Hide comments in downvoted threads option

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To discourage troll feeding…

Let a "downvoted thread" (DT) be any comment with -3 or lower karma and all 
descendent comments (thus a karma 30 comment replying to a karma 0 comment 
replying to a karma -4 comment are all DT comments since they all have -3 or 
worse karma or share a -3 or worse karma ancestor).

*In article views:* collapse all DT comments, regardless of their individual 
karma.
*In /comments, /topcomments and the side-comments sidebar:* don't show DT 
comments at all, regardless of their karma.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by Matthew.Fallshaw on 3 Sep 2012 at 2:54

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Do you want to keep the karma penalty on downvoted comments, or remove it?

Original comment by zildjoh...@gmail.com on 3 Sep 2012 at 7:17

• Added labels: Estimate-2

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Original comment by Matthew.Fallshaw on 3 Sep 2012 at 7:45

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Original comment by Matthew.Fallshaw on 3 Sep 2012 at 9:33

• Changed state: Authorised

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[deleted comment]

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Change the definition of DT as follows:

Let a "downvoted thread" (DT) be any comment with -3 or lower karma AND its 
author has negative 30-day karma [then continue as before]

This is to avoid accidental censoring of controversial comments (and 
self-censoring) by the forum regulars in good standing, as well as to prevent 
abuse by sniping (quick downvoting by three members or even one member with two 
sock puppets). 

Additionally, this virtually prevents a race condition where a comment is 
downvoted while a reply is made, yet not karma loss warning is shown.

See http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/eb9/meta_karma_for_last_30_days/7aq8 
and 
http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_worst_argument_in_the_world/7fg1

Original comment by shmi...@gmail.com on 15 Sep 2012 at 12:01

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I'm not sure this should be an *option*, except maybe for moderators like 
Alicorn who want a complete Recent Comments feed to ban outright spam.  The 
basic problem with trollfeeding is that there are people motivated to engage in 
it, they damage the community as a whole, and either they don't want to stop or 
they find it hard to stop.  It's not clear to me that LW benefits from being 
divided into a clean area and a PVP slum.  I suppose we could develop the 
preference option and then remove it if necessary, but I wouldn't want that to 
slow down development.

There's also the question of whether to remove trollfed comments from Inboxes, 
but that makes even me feel slightly nervous - besides, an exchange between two 
people that nobody else sees is only very slightly damaging.

Does anyone have any strong reasons why LW is better off six months from now if 
there's a preference option instead of just an automatic behavior to hide such 
comments?  If not, I would just like to see the behavior.

Original comment by yudkow...@gmail.com on 15 Sep 2012 at 3:30

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Maybe only hide the following kinds of comments, so that good subdiscussions 
are not affected? (1) Highly downvoted comments; (2) Any comments by authors of 
highly downvoted comments, that are located under them inside the same thread; 
(3) Any comments replying to the comments in (1) and (2).

(I expect this kind of solution won't work in the sense that people who 
participate in big bad threads will care about them enough to save permalinks 
and follow from there, so the discussions won't stop; I think stopping these 
discussions is more important than hiding them, as no automated solution can 
significantly repaint the community culture, the culture itself should be 
shaped.)

Original comment by robot...@gmail.com on 15 Sep 2012 at 5:11

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Has a consensus been reached on this, so I can start development? Here's what I 
need answers/confirmation for:

- Should we keep the -5 penalty for replies to a DT?
- Should the effects only apply to comments by authors who have a negative 
30-day karma?
- Will all effects apply to a whole DT hierarchy, rather than just the parent?
- This won't be a preference, but will apply to all users?
- Should these comments be removed from the page completely, or merely 
collapsed by default?

Original comment by zildjoh...@gmail.com on 20 Sep 2012 at 3:03

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- Should we keep the -5 penalty for replies to a DT?
Yes
- Should the effects only apply to comments by authors who have a negative 
30-day karma?
No
- Will all effects apply to a whole DT hierarchy, rather than just the parent?
Yes
- This won't be a preference, but will apply to all users?
All users except moderators with "Admin" turned on.
- Should these comments be removed from the page completely, or merely 
collapsed by default?
Removed

On reflection - since these changes are noticeably more extreme, let's increase 
the threshold to -4 instead of -3.

Original comment by yudkow...@gmail.com on 20 Sep 2012 at 4:00

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(Comments should be removed only from recent comments pages, and collapsed on 
other pages, if I understand correctly. Probably not affected at all on user 
pages.)

Original comment by robot...@gmail.com on 20 Sep 2012 at 7:36

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John, this comment doesn't modify your instructions. You should proceed as 
Eliezer has described.

Eliezer, rather than remain silent and be assumed to agree, this seems to me to 
be a bad idea:

1. I don't understand why it's important to stop discussions you don't want 
rather than just push them to a place where only willing participants can see 
them.
2. As described this will be confusing to users some who see comments they made 
or responded to disappear.
3. This will continue to punish good behaviour (users explaining downvotes to 
those receiving them).
4. … and it smells really bad - it's pattern matching as a bad idea.

While I think this will suppress some of the behaviour I think you're trying to 
suppress, I think it will do so at an unnecessarily high cost.

If your goal is to improve the quality of visible discussion on the site it is 
not clear to me that you are choosing the simplest or least aggressive path to 
achieve that goal. It is not clear to me what other useful goals this would be 
the simplest and least aggressive path to.

Original comment by Matthew.Fallshaw on 21 Sep 2012 at 6:52

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1.  Because I don't think LW benefits from having a PVP server.  Trollfeeding 
behavior is addictive; people experience a strong drive to engage in the fight, 
even though they don't feel any sense of pleasure or reward afterward.  People 
may also feel obliged to respond to a comment that they think lots of other 
people will see.
2.  The comment should still be there in the post, though collapsed.
3.  If you have lots of karma, fine.
4.  ...I can't really process this in consequentialist terms; it seems like 
ordinary forum maintenance to me.

What's the proposed thing that's simpler?  Just hiding in Recent Comments 
without charging a fee?

Original comment by yudkow...@gmail.com on 21 Sep 2012 at 5:16

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Eliezer, some of your own recent comments were voted below -4, presumably due 
to people strongly disagreeing with them. If this change had been in place, 
then very few people would have seen those comments and the followup 
discussions probably wouldn't have taken place. Is this simply a cost you think 
is worth paying, or do you expect people to change their voting behavior to not 
downvote to -4 except for trolling, or something else? Why don't you like 
shminux's 30-day karma idea for reducing such false positives?

Original comment by weida...@gmail.com on 22 Sep 2012 at 8:14

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Certainly my own hedons wouldn't have gone down if the ensuing discussions 
didn't take place.  It's not clear to me that LW would have been worse off if 
those discussions took place.  And yes, I'd wistfully hope for some amount of 
community norm-change around, "If it's worth replying to, clearly it can't be 
so bad that I ought to vote it down to -4" just as I'd hope for some amount of 
realization that "If it's voted down that low, I should just ignore it instead 
of replying to it", but those may both be wishful thinking.  My mental model of 
Professor Quirrell is saying things like, "You expect people to change?  Are 
you eleven years old, Mr. Yudkowsky?"  If people could be moved by persuasion, 
we wouldn't need code.

Meanwhile people are still replying to eridu, his karma is down to -243, I'm 
still manually going through his user profile and banning everything that got 
voted down, and I'm about ready to start deleting the replies by the 
trollfeeders, since this feature isn't ready to be rolled out.

Original comment by yudkow...@gmail.com on 22 Sep 2012 at 1:40

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In comment 12 by project member yudkowsky:
> 1.  Because I don't think LW benefits from having a PVP server.  Trollfeeding 
behavior is addictive; people experience a strong drive to engage in the fight, 
even though they don't feel any sense of pleasure or reward afterward.

If downvoted comments are hidden by default, in posts and the Recent Comments 
feed, then:
… all in a dark corner the user voluntarily approached. You're describing 
those users who have *chosen* to *hunt out* these discussions and are having 
them in relative private. I think you're proposing that we spend resources to 
prevent consenting adults from playing, in private, in ways you find 
distasteful.

> People may also feel obliged to respond to a comment that they think lots of 
other people will see.

If downvoted comments are hidden, who will expect lots of other people to see 
them?

> 2.  The comment should still be there in the post, though collapsed.

You answered John's question "Should these comments be removed from the page 
completely, or merely collapsed by default?" above with the word "Removed". If 
you've changed your mind here, can you please instruct John that you have done 
so?

> 3. [… continue to punish good behaviour (users explaining downvotes to 
those receiving them)] If you have lots of karma, fine.

?!?

> What's the proposed thing that's simpler?  Just hiding in Recent Comments 
without charging a fee?

Hiding downvoted comments in post body and Recent Comments. No fee.

Original comment by Matthew.Fallshaw on 24 Sep 2012 at 7:02

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Comments should be completely removed from Recent Comments and collapsed, but 
not removed, in the post.

Original comment by yudkow...@gmail.com on 24 Sep 2012 at 7:31

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I want to point out that people use the Anti-Kibitzer may unknowingly vote a 
comment down to -4. And also that people currently use downvotes to sometimes 
express disagreement (and not to indicate bad comment quality), and after this 
change may be incentivized to use other ways to express such disagreement, 
which may worsen the SNR.

Original comment by weidai.w...@gmail.com on 25 Sep 2012 at 7:03

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Merged and deployed.

Original comment by wjmo...@gmail.com on 3 Oct 2012 at 2:07

• Changed state: Fixed

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This possibly resulted in Bug 353 
http://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=353

Original comment by robot...@gmail.com on 5 Oct 2012 at 11:33

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Another related bug: http://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=354

Original comment by robot...@gmail.com on 5 Oct 2012 at 11:51