Member Of Species

In theory, but maybe not in practice, legitimately controversial comments would have many "good"/"bad" votes, few "not good"/"not bad".

Whereas merely bland comments would get many "not good"/"not bad" votes and remain hopelessly stuck at a score of zero.

Starting these comments at -1 would mildly disincentivize chaff without making people feel rejected or attacked by a concrete person.

Just to be clear, in this system, goodness would just show as 0 until more voters said "good" than "not good". Same with badness.

Potential issue: if badness is psychologically stronger than goodness, maybe people will strategically vote "not bad" instead of "good".

If that can be solved, I think the system is better than what LessWrong currently uses, both hedonically and incentives-wise.

It would just be nice to be able to take carrots away from people who don't deserve them without hitting them with sticks.

@MemberOfSpecies the way it works now you can have a norm to vote toward a target and update your vote when necessary, costs time though