It isn’t really clever, but I think biasing the pubic perception of LessWrong discourse is the point of doing so. I don’t know how much good it will do to try and alleviate this by appealing to their sense of honour.
I used to think this kind of thing isn’t much of a problem, since karma is eventually restored, but then looking at my own and some other posters history I’ve noticed that the older comments don’t seem to recover karma, or recover it so slowly that they haven’t done so in 8+ months. In effect this reduces the amount of information one can glean about shifting positions on LW over the long term, or rather might create false impressions on current distribution of opinions regarding old arguments. Especially newcomers may be pretty affected in their assessment of issues by this.
Now let me emphasise that there is a difference between blindly down voting and reading through someone’s commenting history, upvoting and down voting comments as you go along. The end result may well be a 40 point karma boost or hit for the handle. But the problem however might be in who one ends up picking for such review. Either someone you like a lot or someone you dislike a lot. Keep that in mind when reading through someone’s history. Don’t conjure up false rationalizations of the motives for what you are doing.
Being a binge reader, I solve this by precommiting to only voting on one comment per page if I simply feel compelled to read up on all of someone’s stuff.
It isn’t really clever, but I think biasing the pubic perception of LessWrong discourse is the point of doing so. I don’t know how much good it will do to try and alleviate this by appealing to their sense of honour.
From what I can tell the point is sometimes to discredit and warn people who someone thinks are straying close to topics that the someone doesn’t like. Bleh, too tired for clear grammar. Anyway. If so, this is incredibly dangerous; it can easily provoke escalation. Don’t be stupid. (Edit: I mean, “You who are considering engaging in the above-mentioned retaliation, don’t be stupid.” Sorry that wasn’t clear.)
From what I can tell the point is sometimes to discredit and warn people who someone thinks are straying close to topics that the someone doesn’t like. Bleh, too tired for clear grammar. Anyway. If so, this is incredibly dangerous; it can easily provoke escalation.
Could this be a quiet way for people to express ideological tribalism that is suppressed by the “no mind killers” taboo (which I find one of the most refreshing things about LW)? The hypothetical LWer or random reader enraged enough to register, see something that isn’t politics but in their mind (perhaps mistakenly) clearly attacks some tribal attire they are attached to, so that this is therefore clearly wrong and that it is incredible no one is calling this guy out, and guess it falls to him to fix this clear bias by taking a sledge hammer at some of the comment’s author’s other writings. This is indeed dangerous, since if a fraction of people think others are employing such tactics they may start their own campaigns to try and “balance” this.
Do you have any idea of what these topics could be? The one or two times I’ve had this happen I haven’t been too sure about the triggers. If you think you have a good idea, but don’t wish to inflame the situation by paining a bullseye on anyone please PM me.
It isn’t really clever, but I think biasing the pubic perception of LessWrong discourse is the point of doing so. I don’t know how much good it will do to try and alleviate this by appealing to their sense of honour.
I used to think this kind of thing isn’t much of a problem, since karma is eventually restored, but then looking at my own and some other posters history I’ve noticed that the older comments don’t seem to recover karma, or recover it so slowly that they haven’t done so in 8+ months. In effect this reduces the amount of information one can glean about shifting positions on LW over the long term, or rather might create false impressions on current distribution of opinions regarding old arguments. Especially newcomers may be pretty affected in their assessment of issues by this.
Now let me emphasise that there is a difference between blindly down voting and reading through someone’s commenting history, upvoting and down voting comments as you go along. The end result may well be a 40 point karma boost or hit for the handle. But the problem however might be in who one ends up picking for such review. Either someone you like a lot or someone you dislike a lot. Keep that in mind when reading through someone’s history. Don’t conjure up false rationalizations of the motives for what you are doing.
Being a binge reader, I solve this by precommiting to only voting on one comment per page if I simply feel compelled to read up on all of someone’s stuff.
From what I can tell the point is sometimes to discredit and warn people who someone thinks are straying close to topics that the someone doesn’t like. Bleh, too tired for clear grammar. Anyway. If so, this is incredibly dangerous; it can easily provoke escalation. Don’t be stupid. (Edit: I mean, “You who are considering engaging in the above-mentioned retaliation, don’t be stupid.” Sorry that wasn’t clear.)
Could this be a quiet way for people to express ideological tribalism that is suppressed by the “no mind killers” taboo (which I find one of the most refreshing things about LW)? The hypothetical LWer or random reader enraged enough to register, see something that isn’t politics but in their mind (perhaps mistakenly) clearly attacks some tribal attire they are attached to, so that this is therefore clearly wrong and that it is incredible no one is calling this guy out, and guess it falls to him to fix this clear bias by taking a sledge hammer at some of the comment’s author’s other writings. This is indeed dangerous, since if a fraction of people think others are employing such tactics they may start their own campaigns to try and “balance” this.
Do you have any idea of what these topics could be? The one or two times I’ve had this happen I haven’t been too sure about the triggers. If you think you have a good idea, but don’t wish to inflame the situation by paining a bullseye on anyone please PM me.
Eh, is that directed at me?
No no! Sorry, ’twas directed at humans in general. I’m sort of scatter-brained at the moment. My apologies.