I haven’t seen a credible argument how downvoting a post that’s already at −11, or one that’s under several layers of collapsed posts, is “curation”.
I don’t think I’ve seen one either.
Though it’s worth noting that downvotes tend to be front-loaded in time, so something that’s at −5 a little while after posting could easily rise to +6 in only about a week. So your downvotes don’t ‘stop counting’ once the comment is already at −5.
I wonder if an algorithm could be invented to reduce the front-loading in time of negative karma from downvoting that is meant to offset later potential upvotes. Such a thing might have headed off the whole incident in the other thread (he’s stated that he was “ready to fight” out of anger from seeing half his karma gone)
If I’m understanding you correctly, sure. Just truncate all reported net karma scores for comments and posts at zero (while still recording the actual score), and calculate user total karma from reported karma rather than actual.
The suggestion gets made from time to time. Some people think it’s a good idea, others don’t.
More generally, no mechanism that allows a community to communicate what they do and don’t value will serve to prevent people whose contributions the community judges as valueless (or less valuable than they consider appropriate) from being upset by that judgment being communicated.
The question becomes to what degree a given community, acknowledging this, chooses to communicate their value judgments at the potential cost of upsetting people.
That might be an interesting experiment. I’m not confident I can predict what the results would be, given the effect you mention and the large amounts of “corrective voting” I’ve seen.
I imagine the mechanism would immediately apply pending downvotes until it has reached −2, and then apply the rest of pending downvotes either any time it goes above −2 or at some specified rate over time.
But the developer in me is saying that’s a too-complicated system with questionable benefit.
Such a thing might have headed off the whole incident in the other thread (he’s stated that he was “ready to fight” out of anger from seeing half his karma gone)
For reference, the discussed thread is here and User:pleeppleep is the user in question.
I don’t think I’ve seen one either.
Though it’s worth noting that downvotes tend to be front-loaded in time, so something that’s at −5 a little while after posting could easily rise to +6 in only about a week. So your downvotes don’t ‘stop counting’ once the comment is already at −5.
I wonder if an algorithm could be invented to reduce the front-loading in time of negative karma from downvoting that is meant to offset later potential upvotes. Such a thing might have headed off the whole incident in the other thread (he’s stated that he was “ready to fight” out of anger from seeing half his karma gone)
If I’m understanding you correctly, sure. Just truncate all reported net karma scores for comments and posts at zero (while still recording the actual score), and calculate user total karma from reported karma rather than actual.
The suggestion gets made from time to time. Some people think it’s a good idea, others don’t.
More generally, no mechanism that allows a community to communicate what they do and don’t value will serve to prevent people whose contributions the community judges as valueless (or less valuable than they consider appropriate) from being upset by that judgment being communicated.
The question becomes to what degree a given community, acknowledging this, chooses to communicate their value judgments at the potential cost of upsetting people.
That might be an interesting experiment. I’m not confident I can predict what the results would be, given the effect you mention and the large amounts of “corrective voting” I’ve seen.
I imagine the mechanism would immediately apply pending downvotes until it has reached −2, and then apply the rest of pending downvotes either any time it goes above −2 or at some specified rate over time.
But the developer in me is saying that’s a too-complicated system with questionable benefit.
For reference, the discussed thread is here and User:pleeppleep is the user in question.