Low positive and actively negative scores seen to me to send different signals. A low score can be confused for general apathy, imagining that few people having taken notice of the post enough to vote on it. A negative score communicates clearly that something about the post was objectionable or mistaken.
If the purpose of the scoring system is to aggregate opinions, then negative opinions are a necessary input for an accurate score.
Strikes me as inelegant for the final score to depend on the order in which readers happened to encounter the post. Which would happen under this rule, unless people who refrained from voting were checking back later to deliver their vote against a post they thought was bad, once its score has gone up enough to so so without driving it negative (which seems unlikely).
Avoiding negativity would also negate the part of the system where accumulating very negative karma can restrict a user from posting so often.
I see your point regarding different results depending on order of how people see the post but that’s also true the other way around. Given the assumption that less people are likely to view a post that has negative Karma, people who may actually turn out to like the post and upvote it never do so because of preexisting negative votes.
In fact, I think that’s the whole point of this scheme, isn’t it?
So, either way you never capture an „accurate“ picture because the signal itself is distorting the outcome. The key question is then what outcome one prefers, neither is objectively „right“ or in all respects „better“.
I personally think that downvoting into negative karma is an unproductive practice, in particular with new posts because it stifles debate about potentially interesting topics. If you are bothered enough to downvote there should often be something to the post that is controversial.
Take this post as an example. When I found it a couple of hours after posting, it was already downvoted into negative karma but there is no obvious reason why this should be so. It’s well written and makes a clear point that‘s worth discussing as exemplified by our engagement. Because it’s negative karma, however fewer people are likely to weight in to the debate because the signal is telling them to not bother engaging with this.
In general my suggestion would be to only downvote into negative karma if you can be bothered to explain and defend your downvote in a comment and are willing to take it back if the author if the author of the post gives a reasonable reply.
But as I said, this is just one way of looking at this. I value discourse and critical debate as essential pieces to sense and meaning making and believe that I made a reasonable argument for how this is stifled by current practice.
Thanks to the author of the post for his thoughtful invite for critical reflection!
Low positive and actively negative scores seen to me to send different signals. A low score can be confused for general apathy, imagining that few people having taken notice of the post enough to vote on it. A negative score communicates clearly that something about the post was objectionable or mistaken.
If the purpose of the scoring system is to aggregate opinions, then negative opinions are a necessary input for an accurate score.
Strikes me as inelegant for the final score to depend on the order in which readers happened to encounter the post. Which would happen under this rule, unless people who refrained from voting were checking back later to deliver their vote against a post they thought was bad, once its score has gone up enough to so so without driving it negative (which seems unlikely).
Avoiding negativity would also negate the part of the system where accumulating very negative karma can restrict a user from posting so often.
I see your point regarding different results depending on order of how people see the post but that’s also true the other way around. Given the assumption that less people are likely to view a post that has negative Karma, people who may actually turn out to like the post and upvote it never do so because of preexisting negative votes.
In fact, I think that’s the whole point of this scheme, isn’t it?
So, either way you never capture an „accurate“ picture because the signal itself is distorting the outcome. The key question is then what outcome one prefers, neither is objectively „right“ or in all respects „better“.
I personally think that downvoting into negative karma is an unproductive practice, in particular with new posts because it stifles debate about potentially interesting topics. If you are bothered enough to downvote there should often be something to the post that is controversial.
Take this post as an example. When I found it a couple of hours after posting, it was already downvoted into negative karma but there is no obvious reason why this should be so. It’s well written and makes a clear point that‘s worth discussing as exemplified by our engagement. Because it’s negative karma, however fewer people are likely to weight in to the debate because the signal is telling them to not bother engaging with this.
In general my suggestion would be to only downvote into negative karma if you can be bothered to explain and defend your downvote in a comment and are willing to take it back if the author if the author of the post gives a reasonable reply.
But as I said, this is just one way of looking at this. I value discourse and critical debate as essential pieces to sense and meaning making and believe that I made a reasonable argument for how this is stifled by current practice.
Thanks to the author of the post for his thoughtful invite for critical reflection!