But by the same token everybody in this movement has competing priorities and calls on their time. Their feedback might be helpful to you, but why should they be obliged to give it as the price of participating?
However, without verbal feedback there is a danger of negative dynamics around popularity and politics. For example, I can imagine someone who values winning as opposed to finding the truth creating what are known as “sock puppet” accounts and doing multiple downvoting—or even upvoting.
This is a problem that plagues many forums with an upvote/downvote system, such as Reddit and LessWrong, and we can’t be sure it is not already happening here. If we create structures to prevent it, wouldn’t we be better off?
I don’t think ‘we can’t know it’s not a problem’ is a helpful guide to deciding if something needs action. Have you seen any evidence of voting being used by cartels or sock puppets? As you say, it’s just as possible for up-votes to be done for nefarious reasons (though I have serious doubts as to whether that’s the case) - but requiring comments for up-voting would also be onerous and reduce people’s interactions on the forum.
I think the suggested policy would make the forum worse by raising the bar to participation. Greg has explained the problems with it quite articulately above, so I won’t recapitulate his comment.
I haven’t seen evidence of this, but just because there isn’t evidence doesn’t mean it’s not there :-) I have experience on other forums of this being the case. I also have worries about what would happen as new people enter the EA forum who are used to downvoting on venues like Reddit or LW, which have much more harsh approaches to downvoting. I’m concerned about setting up good structures for how we are going forward, considering that the EA movement is growing quickly. I’d like to consider a system of focusing on upvoting rather than downvoting—that way, we still get the signal about good posts, but don’t have the downsides of downvoting.
But by the same token everybody in this movement has competing priorities and calls on their time. Their feedback might be helpful to you, but why should they be obliged to give it as the price of participating?
Yes, it’s definitely a matter of striking the right balance. Well chosen downvotes have value, and losing some of them would be a cost.
Bernadette, I hear you, and that’s a good point.
However, without verbal feedback there is a danger of negative dynamics around popularity and politics. For example, I can imagine someone who values winning as opposed to finding the truth creating what are known as “sock puppet” accounts and doing multiple downvoting—or even upvoting.
This is a problem that plagues many forums with an upvote/downvote system, such as Reddit and LessWrong, and we can’t be sure it is not already happening here. If we create structures to prevent it, wouldn’t we be better off?
I don’t think ‘we can’t know it’s not a problem’ is a helpful guide to deciding if something needs action. Have you seen any evidence of voting being used by cartels or sock puppets? As you say, it’s just as possible for up-votes to be done for nefarious reasons (though I have serious doubts as to whether that’s the case) - but requiring comments for up-voting would also be onerous and reduce people’s interactions on the forum.
I think the suggested policy would make the forum worse by raising the bar to participation. Greg has explained the problems with it quite articulately above, so I won’t recapitulate his comment.
I haven’t seen evidence of this, but just because there isn’t evidence doesn’t mean it’s not there :-) I have experience on other forums of this being the case. I also have worries about what would happen as new people enter the EA forum who are used to downvoting on venues like Reddit or LW, which have much more harsh approaches to downvoting. I’m concerned about setting up good structures for how we are going forward, considering that the EA movement is growing quickly. I’d like to consider a system of focusing on upvoting rather than downvoting—that way, we still get the signal about good posts, but don’t have the downsides of downvoting.