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Richard_Kennaway2mo42

Even on LW, there comes a point where everything has been said and further discussion will foreseeably be unuseful.

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4 When you downvote, explain why

by KvmanThinking

7th Feb 2025

1 min read

4

NOTE: this is not site policy, just my personal suggestion

Being a newcomer and having your post downvoted can be very discouraging. This isn't necessarily a bad thing—obviously we want to discourage people from posting things that are not worth our time to read—but it doesn't provide much feedback other than "something about this post/comment/question/answer makes it undesirable to have on LessWrong". So here's my idea:

If you downvote something that isn't obvious spam, you should comment the reason why. This will nudge the newcomer in the direction of "people don't like this particular quality of my post/comment/question/answer" rather than "people don't like my post/comment/question/answer." So as to avoid flooding bad content with comments, simply upvote any comment that states a reason for the undesirability of the post/comment/question/answer instead. Hopefully this helps the newcomer get feedback about what they should change, rather than just blindly guessing.

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[-]habryka2mo2831

This post is definitely not site policy, and at least I as the site admin disagree with any kind of "should" here.

People are already too hesitant to downvote content on the site. Explaining your downvote is good, but do not feel any obligation to do so. The voting system is anonymous for a reason. Use it for expressing what your values are, approximately whatever they may be, even if you cannot put them into words.

[-]FlorianH2mo1-2

Maybe no "should", but maybe an option to provide either (i) personal quick messages to OP, linked to the post, or (ii) anonymous public comments, could help. I guess (ii) would be silly all in all though. Leaves (i) as an option, anonymous or not anonymous. Not anonymous would make it close to existing PM; anonymous might indeed encourage low-effort rough explanations for downvoting.

[-]habryka2mo3-1

I think nudges towards feedback might make sense, especially if anonymous. I do think feedback is good!

[-]kave2mo20

With LLMs, we might be able to aggregate more qualitative anonymous feedback.

[-]Noah Birnbaum2mo1-7

Downvoted because 1) I don't think people are too hesitant to downvote, and 2) I think explaining one's reasoning is a good epistemic hygiene (downvoting and not explaining is like booing when you hear an idea that you don't like).

[-]Vladimir_Nesov2mo52

These considerations also apply to upvotes (to the extent that they do).

[-]KvmanThinking2mo2-1

I don't think such considerations apply to upvotes nearly as much if at all. Upvotes indicate agreement or approval, which doesn't need to be explained as thoroughly as disagreement (which usually involves having separate, alternative ideas in your head different from the ideas of the one you are disagreeing with)

[-]Vladimir_Nesov2mo51

Whether upvotes need to be explained overall is not relevant to my comment, as I'm talking about the specific considerations named by Noah Birnbaum.

[-]Seth Herd2mo122

I agree.

I often write an explanation of why new members' posts have been downvoted below zero, when the people that downvoted them didn't bother. Downvoting below zero with no explanation seems really un-welcoming. I realize it's a walled garden, but I feel like telling newcomers what they need to do to be welcomed is only the decent thing to do.

[-]Ben Pace2mo31

I disagree, but FWIW, I do think it's good to help existing, good contributors understand why they got the karma they did. I think your comment here is an example of that, which I think is prosocial.

[-]Seth Herd2mo20

I'm curious why you disagree? I'd guess you're thinking that it's necessary to keep low-quality contributions from flooding the space, and telling people how to improve when they're just way off the mark is not helpful. Or if they haven't read the FAQ or read enough posts that shouldn't be rewarded.

But I'm very curious why you disagree.

[-]Elizabeth2mo75

One possible reason: bouncing off early > putting in a lot of effort and realizing you'll still never get traction > being kicked out. Giving people false hope hurts them.

I don't think you should never help out a new person, but I reserve it for people with very specific flaws in otherwise great posts.

[-]Richard_Kennaway2mo74

I am against this from both sides. Some things just aren't worth more than my downvote. And when I get downvoted, as a couple of my recent comments have been (strongly, even, as well as some strong upvotes), it's generally easy to see why, and I'm not interested in extending the conversation. I said a thing, some people didn't like it, we disagree, we're not going to agree^[1], move on, because the conversation would be nothing more than everyone repeating things already said. If anywhere is the place to not have such conversations, LessWrong is it.

Anyone reflexively blurting "but rationalists can't agree to disagree" is unlikely to have read beyond the title of Aumann's paper. ↩︎

[-]Richard_Kennaway2mo20

And as if by magic, the strong downvote appears! My guess is that the person is just trolling, but I do not actually care. See me put my mouth where my mouth was!

[-]Viliam2mo20

Upvoting for the footnote, btw.

[-]KvmanThinking2mo10

I believe that the reason your comment was strong downvoted was because you implied that "everyone repeating things already said" is an inevitable consequence of asking people why they disagree with you. This might be true on other websites (where people are hesitant to relinquish beliefs and opinions), but not on LessWrong.

[-]Richard_Kennaway2mo42

Even on LW, there comes a point where everything has been said and further discussion will foreseeably be unuseful.

[-]Viliam2mo76

I often try, but (1) it costs some time, and (2) sometimes it is quite difficult, especially to comment in a way that I think would be understood by the author. Sometimes the author is just so far away in the mental space that I don't believe that a short message could reach him... and I don't have a time to write a long one. (I could write a short message that would predictably fail, just to signal that I am a nice person, but that wouldn't help anyone.)

[-]Robert Cousineau2mo73

I am strong down voting in this case as when I put a noticeable amount of effort responding to your prior post "are there 2 types of alignment?", you gave an unsubstantiative followup to my answer to your question, and no followup to the 5 other people who commented in response to your post.

When I attempted to communicate with you clearly and helpfully in response to one of your low effort questions, I saw little value. Why should others listen to you when you tell them to do what I did?

[-]KvmanThinking2mo10

I had upvoted the ones I agreed with and thought were helpful. If I agree with something, I will upvote, because simply saying "I agree" is unnecessary when I can just click on a check mark. I appreciate and recognize the effort of those 5 other people who commented, but that is well enough communicated through agreement karma. Just because I have nothing to say about a response someone provided doesn't mean I don't value it.

[-]CstineSublime2mo77

I've noticed at least once that I've downvoted a newcomer's post for no other reason than it is so vague or incomprehensible that I'm not even sure what it is about. I'm not sure how to go about writing comments that are useful or helpful and go beyond "This is all really abstract and I'm not sure what you're trying to express" or "This is so confusing I don't even know what the topic was meant to be". I don't know if that helps anybody, because it's not even giving them a flaw that they can meditate on.

What's a better way of addressing that confusion?

The only alternative I can think of is guessing what the author meant, even if it's wrong, and hoping that you can Cunningham's Law^[1] them into correcting you in a way which is clear enough to understand.

^{^}
The joke that the best way to get the right answer on the internet is by offering the wrong answer

[-]Seth Herd2mo33

The comments you mention are helpful to the author. Any hints are helpful.

[-]CstineSublime2mo20

Can you elaborate on why you think such vague feedback is helpful?

[-]Malentropic Gizmo2mo51

I think I can!

When I write, I am constantly balancing brevity (and aesthetics generally) with clarity. Unfortunately, I sometimes gravely fail at achieving the latter without me noticing. Your above comment immediately informs me of this mistake.

[-]Seth Herd2mo21

I was just thinking that anything is better than nothing. If I received the feedback you mentioned on some of my early downvoted posts, I'd have been less confused than I was.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov2mo54

It's crucial that some people get discouraged and leave for illegible reasons, without a need for hard enforcement, which has unwieldy externalities. For almost everyone who should stay, figuring out reasons for significant downvoting is probably not very difficult. Any discussion would then be about correctness or endorsement of those reasons, not about finding out what they are.

[-]FlorianH2mo10

It's crucial that some people get discouraged and leave for illegible reasons

Interesting. Can you elaborate why? I find it natural one should have the option to downvote anonymously & with no further explanation, but the statement still doesn't seem obvious to me.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov2mo22

If the reasons to leave are too legible, they are either toothless or will be gamed and become too costly to actually enforce, including in injustice and drama. Trivial inconveniences that differentially apply to people that should leave anyway are still effective, but don't have these downsides.

(My own policy is to almost always avoid downvoting precisely when I have a comment to make. Otherwise the vote is all the feedback I have to give, so I'm going to give it rather than metaphorically slash their tires by staying silent and maintaining a misleading impression about the reception of their post/comment.)

[-]Seth Herd2mo00

I think you're overestimating how difficult it is for one person to guess another's thoughts. Good writing is largely a challenge of understanding different perspectives. It is hard.

I'm curious why you think it's crucial for people to leave for illegible reasons in particular? I do see the need to keep the community to a good standard of average quality of contributions.

[-]R. Mutt2mo3-2

I downvote based upon unexamined emotional impulses, of course

[-]notfnofn2mo12

The user could always write a comment (or a separate post) asking why they got a bunch of downvotes, and someone would probably respond. I've seen this done before.

Otherwise I'd have to assume that the user is open-minded enough to actually want feedback and not be hostile. They might not even value feedback from this community; there are certainly many communities where I would think very little about negative feedback.

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