Taking another tack—human beings are prone to failure. Maybe the system should accommodate some degree of failure, as well, instead of punish it.
I think one obvious thing would be caps on the maximum percent of upvotes/downvotes a given user is allowed to be responsible for, vis a vis another user, particularly over a given timeframe. Ideally, just prevent users from upvoting/downvoting further on that user’s posts or their comments past the cap. This would help deal with the major failure mode of people hating one another.
Another might be, as suggested somewhere else, preventing users from downvoting responses to their own posts/comments (and maybe prevent them from upvoting responses to those responses). That should cut off a major source of grudges. (It’s absurdly obvious when people do this, and they do this knowing it is obvious. It’s a way of saying to somebody “I’m hurting you, and I want you to know that it’s me doing it.”)
A third would be—hide or disable user-level karma scores entirely. Just do away with them. It’d be painful to do away with that badge of honor for longstanding users, but maybe the emphasis should be on the quality of the content than the quality (or at least the duration) of the author anyways.
Sockpuppets aren’t the only failure mode. A system which encourages grudge-making is its own failure.
I agree with you that grudge-making should be discouraged by the system.
Another might be, as suggested somewhere else, preventing users from downvoting responses to their own posts/comments
Hmm. I think downvoting a response to one’s material is typically a poor idea, but I don’t yet think that case is typical enough to prevent it outright.
I am curious now about the interaction between downvoting a comment and replying to it. If Alice posts something and Bob responds to it, a bad situation from the grudge-making point of view is Alice both downvoting Bob’s comment and responding to it. If it was bad enough to downvote, the theory goes, that means it is too bad to respond to.
So one could force Alice to choose between downvoting and replying to the children of posts she makes, in the hopes of replacing a chain of −1 snipes with either a single −1 or a chain of discussion at 0.
I am curious now about the interaction between downvoting a comment and replying to it.
I have a personal policy of either replying to a comment or downvoting it, not both. The rationale is that downvoting is a message and if I’m bothering to reply, I can provide a better message and the vote is not needed. I am not terribly interested in karma, especially karma of other people. Occasionally I make exceptions to this policy, though.
I make rare exceptions. About the only time I do it is when I notice my opponent is doing it. (Not because I care they’re doing it to me or about karma, but I regard it as a moral imperative to defect against defectors, and if they care about karma enough to try it against me, I’m going to retaliate on the grounds that it will probably hurt them as much as they hoped it would hurt me.)
I think it’s sufficient to just prevent voting on children of your own posts/comments. The community should provide what voting feedback is necessary, and any voting you engage in on responses to your material probably isn’t going to be high-quality rational voting anyways.
My argument is symmetry, but the form that argument would take would be… extremely weak, once translated into words.
Roughly, however… you risk defining new norms, by treating downvotes as uniquely bad as compared to upvotes. We already have an issue where neutral karma is regarded by many as close-to-failure. It would accentuate that problem, and make upvotes worth less.
Taking another tack—human beings are prone to failure. Maybe the system should accommodate some degree of failure, as well, instead of punish it.
I think one obvious thing would be caps on the maximum percent of upvotes/downvotes a given user is allowed to be responsible for, vis a vis another user, particularly over a given timeframe. Ideally, just prevent users from upvoting/downvoting further on that user’s posts or their comments past the cap. This would help deal with the major failure mode of people hating one another.
Another might be, as suggested somewhere else, preventing users from downvoting responses to their own posts/comments (and maybe prevent them from upvoting responses to those responses). That should cut off a major source of grudges. (It’s absurdly obvious when people do this, and they do this knowing it is obvious. It’s a way of saying to somebody “I’m hurting you, and I want you to know that it’s me doing it.”)
A third would be—hide or disable user-level karma scores entirely. Just do away with them. It’d be painful to do away with that badge of honor for longstanding users, but maybe the emphasis should be on the quality of the content than the quality (or at least the duration) of the author anyways.
Sockpuppets aren’t the only failure mode. A system which encourages grudge-making is its own failure.
I agree with you that grudge-making should be discouraged by the system.
Hmm. I think downvoting a response to one’s material is typically a poor idea, but I don’t yet think that case is typical enough to prevent it outright.
I am curious now about the interaction between downvoting a comment and replying to it. If Alice posts something and Bob responds to it, a bad situation from the grudge-making point of view is Alice both downvoting Bob’s comment and responding to it. If it was bad enough to downvote, the theory goes, that means it is too bad to respond to.
So one could force Alice to choose between downvoting and replying to the children of posts she makes, in the hopes of replacing a chain of −1 snipes with either a single −1 or a chain of discussion at 0.
I have a personal policy of either replying to a comment or downvoting it, not both. The rationale is that downvoting is a message and if I’m bothering to reply, I can provide a better message and the vote is not needed. I am not terribly interested in karma, especially karma of other people. Occasionally I make exceptions to this policy, though.
I make rare exceptions. About the only time I do it is when I notice my opponent is doing it. (Not because I care they’re doing it to me or about karma, but I regard it as a moral imperative to defect against defectors, and if they care about karma enough to try it against me, I’m going to retaliate on the grounds that it will probably hurt them as much as they hoped it would hurt me.)
I think it’s sufficient to just prevent voting on children of your own posts/comments. The community should provide what voting feedback is necessary, and any voting you engage in on responses to your material probably isn’t going to be high-quality rational voting anyways.
Blocking downvoting responses I could be convinced of, but blocking upvoting responses seems like a much harder sell.
My argument is symmetry, but the form that argument would take would be… extremely weak, once translated into words.
Roughly, however… you risk defining new norms, by treating downvotes as uniquely bad as compared to upvotes. We already have an issue where neutral karma is regarded by many as close-to-failure. It would accentuate that problem, and make upvotes worth less.