This opens up a new aspect of downvoting, which I've just now tried out, and will describe in the interest of full disclosure: you can "swim up" the chain of comment parents until you find one that is at -3, and by downvoting that cause the entire downthread discussion to be effectively censored.
Swimming upthread is something I do quite often in the course of trying to understand what sparked a particular controversy - I'm often dismayed to see that these are tangents that had nothing to do with the original question being investigated and not a whole lot to do with rationality.
This comment by Wei Dai was the trigger for my looking to use this tactic (it felt like it belonged in a low-overall-value discussion of the kind I'd like to see less of), showing up at the top of Recent comments.
No less than eight levels above was this comment by wedrifid, sitting at -3, with a total of 38 children comments. Downvoting it (without the slightest qualm, given the first non-quoted words were a rhetorical "How dare you" that I strongly prefer not to see around here) did in fact cause Wei Dai's comment to disappear from Recent. (Here's the starting point of the whole subthrea...
I have no particular antipathy toward either Wei Dai or wedrifid, nor did I allow myself to develop a particular attachment to either "side" in that particular controversy, given that the appearance of "sides" at all didn't strike me as particularly productive.
Not productive in the slightest. In fact I would happily downvote my own comment (despite reflectively endorsing it) just to hide the entire pointless load of tripe.
This confuses me. I can understand how one could think the -5 penalty is useful and I can understand having further comments not show up in recent changes. But if the primary problem seems to be signal/noise in Recent Comments then the penalty doesn't do anything useful. Worse, if a useful thread occurs in part of a downvoted thread, not only will one need to move it over somewhere else, if one wants any chance that people reading that part of the subthread will be able to follow to the new location, one will need to post a comment in that subthread pointing people to it. That will mean one will still need to pay the -5 penalty. This is a not well-thought out combination.
Hmm, EY quietly refused to only apply this to obvious trolls (negative 30-day karma). I wonder what his logic might be.
To make the fact that another downvote would push something below the threshold more evident, would it be helpful to change the colour of the score to yellow when at the threshold and red when below?
The threshold ought to be a user preference. I might consider starting to have a policy of upvoting all comments currently at -4 or lower (except stuff I would delete if I were an admin, i.e. obvious spam, disclosures of confidential information, and the like) until it is made into one.
I just noticed that I got a "you have mail" indicator in my message box but there are no new messages. I'm assuming that this is related to the change here. Is it intended that replies are hidden even within inboxes or is that a bug? If not a bug it seems excessive and given a karma penalty redundant. Not that I especially mind either way but if you are going to hide messages from the inbox you need to also hide the 'new message' indicator for invisible messages.
I disagree somewhat- hiding new messages from the inbox is a bad idea. People should be able to know when new messages have been made to them. The primary advantage that would occur here is that people who browse using Recent Comments won't see them. This doesn't accomplish anything.
I disagree somewhat- hiding new messages from the inbox is a bad idea. People should be able to know when new messages have been made to them. The primary advantage that would occur here is that people who browse using Recent Comments won't see them. This doesn't accomplish anything.
(My main point was that there is a need for consistency between the notification of messages inbox and the contents of the inbox. Otherwise it is just telling you that you have mail and you need to find it yourself... somehow. I'm not sure you are disagreeing with that much at all.)
and further replies in that subthread will incur 5 karma points penalty.
Is there still a warning given about this five point penalty? I ask because I it presumably exists but I have yet to see it, either after this change or the previous change. If it does exist I must just have never wanted to reply to a comment that has been significantly downvoted and, more recently, never have wanted to reply to a comment with a downvoted ancestor.
Performed the following experiment:
Went to this comment, which has (right now) a score of -9 and a child with a score of +12 and a grandchild with a score of +4.
Recorded my karma score (9686).
Attempted to reply to the downvoted comment; got the warning. Didn't post a reply.
Attempted to reply to the upvoted child; got the warning (which, incidentally, warns about replying to downvoted comments, which might be confusing). Didn't post a reply.
Also performed the following experiment:
Went to this post, which has (right now) a score of -9 and some upvoted comments.
Recorded my karma score (9687).
Attempted to reply to the post, no warning.
Submitted this comment
Checked my karma score (9686). I assume the -1 is just because someone downvoted something in the minute or so it took me to do that.
(Incidentally, I would still love a feature where I could review recent upvotes and downvotes applied to me... to the extent that karma is intended as feedback for the poster, it helps to have some way of associating that feedback with the actual thing being evaluated. Knowing that I said something at some time that someone wants less of on LW doesn't really help me much.)
(Incidentally, I would still love a feature where I could review recent upvotes and downvotes applied to me... to the extent that karma is intended as feedback for the poster, it helps to have some way of associating that feedback with the actual thing being evaluated. Knowing that I said something at some time that someone wants less of on LW doesn't really help me much.)
Definitely this.
Another change is that comments with scores of -4 are collapsed, regardless of how the preferences are set. Preferences can still be used to collapse more comments.
I normally use LW without JS, so it's a big hassle for me to uncollapse comments. This also means that I don't see recent comments in the sidebar, which means that I didn't realize that everyone was seeing them (as opposed to the few people who go to the recent comments page) and was confused by all this concern about them. I don't have much experience with them, but they seem of dubious value to me. A simpler solution would have been just to delete them.
Hiding replies to highly downvoted comments from Recent Comments seems like a good idea. And now that such comments are not clogging Recent Comments anyway, the 5 karma penalty is now even more pointlessly stupid.
I like this change (a lot). Especially now that the comments are hidden. When the comments were still visible it was more necessary to reply (so that errors aren't accepted without correction). Now the (presumably, more often than not) bad replies don't require high-quality refutation because they are invisible to those who don't seek them out. The penalty to comment replies has very little downside.
I'm glad to see this functionality implemented, as I'd hoped for someone to take on the challenge of reducing or eliminating long, useless threads for some years now.
This seems to be worth a discussion post since most people are probably still voting things to below -3 without knowing the new consequences of doing so.
There is a moderation mechanism designed to do X when users do Y. If this mechanism is good, we should keep it. If this mechanism is bad, we should remove or modify it. But we should not think about this mechanism while voting. That's gaming the mechanism.
Upvote = "LessWrong discussions should have more of this."
Downvote = "LessWrong discussions should have less of this."
That'...
There is a moderation mechanism designed to do X when users do Y. If this mechanism is good, we should keep it. If this mechanism is bad, we should remove or modify it. But we should not think about this mechanism while voting. That's gaming the mechanism.
A mechanism requiring that it should not be thought about is a significant flaw. Stable systems rely on being robust with respect to people trying to achieve desired goals via them, at least to the degree that is practical. It so happens that I don't think the 'gaming' potential of this mechanism is actually especially significant. People downvoting a comments because "they want to see less of this entire thread" is not too much of a corruption away from "they want to see less of this". People do exactly this already, without this mechanism. In fact, they go through and systematically downvote every comment in a thread. Downvoting just the one is a net reduction in 'gaming', if that label applies at all.
But we should not think about this mechanism while voting. That's gaming the mechanism.
And playing to win is wrong!
There is nothing more to think about while voting.
There wasn't until karma became meaningful. Now karma has meaning.
That's all. There is nothing more to think about while voting. If you think there should be more things to consider while voting, please explain what and why.
I certainly support the heuristic: Upvote = "LessWrong discussions should have more of this." In fact, I've been advocating it for long enough that when I first advocating that interpretation it provoked controversy in as much as some considered it too cynical compared to more pure ideals along the lines of votes being obliged to mean "the point in this comment is rationally coherent". That said, it isn't quite the only consideration that it is reasonable to take in to account and I apply both of the heuristics mentioned above from time to time.
I really dislike this. It makes me feel like we all have the responsibility to upvote downvoted threads if we happen to notice discussion going on downstream. After all, if discussion is happening, then it should be greater than -4, and so we should upvote in circumstances where we otherwise would have not voted.
I like the option of not voting. I upvote when I see something I think we should have more of, leave alone the majority of stuff, and downvote only when I see something inappropriate. Our choices are NOT binary, but ternary. Yet this new system of hiding at -4 takes away my choice to not upvote. If I see worthwhile discussion downstream, I feel obligated to upvote.
Could you taboo "trolling". I think several distinct things are being lumped under that word. Here are the kind of posts that tend to get downvoted:
1) Simply being obnoxious, e.g., "First Post!!!!". As far as I know, these are almost non-existent here.
2) Someone arguing for a crazy position they don't believe.
3) Someone who genuinely believes a crazy position.
4) Someone arguing for a reasonable position that causes some voters to get mind-killed.
Which subset of these do you mean by "trolling" and what do you think is the appropriate response to each?
You forget 5) Someone arguing for a position (crazy or otherwise) in a deliberately provocative way.
Ars Technica discusses recent changes to their moderation, including auto-collapsing threads with negative points. They're quite pleased with the reduction in trolling.
I've gone through and devaporized all of eridu's comments in his epically successful "radical feminism" troll - I don't like vaporizing things (or exercising direct moderator power at all, really), and since eridu at -243 karma can't reply to anything else in that thread, it should be safe now. It also serves as an extremely clear exhibitable example of what this feature was for!
(Looking over so many at once makes me pretty sure that it was trolling (a reinforced behavior of provocation-for-attention), btw.)
Nice! This looks like a better way of preventing long discussions in buried downvoted threads than the previous karma penalty to simple replies.
Hopefully now in reply to crappy posts, people will either create a new thread (or use an open thread) if they have something interesting to reply, or not reply at all if they don't; and people will be less willing to post if they expect to be downvoted - in all cases, it's a win!
I just found out that a new website feature was implemented 2 days ago. If a comment is voted to -4 or below, it and all replies and downstream comments from it will be hidden from Recent Comments, and further replies in that subthread will incur 5 karma points penalty. The hiding, but not karma penalty, applies retroactively to comments in that subthread posted before the -4 vote.
This seems to be worth a discussion post since most people are probably still voting things to below -3 without knowing the new consequences of doing so.