SoullessAutomaton comments on LessWrong Boo Vote (Stochastic Downvoting) - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Vladimir_Nesov 22 April 2009 01:18AM

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Comment author: Alicorn 22 April 2009 02:39:44AM *  7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 22 April 2009 09:47:29AM *  1 point [-]

I want my karma to go up, preferably fast.

Well, karma is a tangible (if imperfect) measure of success in this community, and rationalists should win... right?

I think this perception is a problem for the community, and I don't think it's workable to tell people to not feel like this. Two possible ways around it:

  1. Make comment scores affect karma only if it goes outside some range, e.g., perhaps you'd lose a point of karma for a -2 post, two points for -3 post, gain a point for +2 post, two points for a +3, &c. This would likely be a pain to implement.
  2. Make karma dropping normal and expected, but not tied to participation, e.g., take the square root of everyone's karma on a weekly basis. This has obvious downsides for karma cutoffs to do certain things (like post articles).
Comment author: MrHen 22 April 2009 01:27:32PM *  2 points [-]

I like this conceptually, but pragmatically I do not see its advantage. I think one way to do something similar is to keep karma split into positive and negative karma. I am currently around 75 karma, but my hunches tell me that is probably +125 -50. Someone sitting at +125 -50 is different than +250 -175 or +80 -5.

Having bad karma get its own bucket is less demeaning than having it change your entire "score". It is still bad but you can still get a feel good from the positive scores.

(Edit) Oh, Jordan said the same thing. Please ignore this comment.

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