Disconnect between Stated/Implemented Preferences

As a counterpoint, my highest rated comments are huge walls of text. This could be because (a) I don't make a lot of jokes or (b) I make crappy jokes or (c) people like my walls of text more than the typical wall of text or (d) something else.

I keep an eye on my karma and have noticed these things that I believe are related to your post:

• Talking about the karma system has fallen out of favor. I think people are getting tired of it.

• Asking why something was downvoted usually brings more upvotes unless you really, really deserved the downvotes. This latter case will probably be swarmed with downvotes.

• Some (many?) people vote with an end score in mind. These meta-voters have more affect on threshold comments that fluctuate between -2 and 2.

• Long conversations will generally pull between -1 and +2 per post. Most of my karma comes from lengthy discussions in the comments. Even if the top level post was only rated +2 I will net almost 100 karma points from the post and comments. (Note: I haven't actually added this up. It may be closer to 75 karma.)

• Quick responses pointing out third alternatives or simple problems get upvoted and usually roam between +2 and +14. If you want to get your karma higher, this is the easiest way. Comment immediately after a post is submitted and point out the most obvious flaw respectfully and concisely. Don't try to make a point, just note an error. If you get in before the rest of us, you will probably get +4 or higher.

• Long responses pointing out serious problems get upvoted but have a lower chance of pulling large amounts of karma than quick responses. However, after the first wave of quick responses, only the longer comments are true candidates for higher karma. I suspect that a long response to a quick comment has a good chance to do well, but haven't really watched those comments yet.

• Jokes are upvoted when they are either extremely funny or solidly funny and on topic. Randomness is upvoted if it is an inside joke, otherwise stays around +0. Sarcasm is appreciated but has the problem of being mistaken for nonsarcasm.

• Extending the point or conversation of a top-level post gets upvoted. Most of mine get between +2 and +4. Examples would be almost every comment I have made while reading the sequences.

• Aggressiveness is generally poorly received on technical topics. Aggressiveness is easier to get away with when dealing with fuzzy topics. I attribute this mostly to margin of error. Technical topics are harder to be bulletproof. I am still having a hard time predicting which non-technical top level posts are voted up. I suspect this is because I don't know what is already been discussed or that the issue is a technical topic that I have misidentified.

• Self-depreciation is a huge karma pull. Both my highest rated post and comment were essentially me slamming myself over and over. Each were voted higher than +20.

• Bullet point lists of extensions, ideas, questions, and so on seem to do about as well or better than long paragraphs of text. The walls of text may be harder to skim for goodies or the bullet point list better organized?

• Non-aggressive requests for clarification or information are not generally downvoted. Mine seem to roam between 0 and +2 karma. If the question and response delve into a lengthy but friendly conversation, I seem to get between 0 and +2 karma for each of my comments. If a solid agreement or conclusion is reached, the capping comment gets about double whatever the individual comments were getting.

• Posting nearby "famous" people amps up the karma action. Replying to EY, Alicorn, Vladimir_Nesov, pjeby, et al will increase the amount of people that read your comments. The reasons for this are varied. The four I used here are just names that popped into my head. Also, some people seem to vote up conversations they are in while others do not. A few downvote anyone disagreeing with them. The people that matter generally fit these criteria: (a) top contributer (b) easily recognizable name (c) frequent poster/commenter (d) abnormal amount of recent activity (e) holds atypical beliefs for the community (f) a troll.

• Better grammar, spelling, and language increases the likelihood that your comment will move upward faster.

• Comments quickly upvoted higher than typical seem to either (a) go through the roof or (b) get meta-voted back to between +1 and +3.

• Telling people to vote in a particular way tends to produce easy to predict results but not in a manner that is easy to describe.

And oh wow did that get long. Do note that this is all being typed from the top of my head using myself and the comments I read as an example. Naturally, the above does not dictate how people vote.

EDIT: I guess for fun, I predict that this comment gets ROT13orgjrra cbfvgvir gjb naq cyhf fvk xneznROT13.

EDIT 2: I would normally downvote a post such as this but elsewhere in the comments you seemed to have received the message and was wondering about deleting it. So I just left it as it is. Also relevant: I generally do not upvote jokes unless they are truly amazing.

Number of upvotes indicates breadth, not strength, of support.

Upvotes come more easily - and therefore more numerously - when it takes little effort to evaluate the upvote-worthiness.

This should be a comment on the Open Thread, not a top-level post.

The vote I just added was because:

• It added value to my life. Laughing is healthy and it was certainly the funniest joke I had read today. This is despite reading both XKCD and SMBC.
• It was relevant the parent.
• Biasses in grant allocation and the epistemic consequences are relevant to the core topic of the site.
• A vote by me means "I wish to see more comments similar to this one". I wish to read more jokes like that.

(I downvoted this post.)

I haven't upvoted the joke, mainly because I think that jokes generate more karma than I think they are worthy, and thus I never upvote jokes since the moment I made that observation. But hadn't I the deliberate policy of never upvoting jokes, I would simply upvote it because it was funny.

Remember, upvoting here, from a single user perspective, is a boolean scale. A good comment earns my single upvote, a bad comment earns single downvote, while most comment pass along without my voting because a) I don't read them for different reasons or b) I am not sure whether they are good or bad.

If you make a thoughtful comment, many readers aren't interested to read it and skip it, because it is probably too long, or because it is incomprehensible, or because they aren't interested. From those who read, they would need to think about it for a while before they realise that the reply was really good, and maybe forget to upvote afterwards. On the other hand, a joke generates quite a few instinctive upvotes at the beginning, which makes it even more visible (I tend to read upvoted comments first and more carefully), the visibility then generates more karma.

Nobody is responsible for the others' choices and thus for the fact that the comment stands now at +16. For any single user, the joke is at +1 as well as other better posts, which (s)he is aware of. We want to hear good jokes and thus want to reward them somehow, and the system doesn't allow to differentiate between them and the information-bearing intelligent comments. I suppose that if it was possible to upvote on some more continuous scale, the seeming discrepancy between the individual preferences and the collective voting results would disappear.

You raise a valid point, but,as is, it is not worthy of a top level post. I predict it would have had positive karma as comment in the open thread or meta thread.

Criticism of scientific institutions is more than tangentially relevant to LW as a whole.

"by a factor of four" is not good linking text.

While I don't think this type of post should in general be encouraged, it has generated an interesting discussion on karma; -7 (current score) seems unduly harsh to me.

This reminds me of reddit. I quite enjoy reading the highly rated jokes (or whole joke subthreads) there.

I, for one, try to downvote jokes which are funny but not profound, occasionally, when I think of it.

In the tradition of institutionalized ass-rape, we all just raped you in the ass by voting you down to -7 ;-0

Currently, the comment for which I've received the most positive karma by a factor of four is a joke about institutionalized ass-rape.

Poisson noise.