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bgaesop comments on Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians - Less Wrong
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Comments (271)
Whatever you may think about Brazil84's opinion, this comment is being downvoted unreasonably. He has stated his preferences and the reasons for having them honestly and politely. You may disagree with him as much as you like, but he definitely didn't commit any fault that would warrant treating him as if he were a troll, spammer, rude, or nonsensical.
Unfortunately, much like on Reddit, I think that a lot of people (myself included, though I am working to correct this) treat the up/down buttons as though they were agree/disagree buttons
There's some of that, but it seems that "upvote for agreement" is much more common than "downvote for disagreement", except on hot-button topics (which covers brazil84' post). Downvoting generally requires disagreement + rudeness or stupidity.
Tell me about it. A newbie can only get enough karma to post by saying things people agree with, Nett result: groupthink.
Nah. Even if you disagree with the LessWrong memes on just about everything, you can easily get to 20 karma with a few moderately interesting Rationality Quotes or some such.
I've seen plenty of forums / newsgroups / collective blogs / real-life social circles that developed a powerful groupthink despite the lack of any karma-like mechanic and despite a very hands-off or nonexisting moderation.
There's far more buggy code in our brains than in our servers.
I don't think so - comments seem much more likely to end up with positive karma than with negative karma, except on some hot-button topics (politics, gender relations and seduction ...). So getting enough karma shouldn't be a problem unless you're systematically talking about "unwanted" topics, or write particularly bad comments ... in which case, them not being able to post top-level posts is a feature, not a bug.
I agree it's annoying and probably a problem, but I think there's still less groupthink than on most forums I've seen. I do agree that it can definitely be frustrating; I have a post I want to write up on the value of starting things sooner rather than later, and I was all set to start typing it up back when I had 19 karma (you need 20 to make a full post), but then I started posting in this thread, and my karma score drifted back down to a single digit. It's doubly frustrating because I can't tell if people legitimately think my posts there are without merit or if they're just using it as an agree/disagree button. If they do think my posts are terrible no one has said as such.
This is the wrong metric to apply.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Looks like you actually came out ahead from that thread, karma-wise.
In fact, I think that thread illustrates LW's typical reaction to someone with an outlying opinion: initial rejection when it's poorly put, followed by upvotes when it's cogently fleshed out & defended. Looks OK to me.
I had to impose myself the exact same warning. I was trying to use karma point to signal "rationalist status" instead of simply trying my best to comment intelligent things. There apparently is a little segment of my neurology that is constantly scanning what the median groupthink is and prompting me in that direction...