Upvotes on an internet forum are not a good replacement for peer review. I’m surprised I even have to argue for this, but here goes:
the vast majority of people upvoting/downvoting are not experts in the topic of the blog post.
The vast majority of upvoting/downvoting occurs before a blogpost has been thoroughly checked for accuracy. If theres a serious mistake in a blogpost, and it’s not caught right away, almost no-one will see it.
Upvoting/downvoting is mostly a response to the percieved effort of a post and on whether they personally agree with it.
Yes, peer review is flawed, but the response isn’t to revert to blogposts, it’s to build a better system.
I think that peer review is so poor that probably just the forum alone produces work that is less in need of replication. I guess that’s not really about the system.
And yes, we should build a better system, but still. Peer review vs upvotes on journal sites, I would pick the latter.
Compared to EA blog posts weighted by karma? The Answer is not obviously yes in my opinion. I think we’ll fare better in the replication crisis.
Upvotes on an internet forum are not a good replacement for peer review. I’m surprised I even have to argue for this, but here goes:
the vast majority of people upvoting/downvoting are not experts in the topic of the blog post.
The vast majority of upvoting/downvoting occurs before a blogpost has been thoroughly checked for accuracy. If theres a serious mistake in a blogpost, and it’s not caught right away, almost no-one will see it.
Upvoting/downvoting is mostly a response to the percieved effort of a post and on whether they personally agree with it.
Yes, peer review is flawed, but the response isn’t to revert to blogposts, it’s to build a better system.
And yet argue it you shall.
I think that peer review is so poor that probably just the forum alone produces work that is less in need of replication. I guess that’s not really about the system.
And yes, we should build a better system, but still. Peer review vs upvotes on journal sites, I would pick the latter.
Maybe we could discuss it in the comments of https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/peer-review