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Houshalter comments on Karma Changes - Less Wrong
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I have negative karma to the point where I will probably never get it back :'(
Wait, downvoting costs karma? I might have downvoted a post once back when I had karma. That might explain it. Can I take it back? Please?
Downvoting doesn't cost karma; it's just that there is a limit to the number of posts you can downvote and that limit is based on the amount of karma you have. Downvoting a post reduces that person's karma by 10 and thus counts 10 against your limit (but doesn't change the amount of karma you have). You can take back a downvote by clicking "Vote down" again, but it won't change your karma.
I would actually kind of like it if it did cost karma to downvote. It would mean something to me when I downvoted a post that was irrational or in my judgment out of line socially.
What would be even better is if it were possible to downvote comments multiple times at an exponentially increasing cost. There are some comments that are in such contrast to my preferences that I would be willing to spend 63 votes (1+2+4+8+16+32) to down-vote 6 times. This would sometimes reduce the need to do 'costly signaling' in the form of comments with strongly assertive and direct criticisms.
I can imagine myself thinking "No, that is blatant bullshit but I know if I call you on it you will throw more bullshit and drag me in to your drama. I am willing to pay 31 karma to discourage the bullshit without the (minor) physiological and psychological stress of engaging in futile social conflict with unreasonable people."
I think this is a bad idea. Making people have to pay to downvote will result in them feeling like they've invested in the notion that a post is bad. Moreover, they will be more likely to blame the individual in question for the loss. This could when combined with standard cognitive biases be quite damaging to good thinking.
That cognitive bias would certainly come in to play. Although part of the appeal of the concept is that it would partially replace a far worse contributor to that bias.
When we encounter 'bad' posts - usually a combination of bad rhetoric with disrespect - the natural reaction is make a counter signal, to punish the slight and to assert a boundary to observers, showing that you are not someone that it is ok to walk all over. Without downvotes really meaning anything the way people do this is via conflict in comments. That is to say, minor social trauma combined with public commitment. This is an order of magnitude or three more significant than spending some karma.
Seeing the karma it costs right there in simple integers puts things into perspective. How much do I really care about some silly non-sequitur or straw man that Bob is throwing at Sally? Or the patronising ignorance that Sally is throwing at me? Is it worth spending 7 karma on? Is it worth paying any attention to at all? Why don't I just ignore the crap and go find some interesting, insightful comments to engage with?
Or less likely to experience situations where a clever rhetorician is able to bluff the casual observer into thinking that their 'opponent' is worth downvoting. If it costs to downvote you aren't going to do it unless you look more closely the comments. There are few things that can influence the way I think about someone more than if they manage to turn the crowd against me unjustifiably. To my instincts that is a big deal.
I expect there would be some who would find it easier to think clearly with the actual system and others who would find it easier to think clearly in the speculative one. I have no doubt that I would be in the latter category.
In conclusion: I find counterfactual system intuitively appealing. The dynamics are too complex and too distant for our speculation to be reliable. I could just as well have my press secretary challenge yours to a duel. ;)
Upvoted as an interesting idea, although I am not sure I agree.
I'm not even sure if I agree! ;)
If I thought it was even remotely likely to be implemented I would have to think about it.
Edit: Italic "I"s look like slashes!
That's just considering the effects of you having the awesome exponential downvote power. Would LW look much different if everyone had it?
It seems to me that the current system works pretty well. In general, posts at -2 aren't worth reading, and there isn't much drama associated with downvoting.
I think so. Consider a controversial post that three people really love and three people really hate. It would be at 0 without the exponential downvote power, but very negative with it. The effect would be to make LW blander by silencing posts that offend a small number of people.
A good point. Any system in which increasingly costly downvotes were allowed would have to allow an analogous system for giving extra upvotes at a price too.
That phrasing makes it sound like the downvotes are increasing exponentially with cost, not the reverse.
I guess we should call it a logarithmic downvote power, then.
I was considering the general case. It is definitely hard to predict what the outcome would be. My hunch - once people adapted it would barely make any difference.
I would actually kind of like it if it did cost karma to downvote. It would mean something to me when I downvoted a post that was irrational or in my judgment out of line socially.
What would be even better is if it were possible to downvote comments multiple times at an exponentially increasing cost. There are some comments that are in such contrast to my preferences that I would be willing to spend 63 votes (1+2+4+8+16+32) to down-vote 6 times. This would sometimes reduce the need to do 'costly signaling' in the form of comments with strongly assertive and direct criticisms.
I can imagine myself thinking "No, that is blatant bullshit but I know if I call you on it you will throw more bullshit and drag me in to your drama. I am willing to pay 31 karma to discourage the bullshit without the (minor) physiological and psychological stress of engaging in social conflict with unreasonable people."
I doubt this. I scanned your comment history, just looking at the karma of each comment. I didn't bother to keep a running total, but I think you're only at around -20 to -30. I bet if you care enough to review the high and low scorers, you can easily figure out how to make comments that avoid downvotes, and within a few days or weeks, you'll have accumulated positive karma.
If I were you, I wouldn't bother to track karma that closely unless I had some top-level post I really wanted to make.
Or if I, you know, wanted to post more frequently then every 8 minutes!!!
I had no idea. My apologies.
...was that feature announced anywhere? I certainly didn't know about it, and the others might not have either.
Yes unfortunatley. I don't know where it was announced, but after posting this, if I try to reply to some one else it will tell me "you have to wait another 8 minutes before submitting again". Maybe it is ten minutes, I'll check.
EDIT: It's every ten minutes actually.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I post regularly here, and a 10-minute speed bump wouldn't make much difference to me. The extra time can be an asset, too; you could use the extra time to run your posts through a spelling checker, for instance.
The comment delay thing staying on from comments from weeks ago, even after you've made a bunch of newer comments with net positive karma, doesn't seem like a desired behavior.
On something like Metafilter, things like this would be resolved by talking to the moderators and them making case-by-case adjustments, but the moderation style on LW seems to be a bit more hands-off.
Maybe this could be reported as an issue with the karma system in the LW codebase issue tracker?
Downvoting doesn't cost karma directly. The phrasing was a bit off. What they mean is the following: There's a maximum limit to the number of downvotes you can have. That limit is 4 * karma. But, votes on top-level posts are amplified by a factor for for total karma and for how much they count towards the 4 * karma limit.
Edit: How does one do *s without triggering italics? Edit: And thanks very much for that.
Like this: 4\*karma