A major problem with the setup of our forum: currently it’s possible to go here or to any post and double downvote all the new posts in mass (please, don’t! Just believe me it’s possible), so writers who were writing their AI safety proposal for months will have their posts ruined (almost no one reads posts with negative rating), will probably abandon our cause and go become evil masterminds.
Solution: UI proposal to solve the problem of demotivating writers, helps to teach writers how to improve their posts (so it makes all the posts better), it keeps the downvote buttons, increases signal to noise ratio on the site because both authors and readers will have information why the post was downvoted:
It’s important to ask for reasons why a downvoter downvotes if the downvote will move the post below zero in karma. The author was writing something for maybe months, the downvoter if it’s important enough to downvote, will be able to spend an additional moment to choose between some popular reasons to downvote (we have a lot of space on the desktop, we can put the most popular reasons for downvotes as buttons like Spam, Bad Title, Many Tags, Type...) or to choose some reason later on some special page. Else the writer will have no clue, will rage quit and become Sam Altman instead.
More serious now: On desktop we have a lot of space and can show buttons like this: Spam (this can potentially be a big offense, bigger than 1 downvote), Typo (they probably shouldn’t lower the post as much as a full downvote), Too Many Tags, basically the popular reasons people downvote. We can make those buttons appear when hovering on the downvote button or always. This way people still click once to downvote like before.
Especially if a downvoter downvoted so much, the post now has negative karma, we show a bubble in a corner for 30 seconds that says something like this: “Please choose one of those other popular reasons people downvote or hover here to type a word or 2 why you double downvoted, it’ll help the writer improve.”
Downvoters can hover over the downvote button, it’ll hijack their typing cursor so they can quickly type a word or two why they downvote and press enter to downvote. Again very elegant UI.
If they just click downvote (you can still keep this button), show a ballon for 30 secs where a downvoter can choose a popular reasons for downvoting or again hover and instantly type a word or 2 and press enter to downvote
A page “Leave feedback for your downvotes”: where we show downvotes that ruined articles, then double downvotes then the rest. We can say it honestly in our UI: those are new authors and your downvote most likely demotivated them because the article has negative karma now, so please write how can they improve. And we maybe can write that feedback for popular articles (with comments, from established writers and/or above zero karma posts) is not as important, so you don’t need to bother.
Phone UI is similar but we don’t have hovering. So we can still show popular reasons to downvote on top maybe as icons: Spam, Typo, etc and a button to Type and Downvote that looks like a typing cursor & Downvote icon—by tapping it the keyboard autoappears, you enter a word or two and press return to downvote. So again one tap to downvote like before in most cases. We just gave the downvoters more choices to express themselves.
As I said before we need this at least when the downvote will ruin the post—put it into the negative karma territory. This way we prioritizing teaching people how to write better and more, instead of scaring them away to abandon our website. Everybody wins.
Thank you for reading and making the website work!
A major problem with the setup of our forum: currently it’s possible to go here or to any post and double downvote all the new posts in mass (please, don’t! Just believe me it’s possible), so writers who were writing their AI safety proposal for months will have their posts ruined (almost no one reads posts with negative rating), will probably abandon our cause and go become evil masterminds.
Solution: UI proposal to solve the problem of demotivating writers, helps to teach writers how to improve their posts (so it makes all the posts better), it keeps the downvote buttons, increases signal to noise ratio on the site because both authors and readers will have information why the post was downvoted:
It’s important to ask for reasons why a downvoter downvotes if the downvote will move the post below zero in karma. The author was writing something for maybe months, the downvoter if it’s important enough to downvote, will be able to spend an additional moment to choose between some popular reasons to downvote (we have a lot of space on the desktop, we can put the most popular reasons for downvotes as buttons like Spam, Bad Title, Many Tags, Type...) or to choose some reason later on some special page. Else the writer will have no clue, will rage quit and become Sam Altman instead.
More serious now: On desktop we have a lot of space and can show buttons like this: Spam (this can potentially be a big offense, bigger than 1 downvote), Typo (they probably shouldn’t lower the post as much as a full downvote), Too Many Tags, basically the popular reasons people downvote. We can make those buttons appear when hovering on the downvote button or always. This way people still click once to downvote like before.
Especially if a downvoter downvoted so much, the post now has negative karma, we show a bubble in a corner for 30 seconds that says something like this: “Please choose one of those other popular reasons people downvote or hover here to type a word or 2 why you double downvoted, it’ll help the writer improve.”
Downvoters can hover over the downvote button, it’ll hijack their typing cursor so they can quickly type a word or two why they downvote and press enter to downvote. Again very elegant UI.
If they just click downvote (you can still keep this button), show a ballon for 30 secs where a downvoter can choose a popular reasons for downvoting or again hover and instantly type a word or 2 and press enter to downvote
A page “Leave feedback for your downvotes”: where we show downvotes that ruined articles, then double downvotes then the rest. We can say it honestly in our UI: those are new authors and your downvote most likely demotivated them because the article has negative karma now, so please write how can they improve. And we maybe can write that feedback for popular articles (with comments, from established writers and/or above zero karma posts) is not as important, so you don’t need to bother.
Phone UI is similar but we don’t have hovering. So we can still show popular reasons to downvote on top maybe as icons: Spam, Typo, etc and a button to Type and Downvote that looks like a typing cursor & Downvote icon—by tapping it the keyboard autoappears, you enter a word or two and press return to downvote. So again one tap to downvote like before in most cases. We just gave the downvoters more choices to express themselves.
As I said before we need this at least when the downvote will ruin the post—put it into the negative karma territory. This way we prioritizing teaching people how to write better and more, instead of scaring them away to abandon our website. Everybody wins.
Thank you for reading and making the website work!