= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Viliam_Bur comments on "Hide comments in downvoted threads" is now active - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (87)
There is a moderation mechanism designed to do X when users do Y. If this mechanism is good, we should keep it. If this mechanism is bad, we should remove or modify it. But we should not think about this mechanism while voting. That's gaming the mechanism.
Upvote = "LessWrong discussions should have more of this."
Downvote = "LessWrong discussions should have less of this."
That's all. There is nothing more to think about while voting. If you think there should be more things to consider while voting, please explain what and why.
I can imagine a situation where a stupid comment leads to smart discussion. How often? What is the conditional probability that a heavily downvoted comment will have a discussion worth watching? What are the benefits of watching that discussion in Recent Comments? What are the costs of watching an average discussion below a heavily downvoted comment in Recent Comments?
A mechanism requiring that it should not be thought about is a significant flaw. Stable systems rely on being robust with respect to people trying to achieve desired goals via them, at least to the degree that is practical. It so happens that I don't think the 'gaming' potential of this mechanism is actually especially significant. People downvoting a comments because "they want to see less of this entire thread" is not too much of a corruption away from "they want to see less of this". People do exactly this already, without this mechanism. In fact, they go through and systematically downvote every comment in a thread. Downvoting just the one is a net reduction in 'gaming', if that label applies at all.
I certainly support the heuristic: Upvote = "LessWrong discussions should have more of this." In fact, I've been advocating it for long enough that when I first advocating that interpretation it provoked controversy in as much as some considered it too cynical compared to more pure ideals along the lines of votes being obliged to mean "the point in this comment is rationally coherent". That said, it isn't quite the only consideration that it is reasonable to take in to account and I apply both of the heuristics mentioned above from time to time.
That's why I think upvotes and downvotes should be shown separately: that way it'd be clear whether +40 means +41 -1 or +140 -100.
Replies are not necessarily as good or worse than their parents. A lot of the Sequences on this site might be construed as "replies" to more mainstream statistics, philosophy, or science, and yet I would certainly hope that the Sequence entries would get more upvotes than their parents.
And playing to win is wrong!
There wasn't until karma became meaningful. Now karma has meaning.
I asked Eliezer:
And he answered:
So apparently he does want people to be aware of the mechanism while voting.
I really dislike this. It makes me feel like we all have the responsibility to upvote downvoted threads if we happen to notice discussion going on downstream. After all, if discussion is happening, then it should be greater than -4, and so we should upvote in circumstances where we otherwise would have not voted.
I like the option of not voting. I upvote when I see something I think we should have more of, leave alone the majority of stuff, and downvote only when I see something inappropriate. Our choices are NOT binary, but ternary. Yet this new system of hiding at -4 takes away my choice to not upvote. If I see worthwhile discussion downstream, I feel obligated to upvote.
I'm not sure how I'd even notice if this norm were in place or not. After all, a -4 comment with replies is not evidence that there exists a person who both voted it down to -4 and replied.
Thank you for the link!
However, my (motivated, I admit) reading of that text is that Eliezer wants to bring attention to a paradox of downvoting a comment and discussing below the comment. Either the comment is an interesting discussion-starter, and then it should not be downvoted; or the comment is worthless, and then people should not start a discussion below it. Downvoting a comment and discussing below it is kind of supporting something you oppose.
If it's a seriously misguided but good-faith comment by a newbie, I might want to downvote it and explain why I did it. Hanlon's razor.
But, if it's a newbie and you knew that changing it from a -3 to a -4 would end the discussion, wouldn't you just not down vote it, and explain your problem or correction?
This new change seems to me to be a way for someone to end a conversation, though they had to have 3 other people help them get it there. Is that an intentional change we want to make?
I was arguing against EY's argument mentioned by Viliam_Bur in favour of this change, which I'm opposed to. Of course, given that the change has been implemented, I won't downvote a post at -3 unless it's obvious spam or something.
Not just metaphorically. People are behaviorally reinforced into trolls because attention is reward and provocation gets attention. By downvoting something and commenting in reply to it, you are building positive associations to getting downvoted, a rather psychologically-sick sort of internal state that is a very bad thing to do to anyone. Would you consider it a nice thing to do to follow somebody around and give them a smile and a kiss each time they lost their temper or experienced some other failure of will, so as to reinforce that behavior? No, right?
Could you taboo "trolling". I think several distinct things are being lumped under that word. Here are the kind of posts that tend to get downvoted:
1) Simply being obnoxious, e.g., "First Post!!!!". As far as I know, these are almost non-existent here.
2) Someone arguing for a crazy position they don't believe.
3) Someone who genuinely believes a crazy position.
4) Someone arguing for a reasonable position that causes some voters to get mind-killed.
Which subset of these do you mean by "trolling" and what do you think is the appropriate response to each?
You forget 5) Someone arguing for a position (crazy or otherwise) in a deliberately provocative way.
Trolling: Provocation for the sake of response.
Pattern-match:
Almost all comments are posted at least in part for the sake of response. What's provocation? In particular, how is it different from nonconformism?
Ok, the next question is whether being voted below -3 is a good proxy for a comment being provocation for the sake of response.
For example, I strongly suspect eridu simply honestly believes the insane ideas he espouses, does he count as "provocation for the sake of response", if not what do you think the appropriate response to his comments should have been?