32 Comments

Its part of it for sure, but the explanation lies here:

http://blog.disqus.com/post...

Peace mate.

Expand full comment

this might explain where this "high rep" came from I was referred too

Expand full comment

I think this what victor was referring too.

Expand full comment

My main complaint, reading comments without javascript, has been fixed. I think this is the only disqus site I have see that does it. Thanks!

(PS - it remembered my name this time.)

Expand full comment

That's a big part of it.

Another part is that people avoid posting redundant comments. "Liking" allows people to keep adding emphasis to a good comment, instead of thinking "oh, someone already said what I wanted to" and leaving.  And since good comments are a narrower target than bad comments, this redundancy-aversion lets more bad comments through since they're bad in different ways.

A simple model: suppose that there are 10 possible good ideas about what to say in response to a post, and 90 possible bad ideas. Each reader has 1 idea, 50/50 whether it's good or bad. If readers comment with their idea only if it hasn't already been said, and there's just a small number of commenters, the post will get a few comments with nearly 50% of them good. If there's a large number of commenters, you'll get a lot of comments with a bit over 10% of them good - much worse signal:nosie ratio. But if readers vote on comments, upvoting a comment that expresses the same idea that they had, then good comments will get upvoted 9x as much as bad comments so a larger readership will improve the signal:noise ratio.

Expand full comment

I wonder how well a voting system with "vote for" and "vote against" would work.

Expand full comment

I suspect that a lot of malicious comments have strong narrow appeal to people who feel the same way. So someone says something that is hated by 15% of readers, disliked by 75% of readers, liked by 5% of readers and loved by 5% of readers. Lets say that only people who "love" comments bother to upvote them. If 100 people read the comment, in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority hated or disliked the comment, it still shows up as +5. 

That in no way accurately reflects the community's views on the comment.

Expand full comment

I would suggest that this is true of some people, whereas the reverse is true of others, and by and large input from the first type is more valuable.

Expand full comment

That is not true - comments and whole posts have been deleted by the moderators.

Expand full comment

The karma system of LW is just an elaborate scheme to confirm the world-view of Eliezer Yudkowsky and boost his status. 

The whole EY/LW world-view consists of a few extreme one-dimensional ideas with little to no real-world justification.  Then everyone is expected to nod along and get 'points' by 'confirming'  this nonsense with long-winded impressive sounding jargon.  It's really quite bizarre.

On the other hand, LW itself is a 'honey-trap' set up to stop smart people working on AI ....think about it...all the smart guys who would have been working on potentially dangerous AI are diverted into reading and writing additive LW posts all day indeed...in that sense it's brilliant.

Expand full comment

I said I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like itI said I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like itI said I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like it, like it, yes, I doOh, well, I like it, I like it. I like it...

-It's Only Rock 'n Roll (Rolling Stones)

Expand full comment

No comments are censored on LessWrong. Or at least, not purely because of downvoting. You can set your personal settings to totally ignore how other people have voted if you like, when you view comments. 

Expand full comment

Interesting thought in the last paragraph. I suspect the assumption holds because we are biased in various ways towards over-estimating the quality of our own comments. Some of it's egotism, some of it's just Illusion of Transparency (i.e. it's hard for us to tell how clear we're being.)

Also, I participate in LessWrong, and in retrospect it often seems to me that my strongly upvoted comments are my better comments.

Expand full comment

I think "like" buttons are adequate and elegant in their simplicity.  Comments that are irrelevant/malicious will be identifiable by their lack of likes.  I find the decision of whether or not to like relatively easy compared with e.g. the decision of whether or not to downvote on LW.

It looks like there is filtering; you can choose to sort by rating (dropdown box at the top of the comments).

Expand full comment

The presence of 'dislike' may result in doubling the effects of votes (upvote one and downvote another). 

Like - more people should see thisFlag - irrelevant or maliciousNo Action - no strong opinion

With no dislike option, you can never decide "this is relevant but less people should see this".  It's a reasonable decision.

Expand full comment

Yes, that makes good sense.

Expand full comment