You could’ve made a poll. That wouldn’t have given you nearly as much karma/voting-power, and that wouldn’t have given those who already have a lot of power the ability to influence the results. For the record I’m not angry at you, I’m angry at the karma system and the groupthink it generates. Given that I also have undemocratic power, I will stick to my own principles and not vote on these questions.
I don’t like how much karma I have. I agree that’s a bit ridiculous at this stage, though some disagree. But I think that those who have spent a long time on the forum do tend to be better informed and I do want their votes to count for more.
Democracy is good at avoiding famine and war, but I am unconvinced it is best at making decisions. So a little upweighting of those who the community tends to agree with seems good.
But I think that those who have spent a long time on the forum do tend to be better informed and I do want their votes to count for more.
You made about +448 karma from the last post. When an actual scientist like Jobst comes here and posts a very well informed post, it get’s +1 karma (from me, love ya Jobst). People like Jobst have a fulltime job as a scientist and are too productive to spend most of their time online, and when they do go online they are so well informed it won’t give them any voting power because terminally online people like us are simply not informed enough to understand him, and we have all the voting power. If you say something true but unpopular to those who already have power, you might even lose karma. There is no reason to think that those who have more voting power are more informed, more productive or more altruistic.
EDIT: To clarify: not literally his last post, his last post like this. Splitting things up into smaller vote-able chunks (like this post) nets you more voting-power than making the big posts of criticisms that inspire them. Having a high quantity is a better path to gaining voting power than high quality. This allows a few highly active (and thus most likely orthodox) users to boost or tank any piece of writing. When we combine this with the fact that low karma comments are hidden we basically allow people with high karma (most likely orthodox users) to soft-censor their own critics.
If it’s a good post, can’t it convince people to upvote it? I think the question is, if on average people with high karma have a better sense of what the community is gonna value than those with low karma. Maybe I would like jobst to have more, but most people aren’t jobst.
On balance I still like that that the top forum users have the ability to do some moderation.
But I’d be open to turning it off and seeing how that affects stuff.
I think the “fulltime job as a scientist” situation could be addressed with an “apply for curation” process, as outlined in the second half of this comment.
You could’ve made a poll. That wouldn’t have given you nearly as much karma/voting-power, and that wouldn’t have given those who already have a lot of power the ability to influence the results. For the record I’m not angry at you, I’m angry at the karma system and the groupthink it generates. Given that I also have undemocratic power, I will stick to my own principles and not vote on these questions.
I don’t like how much karma I have. I agree that’s a bit ridiculous at this stage, though some disagree. But I think that those who have spent a long time on the forum do tend to be better informed and I do want their votes to count for more.
Democracy is good at avoiding famine and war, but I am unconvinced it is best at making decisions. So a little upweighting of those who the community tends to agree with seems good.
Honestly, I might suggest it more.
You made about +448 karma from the last post. When an actual scientist like Jobst comes here and posts a very well informed post, it get’s +1 karma (from me, love ya Jobst). People like Jobst have a fulltime job as a scientist and are too productive to spend most of their time online, and when they do go online they are so well informed it won’t give them any voting power because terminally online people like us are simply not informed enough to understand him, and we have all the voting power. If you say something true but unpopular to those who already have power, you might even lose karma. There is no reason to think that those who have more voting power are more informed, more productive or more altruistic.
EDIT: To clarify: not literally his last post, his last post like this. Splitting things up into smaller vote-able chunks (like this post) nets you more voting-power than making the big posts of criticisms that inspire them. Having a high quantity is a better path to gaining voting power than high quality. This allows a few highly active (and thus most likely orthodox) users to boost or tank any piece of writing.
When we combine this with the fact that low karma comments are hidden we basically allow people with high karma (most likely orthodox users) to soft-censor their own critics.
If it’s a good post, can’t it convince people to upvote it? I think the question is, if on average people with high karma have a better sense of what the community is gonna value than those with low karma. Maybe I would like jobst to have more, but most people aren’t jobst.
On balance I still like that that the top forum users have the ability to do some moderation.
But I’d be open to turning it off and seeing how that affects stuff.
I think the “fulltime job as a scientist” situation could be addressed with an “apply for curation” process, as outlined in the second half of this comment.