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.
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