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mormon2 comments on Open Thread: October 2009 - Less Wrong
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I apologize if this is blunt or already addressed but it seems to me that the voting system here has a large user based problem. It seems to me that the karma system has become nothing more then a popularity indicator.
It seems to me that many here vote up or down based on some gut-level agreement or disagreement with the comment or post. For example it is very troubling that some single line comments of agreement that should have 0 karma in my opinion end up with massive amounts and comments that may be in opposition to the popular beliefs here are voted down despite being important to the pursuit of rationality.
It was my understanding that karma should be an indicator of importance and a way of eliminating useless information not just a way of indicating that a post is popular. The popularity of a post is nearly meaningless when you have such a range of experience and inexperience on a blog such as this.
Just a thought feel free to disagree...
I think you're on to something - many commenters (myself included) probably vote based more on agreement or disagreement than on anything else, and this necessarily reinforces the groupthink. If we wanted to fix it, the way to go would be to define standard rules for upvoting and downvoting which reduced the impact of opinion. It cannot be eliminated - if someone says something stupid, for example, saying it should not be rewarded - but a set of clear guidelines could change the karma meter from a popularity score to a filter sorting out the material worth paying attention to.
I think a well-thought-out proposal of such a method could make a reasonable top-level post.