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Alicorn comments on [META] Karma for last 30 days? - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: ArisKatsaris 30 August 2012 10:33AM

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Comment author: Alicorn 30 August 2012 10:31:46PM *  46 points [-]

the next step will be to make it impossible for users less than three months old (or with less than 1000 karma or something) to see comments under -3 at all.

I am vehemently opposed to this. If the problem is out-of-control threads, make the newbies unable to reply to downvoted comments - don't make them unable to look at them! Don't they need negative examples too?

Comment author: William_Quixote 31 August 2012 12:13:12AM *  18 points [-]

As someone who is a new user, I strongly agree with Alicorn.

More options don’t always make people better off, but seeing downvoted posts is an option that is actively useful for new users. One of my first comments initially got downvoted to -1, and on seeing this, I looked at other downvoted comments and was able to use what I learned to edit my post so it eventually got voted back into positive territory.

Mistake avoidance is worth learning and downvoted posts are helpful for this. I have benefited from looking at downvoted posts, and I have no reason to believe I’m atypical in this regard.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 September 2012 11:12:05PM 1 point [-]

Don't they need negative examples too?

Negative examples, if I'm a newcomer, mean that I stop reading the site because the discussion is not consistently high-quality. And newbies looking at negative examples mean that elder posters feel obliged to respond to bad comments, just in case a newbie reads them and gets fooled; it makes it mentally harder to downvote and walk away. This is a change I would strongly consider in any case.