The base rate of good-faith, norm-compliant comments being massively downvoted remains extremely low. I think that is pretty relevant in choosing how much to update on the karma votes here and in the Parr votes.
Substantively, the problem is that the evidence suggests the voting userbase is at least as opposed to Concerned User reminding us of Parr’s posts than it is opposed to Parr making the posts in the first place. While an optics-focused user might not be happy that Concerned User is bringing this up, one would expect their downvotes on the posts that created the optics problem in the first place to be equally as strong. If they aren’t downvoting the Parr posts due to “free speech” concerns, they shouldn’t be downvoting Concerned User for exercising their free-speech rights to call out what they see as a pattern of racism in EA.
One hypothesis: Forum users differ on whether they prioritize optics vs intellectual freedom.
Optics voters downvote both Parr and Concerned User. They want it all to go away.
Intellectual freedom voters upvote Parr, but downvote Concerned User. They appreciate Parr exploring a new cause proposal, and they feel the censure from Concerned User is unwarranted.
Result: Parr gets a mix of upvotes and downvotes. Concerned User is downvoted by everyone, since they annoyed both camps, for different reasons.
This is plausible, although I’d submit that it requires enough “optics voters” to be pretty bad at optics. Specifically, they would need to be unaware of the negative optical consequences of the comment here having been at −43.
Moreover, there are presumably voters who downvoted Parr and upvoted Concerned User because they thought Parr’s posts were deeply problematic and that Concerned User was right to call them out. For this hypothesis to work, they must have been substantially outnumbered by the group you describe as “intellectual freedom voters.” (I say the “group you describe” because the described voting behavior would be the same one would expect from people who sympathize with Parr’s views on the merits; I see no clear way to exclude the sympathy rationale on voting behavior alone.)
The base rate of good-faith, norm-compliant comments being massively downvoted remains extremely low. I think that is pretty relevant in choosing how much to update on the karma votes here and in the Parr votes.
Substantively, the problem is that the evidence suggests the voting userbase is at least as opposed to Concerned User reminding us of Parr’s posts than it is opposed to Parr making the posts in the first place. While an optics-focused user might not be happy that Concerned User is bringing this up, one would expect their downvotes on the posts that created the optics problem in the first place to be equally as strong. If they aren’t downvoting the Parr posts due to “free speech” concerns, they shouldn’t be downvoting Concerned User for exercising their free-speech rights to call out what they see as a pattern of racism in EA.
One hypothesis: Forum users differ on whether they prioritize optics vs intellectual freedom.
Optics voters downvote both Parr and Concerned User. They want it all to go away.
Intellectual freedom voters upvote Parr, but downvote Concerned User. They appreciate Parr exploring a new cause proposal, and they feel the censure from Concerned User is unwarranted.
Result: Parr gets a mix of upvotes and downvotes. Concerned User is downvoted by everyone, since they annoyed both camps, for different reasons.
This is plausible, although I’d submit that it requires enough “optics voters” to be pretty bad at optics. Specifically, they would need to be unaware of the negative optical consequences of the comment here having been at −43.
Moreover, there are presumably voters who downvoted Parr and upvoted Concerned User because they thought Parr’s posts were deeply problematic and that Concerned User was right to call them out. For this hypothesis to work, they must have been substantially outnumbered by the group you describe as “intellectual freedom voters.” (I say the “group you describe” because the described voting behavior would be the same one would expect from people who sympathize with Parr’s views on the merits; I see no clear way to exclude the sympathy rationale on voting behavior alone.)