If you want an idealized system wherein the expectation is “everyone votes their true appraisal of a comment’s value”, then the way I’d implement it would be:
1. Comment karma is hidden until you vote on it (so you don’t anchor as much)
2. The karma displayed isn’t the total, but something more like an average (or a function that’s closer to an average than a total).
(I think this might actually be a good system, although it’s a pretty big change)
I also think that this is likely to be a pretty good system. (I can the outlines of some downsides, but would have to think further before I could describe them satisfactorily; in any case, it does not seem to me, at first glance, that any downsides of this system would exceed those of the current system. But this is not yet a strongly held opinion.)
If you want an idealized system wherein the expectation is “everyone votes their true appraisal of a comment’s value”, then the way I’d implement it would be:
1. Comment karma is hidden until you vote on it (so you don’t anchor as much)
2. The karma displayed isn’t the total, but something more like an average (or a function that’s closer to an average than a total).
(I think this might actually be a good system, although it’s a pretty big change)
I also think that this is likely to be a pretty good system. (I can the outlines of some downsides, but would have to think further before I could describe them satisfactorily; in any case, it does not seem to me, at first glance, that any downsides of this system would exceed those of the current system. But this is not yet a strongly held opinion.)