People have yelled “Admin!” about downvote-abuse before, and so far as I know there is no instance in which any admin has visibly done anything in response.
Perhaps the admins don’t care. Perhaps they happen not to have read any of the threads in which this has happened. Perhaps they don’t want to encourage LW users to put effort into this sort of meta-issue. Perhaps one or more admins are downvote-abusers.
Whatever the reason(s), I think just shouting “Admin!” won’t do much good unless it’s accompanied by some kind of reason why an admin should take action, that they mightn’t already have thought about and decided wasn’t enough.
I think it might be a good idea for admin to get involved now, either to explain what action they’ll take or to explain why they’re not taking any action. The reasons for admin to get involved are:
1)It makes karma a less effective way of signalling the quality of a user’s comments
2)IT seems to have happened to several people
3)It upsets people, and makes them less likely to post here
4)It might cause drama (someone has publicly named a karma abuser below)
I’d like to add 5) It is directly discouraging participation of productive users. See here 6) The nature of the downvoting is creating a situation that may be turning LW into a political battleground, which given the goals of the community is a bad idea. (See prior link.)
People have yelled “Admin!” about downvote-abuse before, and so far as I know there is no instance in which any admin has visibly done anything in response.
Perhaps the admins don’t care. Perhaps they happen not to have read any of the threads in which this has happened. Perhaps they don’t want to encourage LW users to put effort into this sort of meta-issue. Perhaps one or more admins are downvote-abusers.
Whatever the reason(s), I think just shouting “Admin!” won’t do much good unless it’s accompanied by some kind of reason why an admin should take action, that they mightn’t already have thought about and decided wasn’t enough.
I think it might be a good idea for admin to get involved now, either to explain what action they’ll take or to explain why they’re not taking any action. The reasons for admin to get involved are:
1)It makes karma a less effective way of signalling the quality of a user’s comments
2)IT seems to have happened to several people
3)It upsets people, and makes them less likely to post here
4)It might cause drama (someone has publicly named a karma abuser below)
I’d like to add 5) It is directly discouraging participation of productive users. See here 6) The nature of the downvoting is creating a situation that may be turning LW into a political battleground, which given the goals of the community is a bad idea. (See prior link.)