An upvote communicates to other readers “this comment is worth your attention.”
If a comment is more highly upvoted, people are more likely to read it rather than skip over it, more likely to read it closely rather than skim it, more likely to follow links that it contains, and more likely to spend some time thinking about its arguments rather than just moving on.
Downvotes sort of do the opposite, but it’s not perfectly symmetrical because scores below zero pack an extra punch.
Downvotes sort of do the opposite, but it’s not perfectly symmetrical because scores below zero pack an extra punch.
The standard guideline is to upvote if you want more of that kind of comment, and downvote if you want less. The asymmetry between upvotes and downvotes comes the fact Less Wrongers on a whole want more content on Less Wrong rather than less. Negative scores pack a punch because they mean your comment would be better off not existing.
Well really, I think it’s mostly that people just have a pre-existing idea of the connotation of negative numbers, but I gave this retroactive justification to show that I think the result is surprisingly internally consistent.
The asymmetry between upvotes and downvotes comes the fact Less Wrongers on a whole want more content on Less Wrong rather than less.
In principle one could tweak the interest rate on the Less Wrong content economy by eliminating the ability to downvote for users who have less than X karma. Personally, I think we are currently too harsh in our moderation and backing off a bit (requiring 1 karma to downvote) would be a worthwhile experiment. Less Wrong is already going to rip your ideas apart plenty without the added injury of downvotes. The bigger problem is people being Negative Nancys about unimportant things like whether your thing would be more appropriate for discussion or open thread or what have you. Enforcing rules has a social cost; frivolous rules mean you’re paying the cost for little gain. I also dislike seeing people downvote posts past −4 or so for no real reason (god forbid anyone should attempt humor on April Fool’s day).
Another idea I had is trying to create a norm of people sending appreciative private messages for posts they like. I think posters would be extremely responsive to this sort of social reward (much more than mere upvotes, which invite score comparisons etc.) and since they’re private messages, they wouldn’t clog up the site with content-free praise comments. This could be done informally, or it could be institutionalized if there was a popup that would randomly sometimes appear when you upvoted something inviting you to send an appreciative PM. I actually think this could be pretty fabulous for Less Wrong if it was done right. I don’t think people realize on a System 1 level how fantastically valuable a thoroughly researched post on important ideas is, but right now writing that sort of post is athanklessjob. (Or: “When making a correction or complaint as a top-level comment, choose one positive thing about the post, if any, and point it out first.” Or maybe we can just embrace the idea that harsh criticism is normal and expected?)
I have upvoted more comments that are on −1 than I have downvoted ones on +1 (even taking into account that I upvote more than I downvote), but for a different reason: what looks to me like an asymmetry between unreasonable upvotes and unreasonable downvotes.
Most of the time when I do this, it is because I see something obviously reasonable sitting on −1, think “what the hell?”, and conclude it must be an ideological downvote where someone is voting someone else down for being visibly on the wrong team. And I don’t see obvious signs of ideological upvoting.
However, this may simply indicate that ideological downvoting is easier to spot, because downvoting is generally rarer (so if an OK-but-unremarkable comment is at −1 then that’s more evidence of malfeasance than if an OK-but-unremarkable comment is at +1). Which, in turn, is probably because of that psychological difference between positive and negative, and/or the idea that “negative scores mean your comment would be better off not existing”. So maybe, on sufficiently careful analysis, this comes down to the same effect after all :-).
Yeah, I’ve been downvoted to a negative number in Quora with a nice, detailed, science based article about why someone’s “recently recovered early-childhood memory” were probably not reliable enough for her to publicly accuse someone of molesting children and without first talking to a counselor and preferably a councilor who understood memory. It was all very reasonable and with ample evidence to support every statement.
An upvote communicates to other readers “this comment is worth your attention.”
If a comment is more highly upvoted, people are more likely to read it rather than skip over it, more likely to read it closely rather than skim it, more likely to follow links that it contains, and more likely to spend some time thinking about its arguments rather than just moving on.
Downvotes sort of do the opposite, but it’s not perfectly symmetrical because scores below zero pack an extra punch.
The standard guideline is to upvote if you want more of that kind of comment, and downvote if you want less. The asymmetry between upvotes and downvotes comes the fact Less Wrongers on a whole want more content on Less Wrong rather than less. Negative scores pack a punch because they mean your comment would be better off not existing.
Well really, I think it’s mostly that people just have a pre-existing idea of the connotation of negative numbers, but I gave this retroactive justification to show that I think the result is surprisingly internally consistent.
In principle one could tweak the interest rate on the Less Wrong content economy by eliminating the ability to downvote for users who have less than X karma. Personally, I think we are currently too harsh in our moderation and backing off a bit (requiring 1 karma to downvote) would be a worthwhile experiment. Less Wrong is already going to rip your ideas apart plenty without the added injury of downvotes. The bigger problem is people being Negative Nancys about unimportant things like whether your thing would be more appropriate for discussion or open thread or what have you. Enforcing rules has a social cost; frivolous rules mean you’re paying the cost for little gain. I also dislike seeing people downvote posts past −4 or so for no real reason (god forbid anyone should attempt humor on April Fool’s day).
Another idea I had is trying to create a norm of people sending appreciative private messages for posts they like. I think posters would be extremely responsive to this sort of social reward (much more than mere upvotes, which invite score comparisons etc.) and since they’re private messages, they wouldn’t clog up the site with content-free praise comments. This could be done informally, or it could be institutionalized if there was a popup that would randomly sometimes appear when you upvoted something inviting you to send an appreciative PM. I actually think this could be pretty fabulous for Less Wrong if it was done right. I don’t think people realize on a System 1 level how fantastically valuable a thoroughly researched post on important ideas is, but right now writing that sort of post is a thankless job. (Or: “When making a correction or complaint as a top-level comment, choose one positive thing about the post, if any, and point it out first.” Or maybe we can just embrace the idea that harsh criticism is normal and expected?)
Indeed. I have ‘reversed’ quite a few ‘-1’ because of this.
I have upvoted more comments that are on −1 than I have downvoted ones on +1 (even taking into account that I upvote more than I downvote), but for a different reason: what looks to me like an asymmetry between unreasonable upvotes and unreasonable downvotes.
Most of the time when I do this, it is because I see something obviously reasonable sitting on −1, think “what the hell?”, and conclude it must be an ideological downvote where someone is voting someone else down for being visibly on the wrong team. And I don’t see obvious signs of ideological upvoting.
However, this may simply indicate that ideological downvoting is easier to spot, because downvoting is generally rarer (so if an OK-but-unremarkable comment is at −1 then that’s more evidence of malfeasance than if an OK-but-unremarkable comment is at +1). Which, in turn, is probably because of that psychological difference between positive and negative, and/or the idea that “negative scores mean your comment would be better off not existing”. So maybe, on sufficiently careful analysis, this comes down to the same effect after all :-).
Yeah, I’ve been downvoted to a negative number in Quora with a nice, detailed, science based article about why someone’s “recently recovered early-childhood memory” were probably not reliable enough for her to publicly accuse someone of molesting children and without first talking to a counselor and preferably a councilor who understood memory. It was all very reasonable and with ample evidence to support every statement.
I got down-voted to negative by a guy who said she should try a past-life regression and literally used the phrase “sort of a quantum parallel worlds reincarnation metaphysics with possibility of memory across various worlds and/or lives”. (Actually, if you guys could upvote me on that, I’m genuinely worried that other people with similar recovered images will find his advice and be unable to see my comment and that lives and relationships will be destroyed, the thread is https://www.quora.com/I-think-I-have-been-abused-sexually-as-a-child-I-just-have-some-faint-memory-picture-which-came-up-very-recently-in-my-mind-How-can-I-be-sure-I-am-a-20-year-old-female)