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Gunnar_Zarncke10y80

Some polling about voting rules/habits:

Posts and Comments should be voted on depending on quality [pollid:940]

Posts and Comments should be voted on depending on how much you like them [pollid:941]

Posts and Comments should be voted on depending on how much you agree with them factually [pollid:942]

Posts and Comments should be voted on depending on how funny they are [pollid:943]

Posts in Main should be held to very high standards with respect to quality ('scholarly') [pollid:944]

Posts in Discussion should be held to higher standards than comments [pollid:945]

Posts may specify special voting rules to apply in the comments (there are a few precedences for this e.g. the survey) [pollid:946]

Downvotes should only be given for violations of community norms [pollid:947]

Downvotes should be given symmetrically to upvotes [pollid:948]

Posts and comments by trolls should be downvoted [pollid:949]

Ceterum censeo polls are a quick and easy way to quantify opinion.

jbay10y40

Upvotes and downvotes should be added independent of the post's present score [pollid:950]

See in context

29 Guidelines for Upvoting and Downvoting?

by Sable

6th May 2015

1 min read

29

I've only recently joined the LessWrong community, and I've been having a blast reading through posts and making the occasional comment. So far, I've received a few karma points, and I’m pretty sure I’m more proud of them than of all the work I did in high school put together.

My question is simple, and aimed a little more towards the veterans of LessWrong:

What are the guidelines for upvoting and downvoting? What makes a comment good, and what makes one bad? Is there somewhere I can go to find this out (I've looked, but there doesn't seem to be a guide on LessWrong already up. On the other hand, I lose my glasses while wearing them, so…)

Additionally, why do I sometimes see discussion posts with many comments but few upvotes, and others with many upvotes but few comments? If a post is worth commenting on, isn't it worth upvoting? I feel as though my map is missing a few pages here.

Not only would having a clear discussion of this help me review the comments of others better, it would also help me understand what I’m being reinforced for on each of my comments, so I can alter my behaviors accordingly.

I want to help keep this a well-kept garden, but I’m struggling to figure out how to trim the hedges.

Personal Blog

29

New Comment

63 comments, sorted by

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[-]Unnamed10y270

An upvote communicates to other readers "this comment is worth your attention."

If a comment is more highly upvoted, people are more likely to read it rather than skip over it, more likely to read it closely rather than skim it, more likely to follow links that it contains, and more likely to spend some time thinking about its arguments rather than just moving on.

Downvotes sort of do the opposite, but it's not perfectly symmetrical because scores below zero pack an extra punch.

[-]itaibn010y60

Downvotes sort of do the opposite, but it's not perfectly symmetrical because scores below zero pack an extra punch.

The standard guideline is to upvote if you want more of that kind of comment, and downvote if you want less. The asymmetry between upvotes and downvotes comes the fact Less Wrongers on a whole want more content on Less Wrong rather than less. Negative scores pack a punch because they mean your comment would be better off not existing.

Well really, I think it's mostly that people just have a pre-existing idea of the connotation of negative numbers, but I gave this retroactive justification to show that I think the result is surprisingly internally consistent.

[-]John_Maxwell10y60

The asymmetry between upvotes and downvotes comes the fact Less Wrongers on a whole want more content on Less Wrong rather than less.

In principle one could tweak the interest rate on the Less Wrong content economy by eliminating the ability to downvote for users who have less than X karma. Personally, I think we are currently too harsh in our moderation and backing off a bit (requiring 1 karma to downvote) would be a worthwhile experiment. Less Wrong is already going to rip your ideas apart plenty without the added injury of downvotes. The bigger problem is people being Negative Nancys about unimportant things like whether your thing would be more appropriate for discussion or open thread or what have you. Enforcing rules has a social cost; frivolous rules mean you're paying the cost for little gain. I also dislike seeing people downvote posts past -4 or so for no real reason (god forbid anyone should attempt humor on April Fool's day).

Another idea I had is trying to create a norm of people sending appreciative private messages for posts they like. I think posters would be extremely responsive to this sort of social reward (much more than mere upvotes, which invite score comparisons etc.) and since they're private messages, they wouldn't clog up the site with content-free praise comments. This could be done informally, or it could be institutionalized if there was a popup that would randomly sometimes appear when you upvoted something inviting you to send an appreciative PM. I actually think this could be pretty fabulous for Less Wrong if it was done right. I don't think people realize on a System 1 level how fantastically valuable a thoroughly researched post on important ideas is, but right now writing that sort of post is a thankless job. (Or: "When making a correction or complaint as a top-level comment, choose one positive thing about the post, if any, and point it out first." Or maybe we can just embrace the idea that harsh criticism is normal and expected?)

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke10y50

Downvotes sort of do the opposite, but it's not perfectly symmetrical because scores below zero pack an extra punch.

Indeed. I have 'reversed' quite a few '-1' because of this.

[-]gjm10y130

I have upvoted more comments that are on -1 than I have downvoted ones on +1 (even taking into account that I upvote more than I downvote), but for a different reason: what looks to me like an asymmetry between unreasonable upvotes and unreasonable downvotes.

Most of the time when I do this, it is because I see something obviously reasonable sitting on -1, think "what the hell?", and conclude it must be an ideological downvote where someone is voting someone else down for being visibly on the wrong team. And I don't see obvious signs of ideological upvoting.

However, this may simply indicate that ideological downvoting is easier to spot, because downvoting is generally rarer (so if an OK-but-unremarkable comment is at -1 then that's more evidence of malfeasance than if an OK-but-unremarkable comment is at +1). Which, in turn, is probably because of that psychological difference between positive and negative, and/or the idea that "negative scores mean your comment would be better off not existing". So maybe, on sufficiently careful analysis, this comes down to the same effect after all :-).

[-]lululu10y00

Yeah, I've been downvoted to a negative number in Quora with a nice, detailed, science based article about why someone's "recently recovered early-childhood memory" were probably not reliable enough for her to publicly accuse someone of molesting children and without first talking to a counselor and preferably a councilor who understood memory. It was all very reasonable and with ample evidence to support every statement.

I got down-voted to negative by a guy who said she should try a past-life regression and literally used the phrase "sort of a quantum parallel worlds reincarnation metaphysics with possibility of memory across various worlds and/or lives". (Actually, if you guys could upvote me on that, I'm genuinely worried that other people with similar recovered images will find his advice and be unable to see my comment and that lives and relationships will be destroyed, the thread is https://www.quora.com/I-think-I-have-been-abused-sexually-as-a-child-I-just-have-some-faint-memory-picture-which-came-up-very-recently-in-my-mind-How-can-I-be-sure-I-am-a-20-year-old-female)

[-]TheMajor10y270

If you want to read more posts like the one you just read, upvote. If you want to read less posts like the one you just read, downvote.

[-]TheAncientGeek10y100

That's a bad criterion, since it's an open gateway to confirmation bias. Having your biases challenged feels bad.

[-]John_Maxwell10y90

I've argued that counterfactually we should go a bit easy on unpopular views, even if the reasoning seems incorrect on further examination, since it's hard to predict in advance whether someone will find flaws in your reasoning, but they'll go especially hard on you if you present flawed reasoning for an unpopular position (relative to a popular one), discouraging arguing for unpopular positions.

[-][anonymous]10y10

To be fair, I think a more correct response would be that TheMajor's statement is correct, but implies a criterion which would likely lead to confirmation bias. Applied correctly, a better understanding of one's wants would support TheMajor's conclusion because one would not want to just have one's views confirmed.

[-]TheAncientGeek10y10

In other words, it works just fine, so long as you are in an ideal world,

[-]TheAncientGeek10y10

Case in point

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke10y30

This is an example where I - after some deliberation - decided to downvote. I believe this to be grossly overvoted. I agree that it is a simple and handy rule of thumb. But 22 upvotes? It isn't that insightful. It isn't a that much more correct choice than the approches mentioned in other comments.

Note that I wouldn't have downvoted if this comment would have stood in isolation. I see this post an example of a place where the votes order the comments in relation to how well they answer the question of the OP (which is facilitated by the default sort being 'best' voted). Actually a pattern not mentioned in the other comments.

Lets poll what you think of this:

If a post asks for advice (like in the OP) I vote depending on how well the comment answers the question. [pollid:952]

[-]NancyLebovitz10y140

I'm not sure it makes sense to upvote all the articles you comment on, though maybe it does if you like the post and you're doing a direct comment to it. Comments to comments are as likely to be a discussion between the commenters as directly abut the post.

I recommend downvoting things which are malicious and/or incoherent. I can see a case for downvoting things which add little information (except jokes-- it seems to be part of the culture to upvote things which are funny), especially if they're taking a lot of words to not add information.

I think people acquire a belief that a post or comment of a certain felt quality deserves a rough number of upvotes or downvotes, so they don't add or subtract karma when the post or comment hits that level. I might just be extrapolating from myself on this, but I think posts and comments, especially comments, tend to hit stable karma levels fairly quickly. However, I wouldn't put off giving/deleting karma until you've got that sort of felt sense of typical karma.

If someone mentions in a comment that they've updated a belief, they get some upvoted. This is something I like a lot about LW culture. It's also a handy thing to tell people if you want to explain something likable about rationalism.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke10y20

I think people acquire a belief that a post or comment of a certain felt quality deserves a rough number of upvotes or downvotes, so they don't add or subtract karma when the post or comment hits that level.

Sounds familiar and could indeed explain why some posts do not continue to accumulate votes after some time.

Let's check:

I think a post deserves a certain number of votes/karma and up/downvote accordingly[pollid:939]

[-]Capla10y90

I generally don't care what level a post is at if I'm going to upvote it, but when I see something has a negative core that I think is unfair, I'll bump it up by one.

[-]John_Maxwell10y120

The Less Wrong FAQ (linked to from the About page) is meant to address questions like this one. It's still worth revisiting them periodically, though. In order to codify any conclusions we come to for future generations, I suggest making your proposals in the form of polls where the options correspond to changes in FAQ text. (You may wish to include a "I just want to see the results" option in your poll, BTW.)

[-]Stefan_Schubert10y91

Thanks. The instructions are quite vague, though. On the one hand, it says:

Please do not vote solely based on how much you agree or disagree with someone's conclusions.

On the other:

In some cases it's probably acceptable to vote in order to register agreement or disagreement. For example, you can vote someone's proposal up or down based on whether you think it should be implemented.

In my view, this gives too much leeway to people to vote purely on the basis on disagreement with the conclusions.

[-]Lumifer10y50

this gives too much leeway to people

There is no enforcement mechanism, so people have all the leeway the want regardless of what the instructions say.

[-]John_Maxwell10y10

Should we delete the "In some cases..." clause?

[pollid:951]

[-]Elo10y00

repeat poll in a more public location?

[-]IlyaShpitser10y120

Karma is both a very noisy and a very biased signal -- it takes too much discipline from too many people for it to be otherwise.

Very negative and very positive karma scores have some signal, otherwise probably safe to ignore.

[-]TheAncientGeek10y50

I don't think it's an Iimpossible standard to separate "how well did the author argue their point" from "how much .I agree with the point the author argues".

[-]IlyaShpitser10y20

I am sure it's not, but people in an online community, even this one, will not meet it in large enough numbers. It's hard to be rational.

This is not meant to be judgemental, I am sure I am bad at this too (but I pretty rarely use the karma system).

[-]TheAncientGeek10y00

The results will fall short of perfection but that isnt a good reason no to try. Fallacy of gray.

[-]IlyaShpitser10y00

I am not saying you shouldn't try, I am saying given the current state of things, it is probably safe to ignore any karma score that isn't very positive or very negative. It's hard to get signal from other scores.

Let's say a post of mine has -2 total karma. What should I conclude from this? My point is, essentially nothing.

[-]Nornagest10y100

It's mostly up to you. The standard advice is "upvote things you want to see more of, downvote things you want to see less of", and that's not a bad starting point especially on the upvote side, but there's a little more to it than that.

People respond more strongly to downvotes than upvotes, so most people don't downvote merely low-quality posts even if they'd like to see less of them; that takes something more severe. I tend to downvote stuff if it seems to have been posted in bad faith, or if I find it rude, unreadable, obnoxious, or excessively partisan; I'll also sometimes downvote top-level posts (not comments) if they're poorly written or uninformative, especially in Main.

Downvoting posts because you don't like the people that wrote them is explicitly against policy. Don't do that. On the other hand, you'll probably find yourself downvoting the same people a lot, and that's fine as long as you're basing your judgement on the posts themselves.

Incentives-wise, there's one major caveat, and that's that comments (but not top-level posts) downvoted below -4 can no longer be responded to without paying karma of your own, and neither can any of their children: the so-called troll toll. If you feel a comment that's being downvoted deserves further discussion, you might not want to downvote it below that threshold even if you otherwise would.

I've also found it's a good policy not to downvote responses to your own posts; it helps keep conversations civil and it helps avoid messy and unproductive downvote duels in long threads.

[-]Sabiola10y20

I upvote responses to my own comments on principle. Unless they're nasty, but that hasn't happened yet on LW.

[-]Stefan_Schubert10y90

Lots of people seem to downvote a comment or a post simply because they do not agree with its conclusions, as was discussed here. That's wrong, in my opinion. Instead, you should only downvote in case the reasoning is poor, there are personal attacks, and so forth.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke10y80