We have received an influx of people creating accounts to cast votes and comments over the past week, and we are aware that people who feel strongly about human biodiversity sometimes vote brigade on sites where the topic is being discussed. Please be aware that voting and discussion about some topics may not be representative of the normal EA Forum user base.
Huh, seems like you should just revert those votes, or turn off voting for new accounts. Seems better than just having people be confused about vote totals.
And maybe add a visible “new account” flag—I understand not wanting to cut off existing users creating throwaways, but some people are using screenshots of forum comments as evidence of what EAs in general think.
Thanks! Yeah, this is something we’ve considered, usually in the context of trying to make the Forum more welcoming to newcomers, but this is another reason to prioritize that feature.
Yeah, I think we should probably go through and remove people who are obviously brigading (eg tons of votes in one hour and no other activity), but I’m hesitant to do too much more retroactively. I think it’s possible that next time we have a discussion that has a passionate audience outside of EA we should restrict signups more, but that obviously has costs.
How do you differentiate someone who is sincerely engaging and happens to have just created an account now from someone who just wants their viewpoint to seem more popular and isn’t interested in truth seeking?
Or are you saying we should just purge accounts that are clearly in the latter category, and accept that there will be some which are actually in the latter category but we can’t distinguish from the former?
I think being like “sorry, we’ve reverted votes from recently signed-up accounts because we can’t distinguish them” seems fine. Also, in my experience abusive voting patterns are usually very obvious, where people show up and only vote on one specific comment or post, or on content of one specific user, or vote so fast that it seems impossible for them to have read the content they are voting on.
How about: getting a lot of downvotes from new accounts doesn’t decrease your voting-power and doesn’t mean your comments won’t show up on the frontpage? Half a dozen of my latest comments have responded to HBDers. Since they get a notification it doesn’t surprise me that those comments get immediate downvotes which hides them from the frontpage and subsequently means that they can easily decrease my voting-power on this forum (it went from 5 karma for a strong upvote to now 4 karma for a strong upvote). Giving brigaders the power to hide things from the frontpage and decide which people have more voting-power on this forum seems undesirable.
Note: I went through Bob’s comments and think it likely they were brigaded to some extent. I didn’t think they were in general excellent, but they certainly were not negative-karma comments. I strong-upvoted the ones that were below zero, which was about three or four.
I think it is valid to use the strong upvote as a means of countering brigades, at least where a moderator has confirmed there is reason to believe brigading is active on a topic. My position is limited to comments below zero, because the harmful effects of brigades suppressing good-faith comments from visibility and affirmatively penalizing good-faith users are particularly acute. Although there are mod-level solutions, Ben’s comments suggest they may have some downsides and require time, so I feel a community corrective that doesn’t require moderators to pull away from more important tasks has value.
I also think it is important for me to be transparent about what I did and accept the community’s judgment. If the community feels that is an improper reason to strong upvote, I will revert my votes.
Could you set a minimum karma threshold (or account age or something) for your votes to count? I would expect even a low threshold like 10 would solve much of the problem.
Yeah, interesting. I think we have a lot of lurkers who never get any karma and I don’t want to entirely exclude them, but maybe some combo like “10 karma or your account has to be at least one week old” would be good.
Possible Vote Brigading
We have received an influx of people creating accounts to cast votes and comments over the past week, and we are aware that people who feel strongly about human biodiversity sometimes vote brigade on sites where the topic is being discussed. Please be aware that voting and discussion about some topics may not be representative of the normal EA Forum user base.
Huh, seems like you should just revert those votes, or turn off voting for new accounts. Seems better than just having people be confused about vote totals.
And maybe add a visible “new account” flag—I understand not wanting to cut off existing users creating throwaways, but some people are using screenshots of forum comments as evidence of what EAs in general think.
Arguably also beneficially if you thought that we should typically make an extra effort to be tolerant of ‘obvious’ questions from new users.
Thanks! Yeah, this is something we’ve considered, usually in the context of trying to make the Forum more welcoming to newcomers, but this is another reason to prioritize that feature.
I agree.
Yeah, I think we should probably go through and remove people who are obviously brigading (eg tons of votes in one hour and no other activity), but I’m hesitant to do too much more retroactively. I think it’s possible that next time we have a discussion that has a passionate audience outside of EA we should restrict signups more, but that obviously has costs.
When you purge user accounts you automatically revoke their votes. I wouldn’t be very hesitant to do that.
How do you differentiate someone who is sincerely engaging and happens to have just created an account now from someone who just wants their viewpoint to seem more popular and isn’t interested in truth seeking?
Or are you saying we should just purge accounts that are clearly in the latter category, and accept that there will be some which are actually in the latter category but we can’t distinguish from the former?
I think being like “sorry, we’ve reverted votes from recently signed-up accounts because we can’t distinguish them” seems fine. Also, in my experience abusive voting patterns are usually very obvious, where people show up and only vote on one specific comment or post, or on content of one specific user, or vote so fast that it seems impossible for them to have read the content they are voting on.
How about: getting a lot of downvotes from new accounts doesn’t decrease your voting-power and doesn’t mean your comments won’t show up on the frontpage?
Half a dozen of my latest comments have responded to HBDers. Since they get a notification it doesn’t surprise me that those comments get immediate downvotes which hides them from the frontpage and subsequently means that they can easily decrease my voting-power on this forum (it went from 5 karma for a strong upvote to now 4 karma for a strong upvote).
Giving brigaders the power to hide things from the frontpage and decide which people have more voting-power on this forum seems undesirable.
Note: I went through Bob’s comments and think it likely they were brigaded to some extent. I didn’t think they were in general excellent, but they certainly were not negative-karma comments. I strong-upvoted the ones that were below zero, which was about three or four.
I think it is valid to use the strong upvote as a means of countering brigades, at least where a moderator has confirmed there is reason to believe brigading is active on a topic. My position is limited to comments below zero, because the harmful effects of brigades suppressing good-faith comments from visibility and affirmatively penalizing good-faith users are particularly acute. Although there are mod-level solutions, Ben’s comments suggest they may have some downsides and require time, so I feel a community corrective that doesn’t require moderators to pull away from more important tasks has value.
I also think it is important for me to be transparent about what I did and accept the community’s judgment. If the community feels that is an improper reason to strong upvote, I will revert my votes.
Edit: is to are
I agree.
Could you set a minimum karma threshold (or account age or something) for your votes to count? I would expect even a low threshold like 10 would solve much of the problem.
Yeah, interesting. I think we have a lot of lurkers who never get any karma and I don’t want to entirely exclude them, but maybe some combo like “10 karma or your account has to be at least one week old” would be good.
Yeah I think that would be a really smart way to implement it.
Do the moderators think the effect of vote brigading reflect support from people who are pro-HBD or anti-HBD?