On a meta note, I wonder if it’s a bad idea to think in terms of „How much total karma should this comment have?“, instead of treating it like a vote where each person only reacts in terms of how valuable he or she personally found the comment. With the former approach other people might be inclined to use their strong up- or downvotes to counteract this strategy again because they think the vote should represent what „the people“ individually think versus what a single high karma user thinks should be the correct number of points.
Yeah, I’m unsure, and think it’s a good question. I’m also guessing it’s been discussed on the Forum before, though I can’t recall such discussions off the top of my head. How to use the Forum seems to not mention this issue—which is understandable, as it’s not one of the most important things about how to use the Forum.
I think I usually just vote based on my own views, without taking into account the current karma level of the post/comment.
I think the exception is when a post/comment is at negative karma. (Though, off the top of my head, I can’t remember the last time I upvoted to “correct” a post having negative karma—perhaps it actually hasn’t happened before.) The difference between −7 and 1 (for example) feels much larger the difference between 1 and 9; hitting the negatives seem to send a strong signal that the community really doesn’t like this, which is sometimes warranted, but I feel like there should be a relatively high bar for that. I think this is partly but not only because negative karma means a comment isn’t visible by default (without actively expanding the box).
I guess there are probably also cases where I think a comment is bad enough to warrant a downvote, but not so bad that it warrants being pushed into the negative. Then I’d probably downvote if the current karma is above 1, but not if the current karma is 1 or below. (I can’t remember specific instances of this, but I’m guessing it happens.)
One thing that seems worth noting is that I suspect that it’s already the case that people aren’t simply judging comments and posts on their merit. Instead, I suspect there can be positive or negative momentum, either from the fact that things with more karma appear higher up or from the same things that drive information cascades and fads. And I think negative karma is a somewhat stable equilibrium, partly because the comment isn’t visible by default. If these things are true, then pushing karma back up from negatives or down from quite high positives might in a sense make it so that other people assess the comment in a more “independent” way.
(Though I’m not sure I’d ever be inclined to push karma down from quite high positives solely for this reason; I think I’d only do it to push things up from negative.)
(Also, I acknowledge that this comment is just a long discussion of the dynamics of somewhat meaningless internet points!)
The EA forum is Serious Business!! Yeah, your thinking here seems pretty reasonable, I also can relate to the felt asymmetry between positive and negative karma. I think I previously noticed current karma points somehow feeding into my upvote decisions and it kinda felt like I don’t approve of it because I thought the ideal would be an independent vote of usefulness or something like that. But I also think that this is not a big factor and it doesn’t have a large impact here.
On a meta note, I wonder if it’s a bad idea to think in terms of „How much total karma should this comment have?“, instead of treating it like a vote where each person only reacts in terms of how valuable he or she personally found the comment. With the former approach other people might be inclined to use their strong up- or downvotes to counteract this strategy again because they think the vote should represent what „the people“ individually think versus what a single high karma user thinks should be the correct number of points.
Yeah, I’m unsure, and think it’s a good question. I’m also guessing it’s been discussed on the Forum before, though I can’t recall such discussions off the top of my head. How to use the Forum seems to not mention this issue—which is understandable, as it’s not one of the most important things about how to use the Forum.
I think I usually just vote based on my own views, without taking into account the current karma level of the post/comment.
I think the exception is when a post/comment is at negative karma. (Though, off the top of my head, I can’t remember the last time I upvoted to “correct” a post having negative karma—perhaps it actually hasn’t happened before.) The difference between −7 and 1 (for example) feels much larger the difference between 1 and 9; hitting the negatives seem to send a strong signal that the community really doesn’t like this, which is sometimes warranted, but I feel like there should be a relatively high bar for that. I think this is partly but not only because negative karma means a comment isn’t visible by default (without actively expanding the box).
I guess there are probably also cases where I think a comment is bad enough to warrant a downvote, but not so bad that it warrants being pushed into the negative. Then I’d probably downvote if the current karma is above 1, but not if the current karma is 1 or below. (I can’t remember specific instances of this, but I’m guessing it happens.)
One thing that seems worth noting is that I suspect that it’s already the case that people aren’t simply judging comments and posts on their merit. Instead, I suspect there can be positive or negative momentum, either from the fact that things with more karma appear higher up or from the same things that drive information cascades and fads. And I think negative karma is a somewhat stable equilibrium, partly because the comment isn’t visible by default. If these things are true, then pushing karma back up from negatives or down from quite high positives might in a sense make it so that other people assess the comment in a more “independent” way.
(Though I’m not sure I’d ever be inclined to push karma down from quite high positives solely for this reason; I think I’d only do it to push things up from negative.)
(Also, I acknowledge that this comment is just a long discussion of the dynamics of somewhat meaningless internet points!)
This has been discussed on lw here: www.lesswrong.com/posts/xBAeSSwLFBs2NCTND/do-you-vote-based-on-what-you-think-total-karma-should-be
Strong opinions on both sides, with a majority of people currently thinking about current karma levels occasionally but not always.
The EA forum is Serious Business!! Yeah, your thinking here seems pretty reasonable, I also can relate to the felt asymmetry between positive and negative karma. I think I previously noticed current karma points somehow feeding into my upvote decisions and it kinda felt like I don’t approve of it because I thought the ideal would be an independent vote of usefulness or something like that. But I also think that this is not a big factor and it doesn’t have a large impact here.