Contrast with what Eugine is alleged (with good evidence, I think) to have done: someone posts something with a particular political/social leaning, Eugine doesn’t like it, and he downvotes 50 of their other comments.
I confirm that this is what Azathoth123 has done. (I assume with high probability that Azathoth123 is Eugine, but I cannot confirm that. Since both are banned, I don’t care anymore.) Even towards new users. A new user comes, posts dozen comments, receives one downvote per each, leaves LW and doesn’t return again. One of the comments happened to be political, the remaining ones were just the kind of comments we usually have here. No other downvotes for that user from anyone else. This in my opinion is much more harmful than downvoting old users who usually have high enough karma that they are in no danger of returning to zero, and they understand that it is only one person punishing them for having expressed a political opinion, not a consensus of the whole website.
It is a completely different behavior from downvoting the political comment and leaving the other comments untouched. From this kind of feedback people can learn “don’t post this kind of comments”. From the Eugine’s kind of feedback, the only lesson is “someone here doesn’t like you (and doesn’t even bother to explain why), go away”. And Eugine’s algorithm for giving this feedback is far from representative for the LessWrong culture.
I confirm that this is what Azathoth123 has done. (I assume with high probability that Azathoth123 is Eugine, but I cannot confirm that. Since both are banned, I don’t care anymore.) Even towards new users. A new user comes, posts dozen comments, receives one downvote per each, leaves LW and doesn’t return again. One of the comments happened to be political, the remaining ones were just the kind of comments we usually have here. No other downvotes for that user from anyone else. This in my opinion is much more harmful than downvoting old users who usually have high enough karma that they are in no danger of returning to zero, and they understand that it is only one person punishing them for having expressed a political opinion, not a consensus of the whole website.
It is a completely different behavior from downvoting the political comment and leaving the other comments untouched. From this kind of feedback people can learn “don’t post this kind of comments”. From the Eugine’s kind of feedback, the only lesson is “someone here doesn’t like you (and doesn’t even bother to explain why), go away”. And Eugine’s algorithm for giving this feedback is far from representative for the LessWrong culture.