Similar to what Brad says, posts not in line with EA mainstream, or just exploring or giving ideas, or not written in EA-style, or drafty are often down-voted very early on without engaging in discussion or giving any reason for the down-vote.
Even though forum moderators try to engage people to write even if the post is not perfectly polished or thought through—most people are very busy!-- to incentivize exchange of ideas, the dynamics of the forum make it basically useless as such posts are usually very quickly hidden. It often feels useless to write anything.
Another reason, which is understandable and difficult to avoid, but that I find a bit surprising in this forum, is the status and political dynamics: I’ve seen several times good posts with very low karma and afterwards very similar posts written by known EAs that have lots of karma.
I know some people disagree, but very early downvoting (especially strong downvoting) often ends up functionally being a vote to cut off discussion of a post before it even starts. Those votes make it less likely that others will see and click on the post, will cause them to come to the post with a more negative lens (consciously or otherwise), and will make them less likely to engage (why make the effort if you think the post is headed into oblivion soon enough because of low karma?). That’s a hard trifecta for a post to overcome.
Like motions to cut off debate early in most parliamentary systems, the bar for functionally cutting off discussion of a post at an early juncture should be relatively high. (It is 2⁄3 majority in most parliamentary systems, IIRC.)
I wonder if we would benefit from something like a system that hides the karma (and treats it as zero for visibility purposes) of posts that have less than <some quantity> of engagement. That way posts would get a “grace period” before getting hidden.
The potential cost there is that there are occasionally some really bad posts that deserve the rapid downvote—such as those that don’t respect important Forum norms, even if not quite to the point of formal moderator action. In those cases, the hail of downvotes allows the Forum to deal with those quickly and without moderator action that could be seen as “censoring” someone. But maybe those kinds of posts are rare enough to incur the cost.
Similar to what Brad says, posts not in line with EA mainstream, or just exploring or giving ideas, or not written in EA-style, or drafty are often down-voted very early on without engaging in discussion or giving any reason for the down-vote.
Even though forum moderators try to engage people to write even if the post is not perfectly polished or thought through—most people are very busy!-- to incentivize exchange of ideas, the dynamics of the forum make it basically useless as such posts are usually very quickly hidden. It often feels useless to write anything.
Another reason, which is understandable and difficult to avoid, but that I find a bit surprising in this forum, is the status and political dynamics: I’ve seen several times good posts with very low karma and afterwards very similar posts written by known EAs that have lots of karma.
I know some people disagree, but very early downvoting (especially strong downvoting) often ends up functionally being a vote to cut off discussion of a post before it even starts. Those votes make it less likely that others will see and click on the post, will cause them to come to the post with a more negative lens (consciously or otherwise), and will make them less likely to engage (why make the effort if you think the post is headed into oblivion soon enough because of low karma?). That’s a hard trifecta for a post to overcome.
Like motions to cut off debate early in most parliamentary systems, the bar for functionally cutting off discussion of a post at an early juncture should be relatively high. (It is 2⁄3 majority in most parliamentary systems, IIRC.)
I wonder if we would benefit from something like a system that hides the karma (and treats it as zero for visibility purposes) of posts that have less than <some quantity> of engagement. That way posts would get a “grace period” before getting hidden.
The potential cost there is that there are occasionally some really bad posts that deserve the rapid downvote—such as those that don’t respect important Forum norms, even if not quite to the point of formal moderator action. In those cases, the hail of downvotes allows the Forum to deal with those quickly and without moderator action that could be seen as “censoring” someone. But maybe those kinds of posts are rare enough to incur the cost.