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Comments (32)
Robin's point about karma is worth exploring. Yes, votes help to filter comments and the modest score required to post makes sense. But what is the purpose of tracking very large totals? (Eliezer's doesn't even fit inside his little green circle!) This creates a competition and plays to emotional reinforcement mechanisms. It also can be intimidating to see for passers-by or would-be LW contributors.
It creates competition, yes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Personally I've found karma to be a great motivator in trying to write good comments and posts. For me, the top ten list is a considerable motivator - trying to achieve it has been part of the reason why I've been as active as I have been. I probably won't be able to reach it - there are other people who are consistently even more productive - but even then I try not to end up too far from the lowest-ranking people on it. I even think it might be good if people could bring up a list of all contributors as ranked by karma, not just the top ten.
Karma does create an incentive to write more and better comments. Still, the question is what alternative are you foregoing to write the marginal comment at LW? Should the top ten competition skew your investment of time toward LW comments and away from that alternative? Is it rational if it does?
Yes, I'm beginning to wonder how useful tracking karma is. Every time I've found myself referring to it, it has been for status purposes. Maybe a set of titles, ie Beginner (0-100), Intermediate (100-500), Master (500+), rather than a straight number, would be worthwhile.
I also wonder if hiding the total on comments (except an indicator for a negative score) would make votes more honest.
It would, but it would also make them less useful. What's the point of having a more accurate measure if it's at the cost of hiding it?
When I don't have a lot of time, I just skim through the comments and read those with a high score. I'd like to be able to keep doing that.