When criticizing something in a post other than the main point, authors should explicitly state whether they agree, disagree, or are unsure of the post as a whole.
Agreeupvotes post
Minor suggestion: build this into the comment system. Instead of having a button that says “comment” have three buttons: “(mostly) agree”, “(mostly) disagree” and “other”. All agreeing comments could be put in the same place, perhaps in a column, and all disagreeing comments in their own place, perhaps another column. Each column would run like the current comments column, and one could even incorporate variable column widths; if almost all comments said “agree”, then the “agree” column would occupy most of the screen.
Etiquette for the “agree” column would be different to etiquette for the “disagree” and “other” columns. It would be standard to say things like “that really inspired me” or “I feel really positive that we have someone as clever as you working on these problems” etc. We could even have different Karma counters for “positive (agreeing) karma” and “argumentative (disagreeing and other) karma”. Upvoting comments in the “agree” column would based upon how much they seem to promote good emotions and bonding within the community.
EDIT: I’d love to know why this got downvoted. When my comment gets downvoted, it means that there is the tantalizing possibility of me excising a false belief from my mind. If you don’t tell me what you think this false belief is, I can’t do anything about it… this is especially true for comments that get voted to below 1.
There are too many different blogging/commenting systems as it is. For someone interested in finding useful or interesting content rather than in “communing”, it is seriously annoying to keep track of how they work.
It strikes me that such an attitude will stifle innovation.
someone had to be the first one to implement voted commenting… for that matter, someone had to be the first one to implement commenting!
Also, what’s the point of discussing new methods of group rationality if we’re not going to put them into practice, because we want to keep doing things the way everyone else does?
I don’t have anything against innovation—provided it’s more useful than the inconsistency it introduces. Tools, including software, are used for other ends, they are not ends in themselves except for a few people who specialize in them, or are otherwise particularly interested in them. As I put it earlier, I am interested in finding interesting or useful content, not in learning to manage a dozen different software systems.
I don’t have anything against innovation—provided it’s more useful than the inconsistency it introduces.
Agreed. So I guess we differ on a complicated question: my pet idea for a new commenting system will (hopefully!) improve the quality of debate, but it will also introduce more complexity.
Can you think of a way of rationally deciding which way the tradeoff ought to be calculated, e.g. “3 extra minutes of learning time is worth X improvement in community quality”?
Standardize somewhat on the blogging/commenting systems. Reducing the number of different systems will lessen the complexity a lot more than adding features to one or another would increase it. Reduce the number of systems by making it easier for current sites to transfer to another system. Reduce forking of projects by making it easy to patch systems to a consistent standard.
When my comment gets downvoted, it means that there is the tantalizing possibility of me excising a false belief from my mind.
A downvote doesn’t increase the possibility of your losing a false belief. It just means that someone, somewhere, decided to hit one button over another.
You have no idea who voted you down, and as we don’t have clear standards as a group, you can’t even make a stab in the dark as to why some individuals disapproved. It’s a popularity measure, nothing more.
A downvote doesn’t increase the possibility of your losing a false belief. It just means that someone, somewhere, decided to hit one button over another.
My working assumption is that votes on Less Wrong provide greater than zero information, i.e. that the hitting of the “down” button correlates positively with a poor comment.
My own experience is that positive and negative scores have little if any relation to the quality of a comment.
Also, total signal strength matters. The few massively-negative comments I’ve seen I agree are bad, but the ones with only a few negatives often don’t strike me as deserving their scores.
As most comments don’t receive any feedback, positive or negative, having a score of −1 only means that one person cared enough to make the comment and two cared enough to vote it down, for whatever reason.
It would be nice to be able to see total number of positive and negative votes, to see which comments are the most contentious, but that’s not currently a feature.
Agree upvotes post
Minor suggestion: build this into the comment system. Instead of having a button that says “comment” have three buttons: “(mostly) agree”, “(mostly) disagree” and “other”. All agreeing comments could be put in the same place, perhaps in a column, and all disagreeing comments in their own place, perhaps another column. Each column would run like the current comments column, and one could even incorporate variable column widths; if almost all comments said “agree”, then the “agree” column would occupy most of the screen.
Etiquette for the “agree” column would be different to etiquette for the “disagree” and “other” columns. It would be standard to say things like “that really inspired me” or “I feel really positive that we have someone as clever as you working on these problems” etc. We could even have different Karma counters for “positive (agreeing) karma” and “argumentative (disagreeing and other) karma”. Upvoting comments in the “agree” column would based upon how much they seem to promote good emotions and bonding within the community.
EDIT: I’d love to know why this got downvoted. When my comment gets downvoted, it means that there is the tantalizing possibility of me excising a false belief from my mind. If you don’t tell me what you think this false belief is, I can’t do anything about it… this is especially true for comments that get voted to below 1.
There are too many different blogging/commenting systems as it is. For someone interested in finding useful or interesting content rather than in “communing”, it is seriously annoying to keep track of how they work.
It strikes me that such an attitude will stifle innovation.
someone had to be the first one to implement voted commenting… for that matter, someone had to be the first one to implement commenting!
Also, what’s the point of discussing new methods of group rationality if we’re not going to put them into practice, because we want to keep doing things the way everyone else does?
I don’t have anything against innovation—provided it’s more useful than the inconsistency it introduces. Tools, including software, are used for other ends, they are not ends in themselves except for a few people who specialize in them, or are otherwise particularly interested in them. As I put it earlier, I am interested in finding interesting or useful content, not in learning to manage a dozen different software systems.
Agreed. So I guess we differ on a complicated question: my pet idea for a new commenting system will (hopefully!) improve the quality of debate, but it will also introduce more complexity.
Can you think of a way of rationally deciding which way the tradeoff ought to be calculated, e.g. “3 extra minutes of learning time is worth X improvement in community quality”?
Standardize somewhat on the blogging/commenting systems. Reducing the number of different systems will lessen the complexity a lot more than adding features to one or another would increase it. Reduce the number of systems by making it easier for current sites to transfer to another system. Reduce forking of projects by making it easy to patch systems to a consistent standard.
When my comment gets downvoted, it means that there is the tantalizing possibility of me excising a false belief from my mind.
A downvote doesn’t increase the possibility of your losing a false belief. It just means that someone, somewhere, decided to hit one button over another.
You have no idea who voted you down, and as we don’t have clear standards as a group, you can’t even make a stab in the dark as to why some individuals disapproved. It’s a popularity measure, nothing more.
My working assumption is that votes on Less Wrong provide greater than zero information, i.e. that the hitting of the “down” button correlates positively with a poor comment.
(shrug)
My own experience is that positive and negative scores have little if any relation to the quality of a comment.
Also, total signal strength matters. The few massively-negative comments I’ve seen I agree are bad, but the ones with only a few negatives often don’t strike me as deserving their scores.
As most comments don’t receive any feedback, positive or negative, having a score of −1 only means that one person cared enough to make the comment and two cared enough to vote it down, for whatever reason.
It would be nice to be able to see total number of positive and negative votes, to see which comments are the most contentious, but that’s not currently a feature.