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quen_tin comments on Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline - Less Wrong
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The downvote corporatist system of this site is extremely annoying. I am proposing a valid and relevant argument. I expect counter-arguments from people who disagree, not downvotes. Why not keep downvotes for not-argumented/irrelevant comments?
I'm really curious: What work is the word "corporatist" doing in this sentence? In what sense is the downvote system "corporatist"?
Your above comment could be phrased better (it makes a valid point in a way that can be easily misinterpreted as proposing some mushy-headed subjective relativism), but I agree that people downvoting it are very likely overconfident in their own understanding of the problem.
My impression is that the concept of "algorithm" (and "computation" etc.) is dangerously close to being a semantic stop sign on LW. It is definitely often used to underscore a bottom line without concern for its present problematic status.
The guideline is to upvote things you want to see more of, and downvote things you want to see less of. That leaves room for interpretation about where the two quality thresholds should be, but in practice they're both pretty high and I think that's a good thing. There are a lot of things that could be wrong with a comment besides being irrelevant or not being argued. In this case, I think the problem is arguing one side of a confusing question rather than trying to clarify or dissolve it.
Votes are not always for good reasons, whatever the guidelines. Getting good behavior out of people works best if people are accountable for what they do, and tends to fail when they are not. People who comment are accountable in at least two ways that people who vote are not:
1) They have to explain themselves. That, after all, is what a comment is.
2) They have to identify themselves. You can't comment without an account.
Voters have to do neither. Now, even though commenters are doubly accountable, I think most will agree that a certain nonzero proportion of the comments are not very good. Take away accountability, and the we should expect the proportion of the bad to increase.