, so if the banhammer does something more worthwhile than that, then I might be in favor of it.
What about giving users the ability to apply a penalty to the score of posts from people they find uninteresting or aggravating, for the purpose of determining whether comments are hidden for that user? It could be inherited for one comment, or over the entire subtree, or perhaps decay according to some function.
This would, in general, hide comments from those users you object to as well as responses to them. The primary advantage it would have over outright blocks is that it would allow more space for someone to redeem themselves, and would let you catch interesting things in the responses when they do arise. A comment at +22 is likely interesting regardless of who posted it, and if you’ve seen some interesting posts from someone you’ve previously downgraded, you’ll probably think about relaxing that.
Edited to add: Note that if there seems to be a consensus on this, I’m willing to do the coding required.
I can’t ban users; I can ban comments. This makes them inaccessible to nonmod people. Creating a new username would only work against this for as long as it took to identify the new one as the same person.
I am convinced that you are wrong in point of fact. I am telling you this so you can adjust your feelings to fit reality. As long as you feel Alicorn or others are out to get you, or profit by hurting you, you will probably not be able to make a useful contribution to discussions or enjoy them yourself.
From my experience as a longtime reader of the site I can tell you that reputation on LW is not normally gained by attacking anyone, even if everyone else agrees in disliking the target or their comments. We have community values of responding to the factual content of each comment, with clear literal meaning, and without covert signalling. Reputation is gained by contributing to the conversation.
We also require civility, and since people are often bad at predicting how others will react to borderline comments like “dumb”, it’s best to be what may seem to you to be extra-civil just to avoid conversational traps. You have edited the comment that seemed to start this whole subthread, and I haven’t seen the original, so can’t comment more specifically.
I am not upset by receiving negative reputation in itself. I am annoyed that people are not giving justifications for their negative reputations
That would have been more believable if you were complaining about downvotes that other people received, instead of the downvotes that you receive.
It would also have been more believable if you had also complained about the upvotes you received without justification, instead of only the downvotes you received without justification.
Edited to add:
Here’s my impression of you: You are very strongly biased against all negative feedback you receive, whether silent downvotes or explicit criticism and you’re therefore not the best person to criticize it in turn. e.g. in the first thread I encountered you in in, you repeatedly called me a liar when I criticized a post without downvoting it. You couldn’t believe me when I told you I didn’t downvote it.
You are BAD at this. You are BAD at receiving negative feedback. Therefore you are BAD at criticizing it in turn. If you want to give feedback on negative feedback, then make sure said “negative feedback” wasn’t originally directed at you. Try to criticize the feedback given to other people instead—you might be better suited to evaluate that.
4 doesn’t match the data, because no one who has disagreed with the above listed points has given a reason that they disagree with them. There have been no arguments made against my posts, just (1, 2, and 3) statements about aesthetic preferences. IMHO all y’all have really bad aesthetic preferences.
Just because I don’t speak in a pretentious tone doesn’t mean that I can’t make valid points. I get kind of sick of all of the LessWrong commenters sounding alike in tone so I intentionally try to diversify things. Diverse forms of discussion seem more likely to produce diverse forms of thought [insert generic Orwell reference here]. Informal tones are also more conducive to casual communication which takes less time to articulate. Formalism in everyday life is stupid.
Judge the accuracy of the information I provide, please, not the tone which I choose to provide it in. Arguing shouldn’t have to be so formal and should never preclude major lulz whenever major lulz can be achieved. Anyone who acts as though something else is true should provide warranted reasons for doing so or else should be considered a major n00b.
Posts that are solely about karma tend to get downvoted by me, because I want fewer posts that are solely about karma.
Lolz ironic downvoting on your comment.
I disagree with you, I think giving feedback about received feedback makes sense.
Edit: The −3 really just goes to prove my point people, don’t you think? I was making a valid point here.
Saying this does not go a long way towards proving that it is true.
Doesn’t it intuitively make sense that feedback about feedback is good for the same reasons that feedback is good? If my intuitions are bad, the least someone could do is offer an argument to prove the flaws of my intuition. I could have clarified this, I guess, but I felt no real reason to do so given the stunning absence of actual substantive criticisms of what I was doing.
People weren’t responding rationally to my comments, so I pointed out that those people were being dumb. That seems like something that is okay, and like something that might improve feedback mechanisms and which should thus be praised rather than downvoted. ArisKatsaris’ one sentence statement about her karma habits didn’t have any justifications behind it, so it didn’t deserve a detailed and warranted response. I did describe in general terms the substance of my objection, that’s enough in the absence of warranted counterarguments
All of the above listed reasons seem like valid arguments to me, if they’re flawed I would like to know. But I would like actual reasons, not just vague statements that appeal to unjustified personal preferences.
Listen to yourself.
I’m not interested in having arguments with you; you don’t make that look like a remotely productive use of my time. I’m trying to point out the things you are saying that sound juvenile and cause people to downvote you; it seems to bother you, so maybe if you can figure out the pattern, you will stop saying those things.
Announcing that you are making a valid point does not add anything to a point, however valid it may or may not be.
Declaring unilaterally without support that people weren’t responding “rationally”, and then pointing out that this makes them “dumb”, is not any kind of worthwhile behavior.
I am not upset by receiving negative reputation in itself. I am annoyed that people are not giving justifications for their negative reputations, and I was also trying to give reasons that their negative reputations were unjustified. I don’t even know that I’m annoyed so much as I’m trying to point out the flawed behavior on this site so that third parties or intelligent but silent viewers within the community are aware of the danger.
Give a reason that my overall position or the above list is logically flawed, please. Or shut up.
Please go away.
EDIT: Going to turn this into a poll. Permalink to karma sink if it drops below threshold.
Vote this comment up if you think chaosmosis is annoying enough that future chasomosis comments should be banned.
Vote this comment up if you do not think chaosmosis’s future comments should be banned.
Chaosmosis has had a significant number of upvoted comments. Some of his conduct has been very obnoxious and counterproductive, but I don’t think he’s reached a point where it’s reasonable to write him off as unable to learn from his mistakes. At the least, I think his continued presence is more likely to be fruitful than a couple of other recently active members whose contributions have been uniformly downvoted.
Karma sink. You’re all irrational and dumb, shut up!
Point of clarification: does banning a user on LW do anything but force them to create a new user account if they wish to keep contributing?
I have been using Wei_Dai’s awesome greasemonkey script for a while now to filter out some of the users I find valueless, so having them create multiple usernames to dodge the banhammer would be a mild nuisance for me.
So if that’s all it does, I’m somewhat opposed to it, but willing to remain neutral for the sake of not inconveniencing other people who don’t use that script for whatever reason.
OTOH, the responses to those users are themselves mildly annoying, so if the banhammer does something more worthwhile than that, then I might be in favor of it.
What about giving users the ability to apply a penalty to the score of posts from people they find uninteresting or aggravating, for the purpose of determining whether comments are hidden for that user? It could be inherited for one comment, or over the entire subtree, or perhaps decay according to some function.
This would, in general, hide comments from those users you object to as well as responses to them. The primary advantage it would have over outright blocks is that it would allow more space for someone to redeem themselves, and would let you catch interesting things in the responses when they do arise. A comment at +22 is likely interesting regardless of who posted it, and if you’ve seen some interesting posts from someone you’ve previously downgraded, you’ll probably think about relaxing that.
Edited to add: Note that if there seems to be a consensus on this, I’m willing to do the coding required.
I can’t ban users; I can ban comments. This makes them inaccessible to nonmod people. Creating a new username would only work against this for as long as it took to identify the new one as the same person.
Ah, gotcha.
Is there a certain threshold that once passed, personal karma totals no longer matter?
Eh? You only need 20 to post in Main.
I think negative karma throttles posting rate, but I don’t know the formula for it.
I feel as though your comments are now solely directed towards the purpose of gaining reputation.
I am convinced that you are wrong in point of fact. I am telling you this so you can adjust your feelings to fit reality. As long as you feel Alicorn or others are out to get you, or profit by hurting you, you will probably not be able to make a useful contribution to discussions or enjoy them yourself.
From my experience as a longtime reader of the site I can tell you that reputation on LW is not normally gained by attacking anyone, even if everyone else agrees in disliking the target or their comments. We have community values of responding to the factual content of each comment, with clear literal meaning, and without covert signalling. Reputation is gained by contributing to the conversation.
We also require civility, and since people are often bad at predicting how others will react to borderline comments like “dumb”, it’s best to be what may seem to you to be extra-civil just to avoid conversational traps. You have edited the comment that seemed to start this whole subthread, and I haven’t seen the original, so can’t comment more specifically.
That would have been more believable if you were complaining about downvotes that other people received, instead of the downvotes that you receive.
It would also have been more believable if you had also complained about the upvotes you received without justification, instead of only the downvotes you received without justification.
Edited to add: Here’s my impression of you: You are very strongly biased against all negative feedback you receive, whether silent downvotes or explicit criticism and you’re therefore not the best person to criticize it in turn. e.g. in the first thread I encountered you in in, you repeatedly called me a liar when I criticized a post without downvoting it. You couldn’t believe me when I told you I didn’t downvote it.
You are BAD at this. You are BAD at receiving negative feedback. Therefore you are BAD at criticizing it in turn. If you want to give feedback on negative feedback, then make sure said “negative feedback” wasn’t originally directed at you. Try to criticize the feedback given to other people instead—you might be better suited to evaluate that.
People might be downvoting for any number of reasons.
I spot the following, as potential downvote-triggers for various demographics:
1) “Lolz” 2) “ironic” 3) downvoting 4) disagreement without explanation
4 doesn’t match the data, because no one who has disagreed with the above listed points has given a reason that they disagree with them. There have been no arguments made against my posts, just (1, 2, and 3) statements about aesthetic preferences. IMHO all y’all have really bad aesthetic preferences.
Just because I don’t speak in a pretentious tone doesn’t mean that I can’t make valid points. I get kind of sick of all of the LessWrong commenters sounding alike in tone so I intentionally try to diversify things. Diverse forms of discussion seem more likely to produce diverse forms of thought [insert generic Orwell reference here]. Informal tones are also more conducive to casual communication which takes less time to articulate. Formalism in everyday life is stupid.
Judge the accuracy of the information I provide, please, not the tone which I choose to provide it in. Arguing shouldn’t have to be so formal and should never preclude major lulz whenever major lulz can be achieved. Anyone who acts as though something else is true should provide warranted reasons for doing so or else should be considered a major n00b.