I think it is unfortunate that this is happening. ialdabaoth writes some really good stuff in my view—the sort of stuff I want to see more of, so I want her/him to be reinforced and incentivized to write more stuff like it. Often.
That said, I don’t know if much should be done about cases like these. It is wise to have laws and rules that work to help support the goals of any community. But it may be a bit naive to think you can root out all forms of vandalism and silly vengeance.
It is possible that the downvoter(s) sincerely believe ialdabaoth to be making bad or dangerous points, and thereby are using the karma system to make his/her comments seem less credible to everyone who comes across them—that is any member of the community’s right, right?
If it is just vandalism & silly vengeance—and I think that is very likely—then what should be done, other than be well aware that some people just like to watch the world burn? I would argue nothing. The onus falls on the reader not to assign too much value to a comment or article’s karmic value, since that value contains the potential to be skewed by the childish behavior of other members of the group.
Honestly, apart from skewing via vandalism, karmic value at LW seems to be of a limited value for id’ing good stuff. It has some value, I think. But the karma system here seems to be some secret blend of popularity contest and intra-community power struggle anyway. You’ll miss a lot of the best stuff if you base what your read here solely on highest vote count.
that is any member of the community’s right, right?
If “right” means “thing it is technically possible for them to do” then it certainly is. If it means something more like “thing LWers are generally happy to see done”, I think it probably isn’t. I for one (1) would much prefer to be able to interpret the score attached to each comment as a measure of the LW community’s opinion of that comment, which is badly broken when people do that, (2) don’t make much use of total karma scores as a guide to a given LWer’s general merit, and (3) would prefer a user’s total karma score not to be strongly dependent on whether the people they’ve upset happen to be unscrupulous about breaking #1 for the sake of hurting that user’s reputation. I think it unlikely that these preferences are very unusual.
The onus falls on the reader not to assign too much value to a comment or article’s karmic value
Well, sure. But that’s little reason for not trying to make the scores more meaningful rather than less.
I think it is unfortunate that this is happening. ialdabaoth writes some really good stuff in my view—the sort of stuff I want to see more of, so I want her/him to be reinforced and incentivized to write more stuff like it. Often.
That said, I don’t know if much should be done about cases like these. It is wise to have laws and rules that work to help support the goals of any community. But it may be a bit naive to think you can root out all forms of vandalism and silly vengeance.
It is possible that the downvoter(s) sincerely believe ialdabaoth to be making bad or dangerous points, and thereby are using the karma system to make his/her comments seem less credible to everyone who comes across them—that is any member of the community’s right, right?
If it is just vandalism & silly vengeance—and I think that is very likely—then what should be done, other than be well aware that some people just like to watch the world burn? I would argue nothing. The onus falls on the reader not to assign too much value to a comment or article’s karmic value, since that value contains the potential to be skewed by the childish behavior of other members of the group.
Honestly, apart from skewing via vandalism, karmic value at LW seems to be of a limited value for id’ing good stuff. It has some value, I think. But the karma system here seems to be some secret blend of popularity contest and intra-community power struggle anyway. You’ll miss a lot of the best stuff if you base what your read here solely on highest vote count.
If “right” means “thing it is technically possible for them to do” then it certainly is. If it means something more like “thing LWers are generally happy to see done”, I think it probably isn’t. I for one (1) would much prefer to be able to interpret the score attached to each comment as a measure of the LW community’s opinion of that comment, which is badly broken when people do that, (2) don’t make much use of total karma scores as a guide to a given LWer’s general merit, and (3) would prefer a user’s total karma score not to be strongly dependent on whether the people they’ve upset happen to be unscrupulous about breaking #1 for the sake of hurting that user’s reputation. I think it unlikely that these preferences are very unusual.
Well, sure. But that’s little reason for not trying to make the scores more meaningful rather than less.