Some of my posts/​comments can be quite long—I like responding with as much context as possible on the Forum, but as some of the original content itself is quite long, that means my responses can be quite long! I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem in itself, but the problem then comes with receiving disagree votes without comments elaborating them.
<I want to say, this isn’t complaining about disagreement. I like disagreement[2], it means I get to test my ideas and arguments>
However, it does pose an issue with updating my thoughts. A long post that has positive upvotes, negative disagree votes, and no (or few) comments means it’s hard for me to know where my opinion differs from other EA Forum users, and how far and in what direction I ought to update in. The best examples from my own history:
My takeaways from Cremer’s Vox piece. Do the disagree votes apply to Cremer’s piece, my (relatively) positive response to it, or the specific points I highlighted, or all of the above?
Post shorter takes: This means the agree/​disagree signal will be more clearly linked to my context, but it means I won’t be able to add all the content that I do now, which I think adds value.
Post fewer takes: Ceteris paribus this might not be expected work, but the argument would be that with more time between fewer contributions, the quality of them would go up so they’d usually make one clear point for readers to agree/​disagree with
Post more takes: Splitting a large comment into lots of sub-comments would do the same thing as ‘post shorter takes’, and keep context. The cost is a karma-farming effect, and splitting a thread into multiple parts, making it harder to follow.
Explicitly ask for comments: I feel like this wouldn’t work? It feels a bit whiny and has no enforcement mechanism?
Pre-commit to up-voting responses: Relies on others to trust me, might not be credible for those who strongly disagree with me.
Suggestions/​thoughts on any of the above welcome
Oh hi. Just rubber-ducking a failure mode some of my Forum takes[1] seem to fall into, but please add your takes if you think that would help :)
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Some of my posts/​comments can be quite long—I like responding with as much context as possible on the Forum, but as some of the original content itself is quite long, that means my responses can be quite long! I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem in itself, but the problem then comes with receiving disagree votes without comments elaborating them.
<I want to say, this isn’t complaining about disagreement. I like disagreement[2], it means I get to test my ideas and arguments>
However, it does pose an issue with updating my thoughts. A long post that has positive upvotes, negative disagree votes, and no (or few) comments means it’s hard for me to know where my opinion differs from other EA Forum users, and how far and in what direction I ought to update in. The best examples from my own history:
My takeaways from Cremer’s Vox piece. Do the disagree votes apply to Cremer’s piece, my (relatively) positive response to it, or the specific points I highlighted, or all of the above?
My fears about karma-downweighting Community posts. This one went in a few different directions—it has about 2.5 distinct but related points going on, so I don’t know where the disagreement is focused on.[3]
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Potential Solutions?:
Post shorter takes: This means the agree/​disagree signal will be more clearly linked to my context, but it means I won’t be able to add all the content that I do now, which I think adds value.
Post fewer takes: Ceteris paribus this might not be expected work, but the argument would be that with more time between fewer contributions, the quality of them would go up so they’d usually make one clear point for readers to agree/​disagree with
Post more takes: Splitting a large comment into lots of sub-comments would do the same thing as ‘post shorter takes’, and keep context. The cost is a karma-farming effect, and splitting a thread into multiple parts, making it harder to follow.
Explicitly ask for comments: I feel like this wouldn’t work? It feels a bit whiny and has no enforcement mechanism?
Pre-commit to up-voting responses: Relies on others to trust me, might not be credible for those who strongly disagree with me.
Suggestions/​thoughts on any of the above welcome
I’m using ‘takes’ to refer to both posts and comments, it’s not meant to imply low-quality contributions to the forum
Modulo good faith norms etc
Also, the agree-vote karma on this piece went all over the place, and comments might have been a place to hash this disagreement out