This is a mechanism for maintaining cultural continuity.
Karma represents how much the community trusts you, and in return, because you are trusted, youâre granted greater ability to influence what others see because your judgement has been vetted over a long series of posts. The increase in voting power is roughly logarithmic with karma, so the increased influence in practice hits diminishing returns pretty quickly.
If we take this away it allows the culture of the site to drift more quickly, say because thereâs a large influx of new folks. Right now existing members can curate what happens on the Forum. If we take away the current voting structure, weâre at greater risk of this site becoming less the site the existing user base wants.
I donât speak for the Forum by any means, but as I see it weâre trying to create a space here to talk about certain things in a certain way, and that means we want new people to learn the norms and be part of what exists first before they try to change it, since outsiders often fail to understand why things work the way they do until theyâve gotten enough experience to see how the existing mechnismism make things work. Once you understand how things work, it becomes possible to try to change things in ways that keeps what works and changes what doesnât. The voting mechanism is downstream of this and is an important tool of the membership to curate the site.
That said, you can also just ignore the votes if you donât agree with them and read whatever you want.
I really donât think the libertarian âif you donât like it, go somewhere elseâ works here as the EA forum is pretty much the place where EA discussions are held. Sure, they happen on twitter and reddit too but you have to admit itâs not the same. Most discussions start here and are then picked up there.
I agree with your other arguments, I donât want the culture of the site to drift too quickly because of a large influx of new folks. But why wouldnât a cut off be sufficient for that? I donât see why the power has to keep on increasing after, say, a 200 karma. Because at that point value lock-in might become an issue. Reminds me a bit of the average age of US senators being 64 years old. Not too dismiss the wisdom of experienced people, but insights from new folks is important too.
Sure, not everyone likes curated gardens. If thatâs not the kind of site you want, thereâs other places. Reddit, for example, has active communities that operate under different norms.
The folks who started the Forum prefer the sort of structure it has. If you want something else and you donât have a convincing argument that convinces us, youâre free to participate in discussions elsewhere.
âThere are other placesâ seems like a terrible benchmark to judge by. Reddit is basically the only other active forum on the internet for EA discussion and nowhere else has any chance of materially affecting EA culture. The existence of this place suppresses alternativesâI used to run a utilitarianism forum that basically folded into this because it didnât seem sensible at the time to compete with people we almost totally agreed with.
Posting a a single unevidenced LW argument as though it were scripture as an argument against being exposed to a wider range of opinions seems like a poor epistemic practice. In any case, that thread is about banning, which Iâve become more sympathetic to, and which is totally unrelated to the karma system.
Why do people think vote weight should keep on increasing after a certain amount of karma? Iâm curious!
This is a mechanism for maintaining cultural continuity.
Karma represents how much the community trusts you, and in return, because you are trusted, youâre granted greater ability to influence what others see because your judgement has been vetted over a long series of posts. The increase in voting power is roughly logarithmic with karma, so the increased influence in practice hits diminishing returns pretty quickly.
If we take this away it allows the culture of the site to drift more quickly, say because thereâs a large influx of new folks. Right now existing members can curate what happens on the Forum. If we take away the current voting structure, weâre at greater risk of this site becoming less the site the existing user base wants.
I donât speak for the Forum by any means, but as I see it weâre trying to create a space here to talk about certain things in a certain way, and that means we want new people to learn the norms and be part of what exists first before they try to change it, since outsiders often fail to understand why things work the way they do until theyâve gotten enough experience to see how the existing mechnismism make things work. Once you understand how things work, it becomes possible to try to change things in ways that keeps what works and changes what doesnât. The voting mechanism is downstream of this and is an important tool of the membership to curate the site.
That said, you can also just ignore the votes if you donât agree with them and read whatever you want.
I really donât think the libertarian âif you donât like it, go somewhere elseâ works here as the EA forum is pretty much the place where EA discussions are held. Sure, they happen on twitter and reddit too but you have to admit itâs not the same. Most discussions start here and are then picked up there.
I agree with your other arguments, I donât want the culture of the site to drift too quickly because of a large influx of new folks. But why wouldnât a cut off be sufficient for that? I donât see why the power has to keep on increasing after, say, a 200 karma. Because at that point value lock-in might become an issue. Reminds me a bit of the average age of US senators being 64 years old. Not too dismiss the wisdom of experienced people, but insights from new folks is important too.
This doesnât seem self-evidently bad or obviously likely.
Sure, not everyone likes curated gardens. If thatâs not the kind of site you want, thereâs other places. Reddit, for example, has active communities that operate under different norms.
The folks who started the Forum prefer the sort of structure it has. If you want something else and you donât have a convincing argument that convinces us, youâre free to participate in discussions elsewhere.
As to deeper reasons why the Forum is the way it is, see, for example, https://ââwww.lesswrong.com/ââposts/ââtscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/ââwell-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism
âThere are other placesâ seems like a terrible benchmark to judge by. Reddit is basically the only other active forum on the internet for EA discussion and nowhere else has any chance of materially affecting EA culture. The existence of this place suppresses alternativesâI used to run a utilitarianism forum that basically folded into this because it didnât seem sensible at the time to compete with people we almost totally agreed with.
Posting a a single unevidenced LW argument as though it were scripture as an argument against being exposed to a wider range of opinions seems like a poor epistemic practice. In any case, that thread is about banning, which Iâve become more sympathetic to, and which is totally unrelated to the karma system.