orthonormal comments on Minicamps on Rationality and Awesomeness: May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28 - Less Wrong

24 Post author: AnnaSalamon 29 March 2012 08:48PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 29 March 2012 10:43:34PM *  4 points [-]

I've seen "rate from 1 to 5, with 3 excluded", which should be equivalent to "rate from 1 to 4" but feels substantially different. But there are probably better ones.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 30 March 2012 06:31:40AM *  4 points [-]

In this category of tricks, somebody (I forget who) used a rating scale where you assigned a score of 1, 3, or 9. Which should be equivalent to "rate from 1 to 3", but...

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 March 2012 10:44:08PM 1 point [-]

We weren't getting a lot of threes, but maybe that works anyway.

Comment author: orthonormal 29 March 2012 10:57:15PM 1 point [-]

Then maybe "1 to 4, excluding 3" or "1 to 5, excluding 4", to rule out the lazy answer "everything's basically fine". That might force people to find an explanation whenever they feel the thing is good but not perfect.

If you start getting 5s too frequently, then it's probably not a good trick.

Comment author: tgb 30 March 2012 03:45:57AM 3 points [-]

Why not go all the way and just use a plus-minus-zero system like LW ratings (and much of the rest of the internet)? Youtube had an interesting chart before they switched from 5 star rating systems to the like-dislike system showing how useless the star ratings were. But that's non-mandatory so its very different.