I just commented to SamDeere’s comment above about having multiple types of votes. One indicating agreement and one indicating “helpfulness”. Then you can sort by both, but the forum is sorted by default by “helpfulness”. Do you think this would fix some of your issues with a voting system?
Arbital uses a system where you can separately “upvote” things based on how much you like them, and give an estimate of how much probability you assign to claims. I like this system, and have recommended it be added to LW too. Among other things, I think it has a positive effect on people’s mindsets if they practice keeping separate mental accounts of those two quantities.
I think there’s another downside there: we should be wary of implementing a system that doesn’t have a track record. There are lots of forums that don’t have voting, and reddit-style voting has a long track record as well (plus Hacker News-style, which is similar but not quite the same as reddit-style). As you start introducing extra complexity, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Most possible designs are bad, and most designs we come up with a priori will probably be bad, so my inclination would be to stick close to a system that has a proven track record.
That said, having multiple types of upvotes could look something like Facebook which now has multiple types of likes, and we have at least some idea of what that would look like. So it might be a good idea.
I just commented to SamDeere’s comment above about having multiple types of votes. One indicating agreement and one indicating “helpfulness”. Then you can sort by both, but the forum is sorted by default by “helpfulness”. Do you think this would fix some of your issues with a voting system?
Arbital uses a system where you can separately “upvote” things based on how much you like them, and give an estimate of how much probability you assign to claims. I like this system, and have recommended it be added to LW too. Among other things, I think it has a positive effect on people’s mindsets if they practice keeping separate mental accounts of those two quantities.
I think there’s another downside there: we should be wary of implementing a system that doesn’t have a track record. There are lots of forums that don’t have voting, and reddit-style voting has a long track record as well (plus Hacker News-style, which is similar but not quite the same as reddit-style). As you start introducing extra complexity, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Most possible designs are bad, and most designs we come up with a priori will probably be bad, so my inclination would be to stick close to a system that has a proven track record.
That said, having multiple types of upvotes could look something like Facebook which now has multiple types of likes, and we have at least some idea of what that would look like. So it might be a good idea.