I agree with most of what you wrote here, thank you for taking the time to reply. I agree that an option to display a comment or post’s karma score based on different scoring systems (the old system, an egaliterian one, …) would already be a great improvement.
The only point that I find questionable is the idea that it’s OK that a forum ran by effective altruists gives more voting power to effective altruists. To me, this seems at odds with the ideals of cause neutrality and means neutrality: how can effective altruists claim that any means of doing good is in principle open to their consideration, when their most important online discussion forum gives some users, compared to others, so much more ability to downvote or upvote (new) ideas, questions and proposals?
I think it’s important to start by figuring out why the Forum has value. It’s a very unusual institution. Thinking about organizations/movements/etc. that are similar to EA, I’m not coming up with any clear analogues (although my knowledge of similar things is hardly encylopedic). It’s unusually open for a central epistemic institution. You can be a random person not involved in EA, get an account, and potentially have meaningful influence on the direction of how EA thinks about the topics you choose to write on. Although some users have more voting power, I think there is at most a fairly modest correlation between voting power and other power in EA. The net effect is deconcentration of epistemic power within EA, which I appreciate. I think your concern is a fair one, which I’d characterize as in part asking whether the Forum could further deconcentrate epistemic power by changing the karma system.
Most Internet message boards add little to no real value to the world—why is this one different? To me, it’s critical to (roughly) figure out how the Forum adds value to the world before making any major changes to it. The most obvious theory of value-add is many Forum readers are in a position to use the information and perspective they gain from reading and participating to do significant good in the world. I’d suggest that the bulk of those readers are effective altruists working in EA-related positions, so the Forum’s theory of value significantly depends on those readers finding the Forum a good source of actionable information for time invested.
It’s less clear how content that those users do not find helpful ultimately leads to real-world value, and having a good signal:noise ratio (in those readers’ eyes) is important to keeping them engaged. If they don’t find participation an effective use of time, conversations that would be happening on the public Forum are likely to migrate to Slack and similar spaces. And the bulk of high-karma users are EAs in EA-related position (myself being one of the exceptions), so one would think there’s a fairly good correlation between voting power and ability to act on the information obtained from the Forum.
Looking at other message boards, the ones with light-touch moderation and egalitarian voting tend to have a bad signal:noise ratio (e.g., most of Reddit). If you think about subreddits with top-quality material and a good signal:noise ratio (e.g., r/AskHistorians), they tend to be aggressively moderated. I am worried that moving too much in a most-of-Reddit direction would destroy much of the Forum’s value proposition. Ironically, I think this would increase the centralizing influences on EA thought. And of course, having more active moderation increases the influence of the appointing authorities (who would be people who already have a lot of influence in EA).
So I think we actually share some of the same values and concerns here—I am just more concerned that reducing EA influence on Forum voting too much would impair the Forum’s value and have a net negative effect on getting new ideas, questions, and proposals out there.
I guess another crux is that I don’t see the differences in voting power as “so much more” ability. On regular votes—which I believe are the vast majority of votes cast—no user has more than twice the voting power of someone who just signed up. On strongvotes, where the differences are more pronounced, one of the most powerful voters [5-10K karma] counts for eight, while someone who has posted a few dozen comments and maybe a top level post probably counts for four [250-499 karma], and someone who is almost brand new counts for two [10-99 karma]. I can’t get the top karma chart to work, but I think there are only a few dozen users with 5K+ (there are now a few with 10K+). Since there are a lot more lower/medium karma users, the total fraction of the total voting power in the hands of the high-karma crowd is not particularly high.
I agree with most of what you wrote here, thank you for taking the time to reply. I agree that an option to display a comment or post’s karma score based on different scoring systems (the old system, an egaliterian one, …) would already be a great improvement.
The only point that I find questionable is the idea that it’s OK that a forum ran by effective altruists gives more voting power to effective altruists. To me, this seems at odds with the ideals of cause neutrality and means neutrality: how can effective altruists claim that any means of doing good is in principle open to their consideration, when their most important online discussion forum gives some users, compared to others, so much more ability to downvote or upvote (new) ideas, questions and proposals?
I think it’s important to start by figuring out why the Forum has value. It’s a very unusual institution. Thinking about organizations/movements/etc. that are similar to EA, I’m not coming up with any clear analogues (although my knowledge of similar things is hardly encylopedic). It’s unusually open for a central epistemic institution. You can be a random person not involved in EA, get an account, and potentially have meaningful influence on the direction of how EA thinks about the topics you choose to write on. Although some users have more voting power, I think there is at most a fairly modest correlation between voting power and other power in EA. The net effect is deconcentration of epistemic power within EA, which I appreciate. I think your concern is a fair one, which I’d characterize as in part asking whether the Forum could further deconcentrate epistemic power by changing the karma system.
Most Internet message boards add little to no real value to the world—why is this one different? To me, it’s critical to (roughly) figure out how the Forum adds value to the world before making any major changes to it. The most obvious theory of value-add is many Forum readers are in a position to use the information and perspective they gain from reading and participating to do significant good in the world. I’d suggest that the bulk of those readers are effective altruists working in EA-related positions, so the Forum’s theory of value significantly depends on those readers finding the Forum a good source of actionable information for time invested.
It’s less clear how content that those users do not find helpful ultimately leads to real-world value, and having a good signal:noise ratio (in those readers’ eyes) is important to keeping them engaged. If they don’t find participation an effective use of time, conversations that would be happening on the public Forum are likely to migrate to Slack and similar spaces. And the bulk of high-karma users are EAs in EA-related position (myself being one of the exceptions), so one would think there’s a fairly good correlation between voting power and ability to act on the information obtained from the Forum.
Looking at other message boards, the ones with light-touch moderation and egalitarian voting tend to have a bad signal:noise ratio (e.g., most of Reddit). If you think about subreddits with top-quality material and a good signal:noise ratio (e.g., r/AskHistorians), they tend to be aggressively moderated. I am worried that moving too much in a most-of-Reddit direction would destroy much of the Forum’s value proposition. Ironically, I think this would increase the centralizing influences on EA thought. And of course, having more active moderation increases the influence of the appointing authorities (who would be people who already have a lot of influence in EA).
So I think we actually share some of the same values and concerns here—I am just more concerned that reducing EA influence on Forum voting too much would impair the Forum’s value and have a net negative effect on getting new ideas, questions, and proposals out there.
I guess another crux is that I don’t see the differences in voting power as “so much more” ability. On regular votes—which I believe are the vast majority of votes cast—no user has more than twice the voting power of someone who just signed up. On strongvotes, where the differences are more pronounced, one of the most powerful voters [5-10K karma] counts for eight, while someone who has posted a few dozen comments and maybe a top level post probably counts for four [250-499 karma], and someone who is almost brand new counts for two [10-99 karma]. I can’t get the top karma chart to work, but I think there are only a few dozen users with 5K+ (there are now a few with 10K+). Since there are a lot more lower/medium karma users, the total fraction of the total voting power in the hands of the high-karma crowd is not particularly high.