I recently reached over 1,000 Karma, meaning my upvotes now give 2 Karma and my strong upvotes give 6 Karma. I’m most proud of my contributions to the forum about economics, but almost all of my increased ability to influence discourse now is from participating in the discussions on sexual misconduct. An upvote from me on Global Health & Development (my primary cause area) now counts twice as much as an upvote from 12 out of 19 of the authors of posts with 200-300 Karma with the Global Health & Development tag. They are generally experts in their field working at major EA organizations, whereas I am an electrical engineering undergraduate.
I think these kinds of people should have far more ability to influence the discussion via the power of their upvotes than me. They will notice things about the merits of the cases people are making that I won’t until I’m a lot smarter and wiser and farther along in my career. I don’t think the ability to say something popular about culture wars translates well into having insights about the object level content. It is very easy to get Karma by participating in community discussions, so a lot of people are now probably in my position after the increased activity in that area around the scandals. I really want the people with more expertise in their field to be the ones influencing how visible posts and comments about their field are.
I propose that Karma earned from comments on posts with the community tag accrues at a slower rate.
Edit: I just noticed a post by moderators that does a better job of explaining why karma is so easy to accumulate in community posts:
Proposing a change to how Karma is accrued:
I recently reached over 1,000 Karma, meaning my upvotes now give 2 Karma and my strong upvotes give 6 Karma. I’m most proud of my contributions to the forum about economics, but almost all of my increased ability to influence discourse now is from participating in the discussions on sexual misconduct. An upvote from me on Global Health & Development (my primary cause area) now counts twice as much as an upvote from 12 out of 19 of the authors of posts with 200-300 Karma with the Global Health & Development tag. They are generally experts in their field working at major EA organizations, whereas I am an electrical engineering undergraduate.
I think these kinds of people should have far more ability to influence the discussion via the power of their upvotes than me. They will notice things about the merits of the cases people are making that I won’t until I’m a lot smarter and wiser and farther along in my career. I don’t think the ability to say something popular about culture wars translates well into having insights about the object level content. It is very easy to get Karma by participating in community discussions, so a lot of people are now probably in my position after the increased activity in that area around the scandals. I really want the people with more expertise in their field to be the ones influencing how visible posts and comments about their field are.
I propose that Karma earned from comments on posts with the community tag accrues at a slower rate.
Edit: I just noticed a post by moderators that does a better job of explaining why karma is so easy to accumulate in community posts:
https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​dDudLPHv7AgPLrzef/​​karma-overrates-some-topics-resulting-issues-and-potential
Thanks for calling this out Sonia. A number of folks have suggested this and we’re thinking about it actively on the Forum team.