From the point of view of highlighting the best comments to allow good reading order, I think there may not be enough downvoting. Having more downvoting as well perhaps as more upvoting would give a richer distinction and help the best stuff to rise to the top quickly, even if it’s new content on an old thread.
On the other hand from the point of view of experienced feedback, downvoting might be a turn-off, and more of it might reduce people’s inclination to post. But this effect might be reduced if downvoting were more normal.
Overall I guess I’d weakly prefer more upvoting and more downvoting—including downvoting things that you don’t disagree with but would have been happy to skip reading.
That’s a good point, though being extra sparing in your upvoting would achieve a decent fraction of the same benefits. On the other hand, that would mean that fewer people got the warm fuzzies of upvotes, so that fewer people would get demoralising downvotes.
I guess that people currently upvote in the vicinity of 20% of comments they read (this is a guess, but based on how many more upvotes the top articles/comments get than the median), and downvote somewhat under 1%.
Optimal for information in theory might be a 1⁄31⁄31⁄3 split between upvoting, downvoting and not voting. But I think higher thresholds for downvoting than that probably make sense. I guess I might like to see upvoting at about 30% and downvoting at about 3%?
Downvoted to follow my own suggestion—I’m afraid I found this confusing/confused, as I think just being more sparing with upvoting gets you no benefits at all, and you didn’t explain how it was meant to work.
I have mixed feelings on this.
From the point of view of highlighting the best comments to allow good reading order, I think there may not be enough downvoting. Having more downvoting as well perhaps as more upvoting would give a richer distinction and help the best stuff to rise to the top quickly, even if it’s new content on an old thread.
On the other hand from the point of view of experienced feedback, downvoting might be a turn-off, and more of it might reduce people’s inclination to post. But this effect might be reduced if downvoting were more normal.
Overall I guess I’d weakly prefer more upvoting and more downvoting—including downvoting things that you don’t disagree with but would have been happy to skip reading.
That’s a good point, though being extra sparing in your upvoting would achieve a decent fraction of the same benefits. On the other hand, that would mean that fewer people got the warm fuzzies of upvotes, so that fewer people would get demoralising downvotes.
Being sparing in your upvoting? That seems to be the worst of both worlds!
I’m imagining 2 scenarios:
1) People have a very low threshold for upvoting, so upvote most comments. They only downvote in extreme circumstances.
2) People have a high threshold for upvoting, so only upvote comments they think particularly helpful. They only downvote in extreme circumstances.
My thought is that more information about comment quality is conveyed in the second.
I guess that people currently upvote in the vicinity of 20% of comments they read (this is a guess, but based on how many more upvotes the top articles/comments get than the median), and downvote somewhat under 1%.
Optimal for information in theory might be a 1⁄3 1⁄3 1⁄3 split between upvoting, downvoting and not voting. But I think higher thresholds for downvoting than that probably make sense. I guess I might like to see upvoting at about 30% and downvoting at about 3%?
The second scenario isn’t how I started upvoting, but what I’m leaning towards now, on this forum.
Downvoted to follow my own suggestion—I’m afraid I found this confusing/confused, as I think just being more sparing with upvoting gets you no benefits at all, and you didn’t explain how it was meant to work.
Upvoted your original comment though. :)
Ha, fair enough! I tried to explain it in my reply to Ryan: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/b2/open_thread_5/1h2