The cheapest technical fix would probably be to prohibit voting on a comment after some time has passed, like some subreddits do. This would prevent karma gain from “interest” on old comments, but that probably wouldn’t be too big a deal. More importantly, though, it wouldn’t prevent ongoing retributive downvoting, which Eugine did (sometimes? I was never targeted) engage in—only big one-time karma moves.
If we’re looking for first steps, though, this is a place to start.
This would prevent karma gain from “interest” on old comments
If you want to reward having a long history of comments, you could prohibit only downvoting of old comments.
it wouldn’t prevent ongoing retributive downvoting
I doubt you could algorithmically distinguish between downvoting a horticulture post because of disagreements about horticulture and downvoting a horticulture post because of disagreements about some other topic.
But I suspect voting rate limiters should keep the problem in check.
The cheapest technical fix would probably be to prohibit voting on a comment after some time has passed, like some subreddits do. This would prevent karma gain from “interest” on old comments, but that probably wouldn’t be too big a deal. More importantly, though, it wouldn’t prevent ongoing retributive downvoting, which Eugine did (sometimes? I was never targeted) engage in—only big one-time karma moves.
If we’re looking for first steps, though, this is a place to start.
If you want to reward having a long history of comments, you could prohibit only downvoting of old comments.
I doubt you could algorithmically distinguish between downvoting a horticulture post because of disagreements about horticulture and downvoting a horticulture post because of disagreements about some other topic.
But I suspect voting rate limiters should keep the problem in check.