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Elo comments on Should you write longer comments? (Statistical analysis of the relationship between comment length and ratings) - Less Wrong Discussion

11 Post author: cleonid 20 July 2015 02:09PM

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Comment author: Elo 20 July 2015 10:47:47PM *  -2 points [-]

I wonder if the value of a post is not correlated with upvotes. i.e. a post that is 1.3* more valuable than another might have to be 100 words longer but only get 10% more upvotes.

I feel like even if we could encourage only the posts who are below 500 characters that seem to have downvotes to consider increasing their length in order to roughly correlate with sharing more words = being clearer = providing more value. Even at the worst effects of the results of such a strategy, we would probably see the garden get a little nicer.

And continuing the metaphor, its not like we are chopping down trees, just clearing out a few weed around the roses.

I propose a character count on the comment boxes so that people know how many characters they are writing, then possibly a popup (similar to the one about comments on downvoted posts), that says,

"we noticed that comments are more meaningful, helpful and thought out when they are at a minimum 500 characters, you can still post a shorter comment but you have N characters to go to cross the arbitrary threshold we decided on. You can still post but it will cost -1 karma. If you think that you will get at least one upvote more than usual then its certainly worthwhile posting as is; otherwise can you add more useful characters to your post?"

Submitting...

Comment author: Lumifer 21 July 2015 01:24:32AM 2 points [-]

"we noticed that comments are more meaningful, helpful and thought out when they are at a minimum 500 characters, you can still post a shorter comment but you have N characters to go to cross the arbitrary threshold we decided on. You can still post but it will cost -1 karma. If you think that you will get at least one upvote more than usual then its certainly worthwhile posting as is; otherwise can you add more useful characters to your post?"

I can tell you exactly what the outcome of that will be. I am sure you'll figure it out, too, if you think about your suggestion for a minute or two.

Comment author: Elo 21 July 2015 04:47:21AM -1 points [-]

no I couldn't think of it before I sugested the idea, please be explicit about it. exactly what will go wrong and is there a way to solve that without breaking the entire idea?

Comment author: Lumifer 21 July 2015 05:12:12AM 1 point [-]

People will still write short replies.

Andthenfilltheremainderof500characterswithtrashjustsothatthestupidmachinebesatisfiedandtheywouldnothavetopaythe-1karmapricesinceit'seasytojustfillupspacewatchme:ooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahooohaaahphew.

Comment author: gjm 21 July 2015 02:01:09PM 2 points [-]

And then get a storm of downvotes that cancels out the benefit they hoped to gain by padding their comment. And then probably not do it again.

What I'd be more worried about is that short comments may be more valuable than you would think from their average karma -- e.g., perhaps in some cases short not-exceptionally-insightful comments form (as it were) the skeleton of a discussion, within which insights might emerge. Or perhaps if everyone felt they mustn't post short comments unless they were exceptionally insightful, the barrier to participation would feel high enough that scarcely anyone would ever post anything, and LW would just wither.

Comment author: Elo 21 July 2015 05:52:58AM 0 points [-]

sure. some people will. and some people will re-think their choices and write with more effort. and some people will accept -1 karma. I don't see these 3 choices as a problem, if we can marginally increase the quality of interactions...

Comment author: Lumifer 21 July 2015 04:22:47PM 4 points [-]

I don't expect that an incentive to add some unnecessary volume will improve the quality of comments.

Recall Blaise Pascal's "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time" :-)

Comment author: Elo 22 July 2015 01:47:03AM 0 points [-]

a lovely quote, I would not say that volume is correlated with quality, but I would say the potential benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Obviously enough people disagree with me.

Comment author: David_Bolin 21 July 2015 07:41:54AM 2 points [-]

I don't think this would be helpful, basically for the reason Lumifer said. In terms of how I vote personally, if I consider a comment unproductive, being longer increases the probability that I will downvote, since it wastes more of my time.

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