I’m wondering about the possibility to up-vote one’s own posts and comments. I find that a bit of an odd system. My guess would be that someone up-voting their own post is a much weaker signal of quality than someone up-voting someone else’s post.
Also, it feels a bit entitled/boastful to give a strong up-vote to one’s own posts and comments. I’m therefore reluctant to vote on my own work.
Hence, I’d suggest that one shouldn’t be able to vote on one’s own posts and comments.
By default your comments are posted with a regular upvote on them posts with a strong upvote on them. The fact that it’s default seems to me to lower my concern about boastfulness. Although I do think it’s possible the Forum shouldn’t let you change away from those defaults. When I observed someone strong-upvoting their comments on LW, I found it really crass.
As to why not change the default, I do think that you by default endorse your comments and posts. This provides useful info to people, because if you’re a user with strong upvote power, your posts and comments enter more highly rated. This provides a small signal to new users about who the Forum has decided to trust. And it makes it less likely that you’ll see a dispiriting “0” next to your comment. OTOH, we don’t count self-votes for the purposes of calculating user karma, so maybe by consistency we shouldn’t show it.
Although I do think it’s possible the Forum shouldn’t let you change away from those defaults.
I am in favor of these defaults and also in favor of disallowing people to change them. I know of two people on LW who have admitted to strong-upvoting their comments, and my sense is that this behavior isn’t that uncommon (to give a concrete estimate: I’d guess about 10% of active users do this on a regular basis). Moreover, some of the people who may be initially disinclined to upvote themselves might start to do so if they suspect others are, both because the perception that a type of behavior is normal makes people more willing to engage in it, and because the norm to exercise restrain in using the upvote option may seem unfair when others are believed to not be abiding by it. This dynamic may eventually cause a much larger fraction of users to regularly self-upvote.
So I think these are pretty strong reasons for disallowing that option. And I don’t see any strong reasons for the opposite view.
1) Should comments and posts by default start out with positive karma, or should it be 0?
2) Should it be possible for the author to change the default level of karma their post/comment starts out with?
This yields at least four combinations:
a) Zero initial karma, and that’s unchangeable.
b) Zero initial karma by default, but you could give up-votes (including strong up-votes) to your own posts, if you wanted to.
c) A default positive karma (which is a function of your total level of karma), which can’t be changed.
d) A default positive karma, which can be increased (strong up-vote) or decreased (remove the default up-vote). (This is the system we have now.)
My comments only pertained to 2), whether you should be able to change the default level of karma—e.g. to give strong up-votes to your own own posts and comments. On that, you found it “crass” when someone did that. You also made this comment:
This provides useful info to people, because if you’re a user with strong upvote power, your posts and comments enter more highly rated. This provides a small signal to new users about who the Forum has decided to trust. And it makes it less likely that you’ll see a dispiriting “0” next to your comment.
This rather seems to relate to 1).
As stated, I don’t think one should be able to change the default level of karma. This would rule out b) and d), and leave a) and c). I have a less strong view on how to decide between those two systems, but probably support a).
I agree with you and Pablo that I’d rather see it unchangeable. My prioritization basically hinges on how common it is. If Pablo’s right and it’s 10%, that seems concerning. I’ve asked the LW team.
There is a 70% chance someone else will do this and explain how, making the next paragraph irrelevant:
Moving slightly slowly because this takes actual work to ensure quality (or I’m just being annoyingly coy), if someone makes a $200 counterfactual donation to an EA charity specified by me (that meets the qualifications as a 501c3 charity in an EA cause area and donated to by senior EA grantmakers), I will produce this report and send it you (after I get back from a major conference that is going on in the next 7 days).
I’m wondering about the possibility to up-vote one’s own posts and comments. I find that a bit of an odd system. My guess would be that someone up-voting their own post is a much weaker signal of quality than someone up-voting someone else’s post.
Also, it feels a bit entitled/boastful to give a strong up-vote to one’s own posts and comments. I’m therefore reluctant to vote on my own work.
Hence, I’d suggest that one shouldn’t be able to vote on one’s own posts and comments.
By default your comments are posted with a regular upvote on them posts with a strong upvote on them. The fact that it’s default seems to me to lower my concern about boastfulness. Although I do think it’s possible the Forum shouldn’t let you change away from those defaults. When I observed someone strong-upvoting their comments on LW, I found it really crass.
As to why not change the default, I do think that you by default endorse your comments and posts. This provides useful info to people, because if you’re a user with strong upvote power, your posts and comments enter more highly rated. This provides a small signal to new users about who the Forum has decided to trust. And it makes it less likely that you’ll see a dispiriting “0” next to your comment. OTOH, we don’t count self-votes for the purposes of calculating user karma, so maybe by consistency we shouldn’t show it.
I am in favor of these defaults and also in favor of disallowing people to change them. I know of two people on LW who have admitted to strong-upvoting their comments, and my sense is that this behavior isn’t that uncommon (to give a concrete estimate: I’d guess about 10% of active users do this on a regular basis). Moreover, some of the people who may be initially disinclined to upvote themselves might start to do so if they suspect others are, both because the perception that a type of behavior is normal makes people more willing to engage in it, and because the norm to exercise restrain in using the upvote option may seem unfair when others are believed to not be abiding by it. This dynamic may eventually cause a much larger fraction of users to regularly self-upvote.
So I think these are pretty strong reasons for disallowing that option. And I don’t see any strong reasons for the opposite view.
I guess there are two different issues:
1) Should comments and posts by default start out with positive karma, or should it be 0?
2) Should it be possible for the author to change the default level of karma their post/comment starts out with?
This yields at least four combinations:
a) Zero initial karma, and that’s unchangeable.
b) Zero initial karma by default, but you could give up-votes (including strong up-votes) to your own posts, if you wanted to.
c) A default positive karma (which is a function of your total level of karma), which can’t be changed.
d) A default positive karma, which can be increased (strong up-vote) or decreased (remove the default up-vote). (This is the system we have now.)
My comments only pertained to 2), whether you should be able to change the default level of karma—e.g. to give strong up-votes to your own own posts and comments. On that, you found it “crass” when someone did that. You also made this comment:
This rather seems to relate to 1).
As stated, I don’t think one should be able to change the default level of karma. This would rule out b) and d), and leave a) and c). I have a less strong view on how to decide between those two systems, but probably support a).
I agree with you and Pablo that I’d rather see it unchangeable. My prioritization basically hinges on how common it is. If Pablo’s right and it’s 10%, that seems concerning. I’ve asked the LW team.
Making it unchangeable also seems reasonable to me, or at least making it so that you can no longer strong-upvote your own comments.
Strong-upvoting your own posts seems reasonable to me (and is also the current default behavior)
I think strong upvoting yourself should either be the default (opt-out), or impossible. It shouldn’t be opt-in, because this rewards self-promotion.
Did you know you can see strong self upvotes for all users?
You can see the this at the user level (how much they do this in total) and I’m 80% sure you can see this at the comment/post level for each user.
This might mitigate your concerns and the related activity might finally produce a report where I am ranked #1.
How can this list be viewed?
There is a 70% chance someone else will do this and explain how, making the next paragraph irrelevant:
Moving slightly slowly because this takes actual work to ensure quality (or I’m just being annoyingly coy), if someone makes a $200 counterfactual donation to an EA charity specified by me (that meets the qualifications as a 501c3 charity in an EA cause area and donated to by senior EA grantmakers), I will produce this report and send it you (after I get back from a major conference that is going on in the next 7 days).
Oh, I thought you meant this was already available online—my mistake!