I think usually when a discussion is heated, I prefer the equilibrium where the two primary discussion partners have votes that cancel each other out, instead of an equilibrium where just all the comments are in the negatives.… This includes the case where the person you are responding to is strong-downvoting your comment, and then I think it can make sense to strong-upvote your comment, in order to not give the false impression that there is a consensus against your comment.
This problem won’t arise if everyone strong-upvotes themselves by default.
The main downside to everyone strong-upvotes themselves by default in my view is that it punishes new users (or those with lower karma and thus weaker strong-upvotes) too much. Maybe this isn’t that important of a factor?
Yeah, but I think the problem is then that in the case of comments the consensus seems actually too dominated by people’s initial strong-vote, and arguing against Eliezer on LW with a 10 karma upvote would make it feel like consensus is heavily stacked against you in a way I also don’t like.
I mean, that would just make the total karma system in 90% of cases worse. For example I think it totally makes sense for posts by Eliezer to start with that much karma, since I think there is a strong prior that they are going to be pretty good.
Ah, yeah, I think that’s a kind of reasonable thing to do. My primary hesitation is that it’s not super intuitive and adds complexity, but it seems like one of the reasonable ways forward.
This problem won’t arise if everyone strong-upvotes themselves by default.
The main downside to everyone strong-upvotes themselves by default in my view is that it punishes new users (or those with lower karma and thus weaker strong-upvotes) too much. Maybe this isn’t that important of a factor?
To me, that sounds like a feature, not a bug, given how the influx of users has degraded average post quality recently.
Yeah, but I think the problem is then that in the case of comments the consensus seems actually too dominated by people’s initial strong-vote, and arguing against Eliezer on LW with a 10 karma upvote would make it feel like consensus is heavily stacked against you in a way I also don’t like.
Most people have strong upvote strength 3-7 though. Anyway, if this is a big problem, then just cap self-upvote strength around 5?
I mean, that would just make the total karma system in 90% of cases worse. For example I think it totally makes sense for posts by Eliezer to start with that much karma, since I think there is a strong prior that they are going to be pretty good.
I was thinking just for comments.
Ah, yeah, I think that’s a kind of reasonable thing to do. My primary hesitation is that it’s not super intuitive and adds complexity, but it seems like one of the reasonable ways forward.