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Ander comments on Downvote stalkers: Driving members away from the LessWrong community? - Less Wrong Discussion

39 Post author: Ander 02 July 2014 12:40AM

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Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 02 July 2014 12:56:37AM 10 points [-]

I have been told by multiple other people at LessWrong meetings things such as “I used to post a lot on LessWrong, but then I posted X, and got mass downvoted, so now I only comment on Yvain’s blog”.

That's interesting, and is causing me to update in the direction of thinking that this is a real problem that resources should be devoted to solving. I think I know of one other person who's not you who has left LW because of downvoting. It's interesting how seriously we take the arbitrary numbers associated with our profiles & contributions. (I do it too.)

And it looks as though there are many people who have reported similar in this thread. Maybe talk to Kaj Sotala? Perhaps he is privately reprimanding mass downvoters?

I do think this comment of yours was a reasonable downvote candidate:

Then why do I see reddit links to NOAA articles, every single month, with titles like: "May 2014 the hottest May since 1880. Four of the five warmest Mays on record have occurred in the past five years. May 2014 marked the 39th consecutive May and 351st consecutive month (more than 29 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average."

Not because I think you are wrong about global warming, but because frequency of newspaper headlines seems like a bad way to infer statistical trends. Newspapers report on what's interesting, what their readers will read, what's unusual, etc. So news stories are not all that representative of what's actually going on in the world.

Comment author: Ander 02 July 2014 01:26:16AM 8 points [-]

Indeed, it is perfectly fine if someone downvoted that post. I probably deserved a -3 there. However, rather than be given the opportunity to learn from that feedback in the way karma is supposed to work, I instead received one downvote to every post I ever made on the site.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 02 July 2014 03:29:32AM 1 point [-]

I don't think people are entirely on the same page about how karma is "supposed to work". For some, it may be feedback to get people to post better. For others, it may be stifling the posts from who they perceive as a low quality poster.

Karma bombing seems rather jerk faced to me, but do you really need to care? You've got enough karma to post articles. You have good evidence that the karma drop was due to one lone jerk off.

Therefore, what does he matter? Why is this a problem for you?

Comment author: shminux 02 July 2014 03:53:28AM 15 points [-]

Why is this a problem for you?

I suppose if you use comment karma to evaluate how people like what you write, blank downvoting masks the useful signal.

Comment author: bbleeker 02 July 2014 11:23:20AM 9 points [-]

Yes. A while ago I suddenly lost like 50 points (which is a lot for me). The signal that gives isn't 'don't write stuff like this', but 'we don't want you here, go away', and I almost did.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 03 July 2014 12:00:06AM 2 points [-]

But he knows the source of the karma drop, therefore the useful signal has been unmasked.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 02 July 2014 03:37:28PM 11 points [-]

Therefore, what does he matter? Why is this a problem for you?

I don't see the point in telling people that they shouldn't have the emotional reactions that they keep having. It may be possible to fade those reactions out in the long haul, but caring about karma is a typical reaction (and it seems to be at least common), then it's better to take it into account.

Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 03 July 2014 02:37:28AM 1 point [-]

If you were mugged, but the cops caught the mugger and you got all your money back, would you not care about the mugging? You seem to be putting results over process.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 03 July 2014 08:36:41PM *  0 points [-]

I would want to see the guy strung up. But I wouldn't refrain from going out of my house because I had once been mugged. I consider that a dysfunctional response. If I knew someone who was "living" that way, I'd encourage them to change.

See previous comment (downvoted into oblivion) on people refraining from posting because people downvoted them. I walk the talk. It just isn't that hard.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfj/downvote_stalkers_driving_members_away_from_the/b255