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MBlume comments on LessWrong Boo Vote (Stochastic Downvoting) - Less Wrong
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Comments (38)
Data point: I was going to make a different comment, but have been made paranoid and inclined to hoard my existing karma by the new, more liberal downvoting recommendations. I'm never going to find out whether my original comment would have improved anyone else's reading experience or not, because I didn't care about it enough to take a newly increased risk as the price for saying it.
I don't want to trade in karma I earn for great comments so I can make mediocre comments. I want my karma to go up, preferably fast. I'm not sure if this is a good goal to have - maybe karma just feels like approval and I like it because I wasn't hugged enough as a child or something - but nevertheless, I have that motivation.
Is that bad?
Considering that some posts are getting hundreds of comments, not that many people have the time to read them all (especially if you have to search a bit to find what you have and haven't read), it may be better for everyone to have fewer comments, but of higher quality.
Or, to put it another way, considering that you're writing once to be read dozens of times, it's nice to your readers to take a bit of effort to polish up your prose, it costs a few seconds to you but can save a few seconds to a lot of people. This may feel unusual if we are used to situations like conversation (or online chat) where the listener/talker ratio isn't as skewed.
The real risk is when certain forms of comment (approval, disapproval) are discouraged, because the community's standards of "quality" are skewed.
Agreed. I strongly feel that comments of a few words expressing thanks, agreement, apology, sympathy, approval, acknowledgement, etc. should simply hover at zero. Such remarks are part of the native architecture by which we communicate, and I think we lose something if we discourage them.
I agree with the descriptive content of what you wrote, but not the normative content. I agree that we do lose something if we discourage these sorts of comments. However, short comments that don't add anything to the discussion (like the ones you mention) do add a significant amount to what gets displayed on the screen. If someone is reading this with a screen reader, a text browser, an iphone, or even just a small laptop or old, low-res display, then they will have to wade through "MBlume 22 April 2009 07:55:59AM* 8 points [-] Thanks - I agree. Vote up | Vote down | Permalink | Parent | Report | Reply", for no good reason. Much better to discourage this sort of noise that adds nothing to the pursuit of rationality as such.