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AnnaSalamon comments on LessWrong Boo Vote (Stochastic Downvoting) - Less Wrong
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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.
Might be bad -- in principle, it would be nice if we could sift through many comments as a community, so as to increase the number of good ones that can float to the top. If everyone who reads a bad comment votes it down, not that many will be inconvenienced by additional mediocre comments, and allowing folks to attempt comments they think might be good (and might not be) would plausibly increase the absolute quantity of good comments. (This depends on our ability to sort good comments to the top and mediocre ones to not-much-read locations, though.)
A second reason it might be bad is that commenting, and engaging with LW content more generally, increases the chances that the commenter will learn from it and do something with it. But, again, the costs may be prohibitive if such comments stay mixed with the best of LW.