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ThoughtDancer comments on Open Thread: April 2009 - Less Wrong
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I just stopped myself from commenting on a thread because I was worried for my itty bitty karma score. I'm new, so my karma score is tiny. I'm new enough to know that I might not know all the relevant context, so I stopped myself in case what I was going to say was too obvious.
I wish that newbies could have a protected period from being downvoted to the pits of negative karma if the new person is clearly giving an honest effort. But at the same time, downvoting trolls makes very good sense. I realize it's not practical to separate out new people from potential trolls. So for now, I find that I am being very, very careful.
Nevertheless, do we want the new people to feel the need to be careful? (Yes, I know that other sites do this: I have a decent karma on slashdot. Is it what this site wants?)
I am new as well, and even under-versed in most of the common phrases. But I am starting to comment anyway because of the karma rating. My score does not mean much to me in terms of status, so I don't care if it drops to nothing. To me, it is a marker of how much of what I say is interesting to other people. It is feedback that allows me to improve. I cannot get that feedback unless I comment, so I comment.
Ah, but I have an ulterior motive. I'm here in part because I want to read discussions of a rationalist approach to rhetoric. And we can't create new posts until we hit 20 I believe.
But I'm really curious about how a rationalist group would approach rhetoric, so I want to get the discussion started. :-)
That's why I care about my karma score so much.
Well, I'll be looking forward to seeing your first post soon then =)
Thanks for the confirmation, and yes, I appear to be at 20.
Now to start thinking about how to open up a discussion about rationalist approach to rhetoric.
:-)
Sadly, we do want newcomers to take extra care, and indeed that's pretty much normal - for example, it's usually good to lurk for a bit in a new community before contributing. It looks like that care is paying off for you, which to me seems to indicate that the karma system has been a success in this instance.
Agreed, the karma system is not fundamentally flawed (I realize that there's further discussion on the karma system, like over here ). Maybe the karma system is a little frustrating because it does force the new person to be careful, but a bit of frustration now to improve the latter dialogue makes sense.
I just wanted to know that that was the intention here, not an accidental (if beneficial) by-product of the karma system.
I guess that makes me the counter-point. We will see how it goes. Normally I take much more care before contributing but I feel that karma is an easier way to feel the community.
That being said, I am not planning on being pointedly disrespectful just to test the waters. I do think I have interesting things to say. Karma just lets me know if the community agrees. If, in a week, everything I say is ignored or voted down, I take it as evidence I need to change something.