Thereās some nasty subtext in the voting patterns where things are heavily upvoted and downvoted with rather little explanation.
If I see that a post is heavily downvoted, and that several comments that criticize the post are heavily upvoted (as is the case here), I assume that people who downvoted the post generally agree with those criticisms.
In fact, I actively like the āupvoting critical commentsā form of explanation if someone thinks that existing comments basically cover what they wanted to say. Otherwise, you get a Twitter-esque pile-on where a dozen people all make very similar critical comments.
(Is there some way you wish people would behave that you think avoids this scenario and the ālow-explanation downvoteā scenario?)
I may publish a separate comment on this post, but I thought Michelleās critique was good and upvoted. And I downvoted this post based on my main voting criterion: āWould I want to see more content like this on the EA Forum?ā
The answer is: āNo, I donāt want to see more content like this on the EA Forum.ā I think it generated much more heat than light, and there were many better ways to make the same point. I might not have downvoted the post had it been written by someone who was clearly new to the movement, for the reasons you outlined, but Sanjay isnāt new. On the contrary, heās written many good posts that I upvoted because I wanted to encourage more content along those lines.
Ideally, downvotes discourage some types of posts and comments that arenāt very useful to the Forumās goals, and upvotes encourage more posts and comments that are useful. Thereās always a risk that someone whose post gets downvoted will be discouraged from writing other posts that could be better, but critical comments seem like they would create the same risk.
I think one area where we may have different feelings is in the bar for publishing to the EA Forum. My intuition was that we should have a very low bar, but have easy sorting and make things easy for readers to skip content. The feeling is something like, āWe thank you for writing any content to the forum. Once itās here, itās easy enough to remove or hide it if really needed, so content is generally EV-positive.ā
I would argue that the original Crybabyās post may have been worse than this one, but still am fine with it being hosted publicly. If the next Holden were to write a post like that, on this Forum, Iād want them to come away learning how to do better, but not having a very negative experience.
One of the main uses of posting to the Forum is not for readership but for feedback. And some of the worst posts may be exactly those that could benefit the most from feedback.
I know a bunch of people who are reluctant to post to the Forum, and my impression is that weāre losing out a bit here.
If you see the Forum as more of a professional thing, I would hope we could eventually have some other alternative to give feedback to people on their written up thoughts and early blog posts. (Not saying that this is your responsibility, just that I would like to see someone do it).
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Often when I see posts heavily downvoted /ā other comments upvoted, itās because they seem to hit a nerve that a large part of the community deeply cares about, but the comment responses donāt make this clear (it is confusing!). For example, there have been a bunch of emotionally charged threads on transparency vs. censorship. Iām worried that people posting will touch on these issues without realizing it, then take the vote differences to be about them personally.
One of the main uses of posting to the Forum is not for readership but for feedback. And some of the worst posts may be exactly those that could benefit the most from feedback.
It seems to me like this post got a reasonable amount of feedback. The top two upvoted comments took issue with different elements of the post, and I think those commenters explained their points well.
In my experience, heavily-downvoted posts often get a lot of feedback, at least relative to the number of people who vote on them at all. I looked up a bunch of recentposts with negative karma, and they all got comments explaining why people downvoted. Even this post (with only three total votes) at least had someone asking a reasonable question about its conclusion.
Do any counterexamples come to mind? Posts or comments with a lot of downvotes and little-to-no feedback in the form of critical replies?
Often when I see posts heavily downvoted /ā other comments upvoted, itās because they seem to hit a nerve that a large part of the community deeply cares about, but the comment responses donāt make this clear (it is confusing!). For example, there have been a bunch of emotionally charged threads on transparency vs. censorship.
Again, Iād be interested to see examples. Iāve written at least twoposts that touch on issues of transparency and/āor censorship, and they both got plenty of critical attention that (to me) made it clear what people were concerned about. Other posts on controversial topics also seem to fit this description (when they get more than a couple of votes overall).
If you see the Forum as more of a professional thing, I would hope we could eventually have some other alternative to give feedback to people on their written up thoughts and early blog posts.
I also think that feedback on the Forum tends to be more helpful (on average) than youād get on almost any other free online platform. My main criticism of the Forumās commentariat is that they donāt write enough comments (Iād love to see people get more feedback), but I donāt know what alternative platform would be better in that regard.
*****
A question: Do you think the Forum would be a better site, overall, if it had only upvotes and comments, but no downvotes? This would reduce the chance of people getting discouraged by downvotes, but it would also lead to an atmosphere where posts were (by default) ranked by how much attention they received, rather than by how good people thought they were. That seems worse to me.
It seems to me like this post got a reasonable amount of feedback
That was kind of my point. I interpreted you before as saying you wanted to see fewer posts like this, and was pointing out that if we did, those posts wouldnāt get feedback like this. (That said, I think that the feedback on this could have been better, Iām responsible for this too)
Do any counterexamples come to mind?
I think going through this would take a lot of time, especially if you really donāt share this intuition. Happy to discuss in a call. I would note that ālots of critical commentsā doesnāt exactly mean that āwhatās going onā is obvious. There are many mediocre posts that have bad ideas that get no comments. I would expect that if one had a post that got a ton of bad comments, they would assume it could be because their post was much worse than those that got few comments, or that people dislike them personally.
I also think that feedback on the Forum tends to be more helpful (on average) than youād get on almost any other free online platform. My main criticism of the Forumās commentariat is that they donāt write enough comments (Iād love to see people get more feedback), but I donāt know what alternative platform would be better in that regard.
I wouldnāt really disagree, but expect that we can still aim for much better. Many of the forums I encounter (especially ones that border on discussions of Morality) are really really bad.
A question: Do you think the Forum would be a better site, overall, if it had only upvotes and comments, but no downvotes?
Iām not excited about this idea. The upvote/ādownvote system is crude enough as it is; if anything, Iād like to see more specificity come to it (like, I upvote the reasoning of this post, but not its conclusions). I am excited about things like important community members (myself included) learning how to better handle emotionally sensitive communication, though there are many useless ways of attempting this. Eventually, it could be interesting to have ML bots or similar to help here.
I think Iād also like to recommend having the EA Community Health team or similar jump in on situations like this, and hopefully have a call with Sanjay and the top critics. Social disagreements on sensitive issues are really tough to have in person, let alone on a public forum with everyone in the community judging you.
If I see that a post is heavily downvoted, and that several comments that criticize the post are heavily upvoted (as is the case here), I assume that people who downvoted the post generally agree with those criticisms.
In fact, I actively like the āupvoting critical commentsā form of explanation if someone thinks that existing comments basically cover what they wanted to say. Otherwise, you get a Twitter-esque pile-on where a dozen people all make very similar critical comments.
(Is there some way you wish people would behave that you think avoids this scenario and the ālow-explanation downvoteā scenario?)
I may publish a separate comment on this post, but I thought Michelleās critique was good and upvoted. And I downvoted this post based on my main voting criterion: āWould I want to see more content like this on the EA Forum?ā
The answer is: āNo, I donāt want to see more content like this on the EA Forum.ā I think it generated much more heat than light, and there were many better ways to make the same point. I might not have downvoted the post had it been written by someone who was clearly new to the movement, for the reasons you outlined, but Sanjay isnāt new. On the contrary, heās written many good posts that I upvoted because I wanted to encourage more content along those lines.
Ideally, downvotes discourage some types of posts and comments that arenāt very useful to the Forumās goals, and upvotes encourage more posts and comments that are useful. Thereās always a risk that someone whose post gets downvoted will be discouraged from writing other posts that could be better, but critical comments seem like they would create the same risk.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I think one area where we may have different feelings is in the bar for publishing to the EA Forum. My intuition was that we should have a very low bar, but have easy sorting and make things easy for readers to skip content. The feeling is something like, āWe thank you for writing any content to the forum. Once itās here, itās easy enough to remove or hide it if really needed, so content is generally EV-positive.ā
I would argue that the original Crybabyās post may have been worse than this one, but still am fine with it being hosted publicly. If the next Holden were to write a post like that, on this Forum, Iād want them to come away learning how to do better, but not having a very negative experience.
One of the main uses of posting to the Forum is not for readership but for feedback. And some of the worst posts may be exactly those that could benefit the most from feedback.
I know a bunch of people who are reluctant to post to the Forum, and my impression is that weāre losing out a bit here.
If you see the Forum as more of a professional thing, I would hope we could eventually have some other alternative to give feedback to people on their written up thoughts and early blog posts. (Not saying that this is your responsibility, just that I would like to see someone do it).
---
Often when I see posts heavily downvoted /ā other comments upvoted, itās because they seem to hit a nerve that a large part of the community deeply cares about, but the comment responses donāt make this clear (it is confusing!). For example, there have been a bunch of emotionally charged threads on transparency vs. censorship. Iām worried that people posting will touch on these issues without realizing it, then take the vote differences to be about them personally.
It seems to me like this post got a reasonable amount of feedback. The top two upvoted comments took issue with different elements of the post, and I think those commenters explained their points well.
In my experience, heavily-downvoted posts often get a lot of feedback, at least relative to the number of people who vote on them at all. I looked up a bunch of recent posts with negative karma, and they all got comments explaining why people downvoted. Even this post (with only three total votes) at least had someone asking a reasonable question about its conclusion.
Do any counterexamples come to mind? Posts or comments with a lot of downvotes and little-to-no feedback in the form of critical replies?
Again, Iād be interested to see examples. Iāve written at least two posts that touch on issues of transparency and/āor censorship, and they both got plenty of critical attention that (to me) made it clear what people were concerned about. Other posts on controversial topics also seem to fit this description (when they get more than a couple of votes overall).
I think the Forum should host a really wide range of things written by a wide range of people. I donāt see it as āprofessionalā at all, save in the sense that I want professional people to feel comfortable sharing their work here, same as anyone else who wants to discuss EA.
I also think that feedback on the Forum tends to be more helpful (on average) than youād get on almost any other free online platform. My main criticism of the Forumās commentariat is that they donāt write enough comments (Iād love to see people get more feedback), but I donāt know what alternative platform would be better in that regard.
*****
A question: Do you think the Forum would be a better site, overall, if it had only upvotes and comments, but no downvotes? This would reduce the chance of people getting discouraged by downvotes, but it would also lead to an atmosphere where posts were (by default) ranked by how much attention they received, rather than by how good people thought they were. That seems worse to me.
That was kind of my point. I interpreted you before as saying you wanted to see fewer posts like this, and was pointing out that if we did, those posts wouldnāt get feedback like this. (That said, I think that the feedback on this could have been better, Iām responsible for this too)
I think going through this would take a lot of time, especially if you really donāt share this intuition. Happy to discuss in a call. I would note that ālots of critical commentsā doesnāt exactly mean that āwhatās going onā is obvious. There are many mediocre posts that have bad ideas that get no comments. I would expect that if one had a post that got a ton of bad comments, they would assume it could be because their post was much worse than those that got few comments, or that people dislike them personally.
I wouldnāt really disagree, but expect that we can still aim for much better. Many of the forums I encounter (especially ones that border on discussions of Morality) are really really bad.
Iām not excited about this idea. The upvote/ādownvote system is crude enough as it is; if anything, Iād like to see more specificity come to it (like, I upvote the reasoning of this post, but not its conclusions). I am excited about things like important community members (myself included) learning how to better handle emotionally sensitive communication, though there are many useless ways of attempting this. Eventually, it could be interesting to have ML bots or similar to help here.
I think Iād also like to recommend having the EA Community Health team or similar jump in on situations like this, and hopefully have a call with Sanjay and the top critics. Social disagreements on sensitive issues are really tough to have in person, let alone on a public forum with everyone in the community judging you.