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JoshuaZ 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: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 August 2012 10:03:19PM 1 point [-]

The site was seriously going to hell due to long troll-started threads and troll-feeding. It's not a good use-case when intelligent comments are hidden by default, either. And I now see that contrary to the feature request, it's only asking for 5 karma for immediate descendants, not anywhere in the chain, so I shall go now and ask that to be updated.

I don't want to train readers to unhide things by default just because they might miss intelligent conversation in subthreads, I don't want intelligent conversation in places it's hidden by default from readers trusting the site mechanics, I want this site to stop feeding its trolls and would prefer a community solution rather than moderators wielding banhammers, and I want this site to focus its efforts positively rather than in amazing impressive refutations of bad ideas which is a primary failure mode of any intelligent Internet site. Threads with heavily downvoted ancestors should almost always not exist, because of their opportunity costs, the behaviors they reinforce, and other long-term consequences.

If this particular effort proves insufficient, 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.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 30 August 2012 10:38:24PM *  16 points [-]

It may be worth considering whether your intuitions and priors about how serious a problem trolling is is at odds with the impression of the rest of the community. Or, it may be that most of the people you have attracted here are somewhat more tolerant of some amount of trolling. It seems at least from the general voting in this thread that most of the community is not happy with even this change, let alone the other changes you are suggesting.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 August 2012 10:44:38PM -2 points [-]

Biased sample if those who flee the long-replies-to-downvoted-comments threads have already left. At the point where LW starts being unfun for me to read, I panic. If my standards are too high... well, there's worse things that could happen to a site, like my threshold for alarm being set too low.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 30 August 2012 10:47:35PM 14 points [-]

Biased sample if those who flee the long-replies-to-downvoted-comments threads have already left

Valid point. How can we test this?

At the point where LW starts being unfun for me to read, I panic.

Being concerned about the signal to noise ratio is reasonable, but yes this sounds like panicking. Deciding that there's a problem is not the same thing as deciding that a specific course of action is a good solution to the problem. (I shouldn't need to tell you that.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 31 August 2012 11:04:15AM 13 points [-]

The mental model being applied appears to be sculpting the community in the manner of sculpting marble with a hammer and chisel. Whereas how it'll work will be rather more like sculpting flesh with a hammer and chisel, giving rather a lot of side effects and not quite achieving the desired aims. Sculpting online communities really doesn't work very well.

Comment author: evand 31 August 2012 03:12:05AM 13 points [-]

Do you feel that this is an example of you being intolerant of other posters' tolerance of trolls? If not, why?

Personally, it seems to me that it is, but that it might well be justified anyway. I'm not a big fan of the approach taken, but I'm not yet completely against it either. I'm disappointed that it was implemented unilaterally.