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CannibalSmith comments on Voting etiquette - Less Wrong
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Positivist's guide to voting
A: You need 20 karma to write articles. That's it.
Q: What should I upvote?
A: That which you want to see at the top of the page.
Q: What should I downvote?
Anything else is meaningless.
Well said.
EDIT: Q: What should I vote down below -4? A: That which you don't want others to see without clicking on it.
Some consequencse of CannibalSmith's sensible rules, together with Eliezer's sensible rule (and a converse: "What should I vote up past -4? What you think doesn't merit hiding from others."):
This all seems rather suboptimal.
(Yeah, I know, tongue in cheek and all that.)
I don't think these rules imply this. Most comments shouldn't be considered ones you want to see at the top of the page. Depending on how you define 'top' and 'bottom', it might result in every voter only voting on two comments each.
Most users will be able to answer "yes" or "no" to "Do I want to see this at the top of the page?" about most comments, I think. In which case, if they follow CS's two rules then they will vote those comments either up or down: so most comments end up getting voted on by most users.
Therefore, any comment for which a fraction of users substantially less than 50% wants to see it at the top of the page -- and, as you rightly say, that's likely to be most of them -- will get downvoted heavily if everyone follows CS's rules; almost certainly to lower than -4, unless voters notice soon enough that this is happening and switch to following Eliezer's rule (which they cannot do at the same time as following CS's rule).
(I'm sure CS didn't intend his rules to be applied so mechanically, and actually I think both his and Eliezer's are basically correct.)
Those silly positivists! ;-)