My pet criticism of EA (forums) is that EAs seem a bit unkind, and that LWers seem a bit more unkind and often not very rationalist. I think I’m one of the most hardcore EA/rationalists you’ll ever meet, but I often feel unwelcome when I dare to speak.
Like:
I see somebody has a comment with −69 karma. An obvious outsider asking a question with some unfair assumptions about EA. Yes, it was brash and rude, but no one but me actually answered him.
I write an article (that is not critical of any EA ideas) and, after many revisions, ask for feedback. The first two people who come along downvote it, without giving any feedback. If you downvote an article with 104 points and leave, it means you dislike it or disagree. If you downvote an article with 4 points and leave, it means you dislike it, you want the algorithm to hide it from others, you want the author to feel bad, and you don’t want them to know why. If you are not aware that it makes people feel bad, you’re demonstrating my point.
I always say what I think is true and I always try to say it reasonably. But if it’s critical of something, I often get downvote instead of a disagree (often without comment).
I describe a pet idea that I’ve been working on for several years on LW (I built multiple web sites for it with hundreds of pages, published NuGet packages, the works). I think it works toward solving an important problem, but when I share it on LW the only people who comment say they don’t like it, and sound dismissive. To their credit, they do try to explain to me why they don’t like it, but they also downvote me, so I become far too distraught to try to figure out what they were trying to communicate.
I write a critical comment (hypocrisy on my part? Maybe, but it was in response to a critical article that simply assumes the worst interpretation of what a certain community leader said, and then spends many pages discussing the implications of the obvious trueness of that assumption.) This one is weird: I get voted down to −12 with no replies, then after a few hours it’s up to 16 or so. I understand this one―it was part of a battle between two factions of EA―but man that whole drama was scary. I guess that’s just reflective of Bay Area or American culture, but it’s scary! I don’t want scary!
Look, I know I’m too thin-skinned. I was once unable to work for an entire day due to a single downvote (I asked my boss to take it from my vacation days). But wouldn’t you expect an altruist to be sensitive? So, I would like us to work on being nicer, or something. Now if you’ll excuse me… I don’t know I’ll get back into a working mood so I can get Friday’s work done by Monday.
Also: critical feedback can be good. Even if painful, it can help a person grow. But downvotes communicate nothing to a commenter except “f**k you”. So what are they good for? Text-based communication is already quite hard enough without them, and since this is a public forum I can’t even tell if it’s a fellow EA/rat who is voting. Maybe it’s just some guy from SneerClub―but my amygdala cannot make such assumptions. Maybe there’s a trick to emotional regulation, but I’ve never seen EA/rats work that one out, so I think the forum software shouldn’t help people push other people’s buttons.
For what it is worth, you are not alone in feeling bad when you get downvotes. People have described me as a fairly confident person, and I view myself as pretty level-headed, but if I get a disagree vote without any comment or response I am also perplexed/frustrated/irritated. I often think something along the lines of “there is nothing in this comment that is stating a claim or making an argument; what could a person disagree with?”
I do wish there were a way to “break” the habit that EA forum users have to conflate up/down votes and agree/disagree votes.
Theoretically, if there was some sort of option for a user to “hide” votes (maybe on all content, or maybe just on the user’s own content), do you think that would minimize the negative feelings you have relating to votes?
I haven’t seen such a resource. It would be nice.
My pet criticism of EA (forums) is that EAs seem a bit unkind, and that LWers seem a bit more unkind and often not very rationalist. I think I’m one of the most hardcore EA/rationalists you’ll ever meet, but I often feel unwelcome when I dare to speak.
Like:
I see somebody has a comment with −69 karma. An obvious outsider asking a question with some unfair assumptions about EA. Yes, it was brash and rude, but no one but me actually answered him.
I write an article (that is not critical of any EA ideas) and, after many revisions, ask for feedback. The first two people who come along downvote it, without giving any feedback. If you downvote an article with 104 points and leave, it means you dislike it or disagree. If you downvote an article with 4 points and leave, it means you dislike it, you want the algorithm to hide it from others, you want the author to feel bad, and you don’t want them to know why. If you are not aware that it makes people feel bad, you’re demonstrating my point.
I always say what I think is true and I always try to say it reasonably. But if it’s critical of something, I often get downvote instead of a disagree (often without comment).
I describe a pet idea that I’ve been working on for several years on LW (I built multiple web sites for it with hundreds of pages, published NuGet packages, the works). I think it works toward solving an important problem, but when I share it on LW the only people who comment say they don’t like it, and sound dismissive. To their credit, they do try to explain to me why they don’t like it, but they also downvote me, so I become far too distraught to try to figure out what they were trying to communicate.
I write a critical comment (hypocrisy on my part? Maybe, but it was in response to a critical article that simply assumes the worst interpretation of what a certain community leader said, and then spends many pages discussing the implications of the obvious trueness of that assumption.) This one is weird: I get voted down to −12 with no replies, then after a few hours it’s up to 16 or so. I understand this one―it was part of a battle between two factions of EA―but man that whole drama was scary. I guess that’s just reflective of Bay Area or American culture, but it’s scary! I don’t want scary!
Look, I know I’m too thin-skinned. I was once unable to work for an entire day due to a single downvote (I asked my boss to take it from my vacation days). But wouldn’t you expect an altruist to be sensitive? So, I would like us to work on being nicer, or something. Now if you’ll excuse me… I don’t know I’ll get back into a working mood so I can get Friday’s work done by Monday.
Also: critical feedback can be good. Even if painful, it can help a person grow. But downvotes communicate nothing to a commenter except “f**k you”. So what are they good for? Text-based communication is already quite hard enough without them, and since this is a public forum I can’t even tell if it’s a fellow EA/rat who is voting. Maybe it’s just some guy from SneerClub―but my amygdala cannot make such assumptions. Maybe there’s a trick to emotional regulation, but I’ve never seen EA/rats work that one out, so I think the forum software shouldn’t help people push other people’s buttons.
For what it is worth, you are not alone in feeling bad when you get downvotes. People have described me as a fairly confident person, and I view myself as pretty level-headed, but if I get a disagree vote without any comment or response I am also perplexed/frustrated/irritated. I often think something along the lines of “there is nothing in this comment that is stating a claim or making an argument; what could a person disagree with?”
I do wish there were a way to “break” the habit that EA forum users have to conflate up/down votes and agree/disagree votes.
Theoretically, if there was some sort of option for a user to “hide” votes (maybe on all content, or maybe just on the user’s own content), do you think that would minimize the negative feelings you have relating to votes?