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NihilCredo comments on Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People - Less Wrong
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You know the thing that horrified me? When I realized that my "wizened" snark was my most upvoted contribution to this site. All I did was point out the intersection of a typo and an amusing mental image!
You're totally right, though, that I should have found a politer way to do it- focus on the mental image instead of status-seeking sarcasm. Indeed, that's probably the heart of politeness- wording things in ways that they don't threaten the other person's status.
When one's opinion is expressed as a flat yes/abstain/no, a natural consequence is that an item that elicits wide, mild approval but little or no disapproval will be more successful than an item that elicits narrow, ecstatic approval with significant disapproval. This applies as much to blog commenting as it does to democratic politics.
On LW, a partial fix is the "controversial" rating, which ranks a +20/-10 comment higher than a +10/0 one since it's likely to be a more substantive one, and the "top comments" page which is ranked purely by upmods.