You can engage in rational discourse where you take the other person’s arguments charitably and respond reasonably and as politely as possible. I will continue to do attempt this,
I’m sorry, but I have never seen you do this; I’ve repeatedly had to correct extremely uncharitable interpretations of my position from you.
So far, I haven’t encountered anyone making baseless accusations about me all night,
...Except the time I accused you of kitten torture. Oh right, that wasn’t baseless, because the existence of an accusation proves a basis (???)
and if I did, I’d probably just downvote and ignore. Neither have you, and I’d hope you’d do the same, as a responsible member of this community.
Yes, you’ve shown a general pattern of “Bad commenter! No karma for you!” as an alternative to actual articulation of where others’ claims are in error.
(That’s not something to be proud of.)
By your own standard, you suggest I should have just downvote comments like bogus’s rather than even telling him what my position actually is. This is fruitful for discussion, why?
Sadly, my ethics prevent me from modding comments in exchanges I’m directly involved in. It’s probably a vestige of listening to advice like Alicorn’s, and it puts me at a disadvantage against people who view the downmod as equivalent to an argument.
Sadly, my ethics prevent me from modding comments in exchanges I’m directly involved in.
Honestly, this notion never occurred to me. I interpret downvotes (upvotes) as a “I would like to see fewer (more) comments like this,” and feel free to vote on exchanges I’m involved in, trying to base my votes on quality of discussion and argument, rather than strictly whether I agree or not. Do you think your standard should be a community norm (even if it can’t be enforced)?
You’re kidding. It never occurred to you that you might not be neutral enough to accurately moderate during an argument you’re personally involved in?
What’s your “working theory” for why the site prevents upvoting your own comment, “even though” you could just register with a different name and upvote as a sockpuppet?
I … feel free to vote on exchanges I’m involved in, trying to base my votes on quality of discussion and argument, rather than strictly whether I agree or not.
Great, but why don’t you think your involvement compromises your ability to do so neutrally, especially when it’s a heated discussion? (Btw, on Slashdot, you’re prevented from moderating on any discussion where you’ve posted anywhere, which is probably where I got that ethic, plus previous EY rationality writings about when one’s neutrality is compromised.)
Do you think your standard should be a community norm (even if it can’t be enforced)?
Yes. I assumed people already had my level of restraint. But, like with following feminist advice, “no good deed goes unpunished”. I have a much lower karma level, and others a higher karma level, because I followed obvious rules about watching one’s own bias.
I humbly recommend you cancel any votes for or against me in exchanges you’ve been involved in.
It never occurred to you that you might not be neutral enough to accurately moderate during an argument you’re personally involved in?
I guess I’m just retarded???
I humbly recommend you cancel any votes for or against me in exchanges you’ve been involved in.
Done.
I have a much lower karma level [...]
I agree that drive-by mass downvoting out of personal animosity is bad, and it is of course unjust that you have apparently been subjected to it. But again, you should also consider that a nontrivial proportion of your recent karma loss has been because people legitimately find many of your recent comments to be of low-quality. For example, your tone is oftentimes rather hostile and condescending (“Can you do it? No? Then you don’t have a point,” “Like any bad lie, your position has forced you into defending ever-more-absurd positions,” “Know anyone like that?”, “There is no hope for this one,” “Is that too much to ask of you these days?” &c.), and maybe you can see why some people might think this worthy of a downvote?
No, you’re not retarded, but you could provide a better explanation for why it never occurred to you that you have a bias during a flamewar.
I humbly recommend you cancel any votes for or against me in exchanges you’ve been involved in.
Done.
Holy ----! Since I last came here an hour or so ago, my karma shot up about a hundred points.
I don’t know how much of that was you, but I very much appreciate that you are taking my suggestion.
I agree that drive-by mass downvoting out of personal animosity is bad, and it is of course unjust that you have apparently been subjected to it. But again, you should also consider that a nontrivial proportion of your recent karma loss has been because people legitimately find many of your recent comments to be of low-quality.
I accounted for this already. There were severe downmods for recent comments, accumulating over the past 18 hours. Then, in a much shorter period, I lost ~30 more, mainly on much older comments.
For example, your tone is oftentimes rather hostile and condescending (“Can you do it? No? Then you don’t have a point,”
I accept that my tone has gotten worse recently. But please, take a second look at that exchange. You refuted one analogy with another one which revealed you didn’t understand the topic. To untangle your misunderstanding required me to restate the context of the conversation, and then spell out the mapping in your proposed analogy, basically, doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you.
I derived what your analogy needed to contain for it to be relevant to my point. But, if you could present such evidence, or even realize its applicability, you would have already done so.
And so I had to spend far disproportionate time responding to you, compared to your investment in the discussion. Yes, I could have said something instead, like, “Is there a quote from a men’s magazine that meets the criteria? I don’t think there is, which is what you need to make your point applicable.” But please understand my frustration there.
To untangle your misunderstanding required me to restate the context of the conversation, and then spell out the mapping in your proposed analogy, basically, doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you.
“Do all the intellectual heavy lifting for you” could potentially sound antagonistic. Someone can be wrong (and you can explain why you think so) without you need to bring in meta-discussion about their intellectual skills.
Since I agree with you more often than not, I often find myself wishing that your substantive points were made in a different tone.
Thanks for your advice. I didn’t mean it that way, but I see how it can be read as a direct attack on someone’s intelligence. I’ll avoid such usages in the future.
but you could provide a better explanation for why it never occurred to you that you have a bias during a flamewar.
There’s no further explanation! It really didn’t occur to me that that was a reason to not vote! And it’s still not obvious to me that not-voting is unambiguously the right ethical standard. Of course I agree that it’s unethical to downvote a comment solely because you don’t like the conclusion or you don’t like the commenter—but that remains true whether or not you’re personally involved in the conversation. So as long as we’re going to talk about unenforceable personal standards of ethics, maybe the standard (which had been my policy) of “always and everywhere try to vote solely based on quality of discussion” is better than “don’t vote when I’m part of the discussion.”
I don’t know how much of that was you
Not very much. During the recent madness, I had downvoted you I think maybe three or four times, and upvoted you I think once, all of which have now been cancelled.
I accounted for this already.
Sure. Notice that I wrote that a “a nontrivial proportion of your recent karma loss” (emphasis added) could be legitimate; I didn’t mean to suggest that all of it was.
And so I had to spend far disproportionate time responding to you, compared to your investment in the discussion.
If you don’t think it’s worth your time to correct (what seems to you to be) someone’s egregious misapprehension, then don’t bother to do so. If you think a comment is poorly argued—maybe just downvote it?
So as long as we’re going to talk about unenforceable personal standards of ethics, maybe the standard (which had been my policy) of “always and everywhere try to vote solely based on quality of discussion” is better than “don’t vote when I’m part of the discussion.”
The problem with your alternative is that being in an argument alters your judgment of what counts as a good quality post. In additional to the usual “Politics is the mind-killer” truism, remember that we run on corrupted hardware.
You may think that it’s better to go by: “Don’t do X unless, all things considered, it would work for the greater good.” But even if you want to follow that rule, you actually do a better job following it if you just go by “Don’t do X”, as long as X is easily abused and self-serving. That’s the point of the post in the link.
And that’s why I think it just doesn’t work to say, “Oh, I’m modding down this comment because it’s an obectively bad comment, not because I’m in a heated flamewar with them.”
If you don’t think it’s worth your time to correct (what seems to you to be) someone’s egregious misapprehension, then don’t bother to do so. If you think a comment is poorly argued—maybe just downvote it?
See above for why I don’t downvote in arguments I’m currently involved in.
But even setting that policy aside for a minute, you got several upmods, which gave the false impression your post was high quality, when it wasn’t, and used a deceptively simple comparison that you didn’t understand how to use correctly. Changing you from 3 to 2 wouldn’t have done anything; people would still think you had a good point, since they probably didn’t know the entire context that led up to the point about Cosmo.
And since the point about Cosmo was strong, and used to highlight a critical hole in Alicorn’s point, I couldn’t ignore it either.
Now, as long as we’re suggesting ways it could have gone better, how about this: why don’t you make sure you know what you’re talking about before you get involved? In this case, that would mean presenting the evidence your comparison requires: a case of a male-oriented magazine that uses language that the men here consider beyond the pale in its offensiveness.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don’t have an example in mind.
Please correct me if I’m misreading you here. You don’t trust yourself to assess whether a comment deserves a downvote, because humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases, and yet somehow you do trust yourself to assess that the other person has no idea of what she’s talking about, even though humans are subject to an arrayofegocentricbiases?
You might want to consider doing this the other way, extending interpretive charity but not karmic charity. In fact, I hereby urge you to vote however you want to on whatever comments you want to. After all, a few undeserved downvotes are of little importance, whereas, say, continuous swipes at other people’s intellectual competence and integrity (e.g., “Yeah, wanna rethink that one?” “This is the part where you’re supposed to realize the absurdity of your original response to my reaction,” “I heard you make an all-too-convenient claim about what you were, like, totally about to do,” “Now for the hard part!” “You’re kidding. It never occured to you [...]?” “a deceptively simple comparison that you didn’t understand how to use correctly,” “doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you,” “if you could present such evidence, or even realize its applicability, you would have already done so,” “why don’t you make sure you know what you’re talking about [...]?” “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don’t have an example,” &c.) have a tendency to drag the quality of discourse down. It’s worth keeping in mind that the karma system is supposed to be a mechanism that exists in the service promoting good discussion; discussion does not exist in the service of amassing karma points. I would much rather someone abuse her voting power than constantly taunt and belittle people.
I would much rather someone abuse her voting power than constantly taunt and belittle people.
If only because the former is much easier to correct. I frequently upvote comments (including ones I disagree with) with negative scores that seem to have no obvious, objective flaws, on the assumption that they were downvoted for disagreement.
The danger here is that someone else might later upvote because they think it’s a good comment, and thus your ‘corrective’ upvote is misplaced (as if you’d come along later you’d never have made it)
For what it’s worth, I vote in threads in which I am active. Namely, I downvote and explain my downvote or upvote and add what I hope is a useful insight.
If I feel like I am getting emotional about anything or the topic is tilting personal I usually wait until the whole thing is finished and then go back through the thread and vote on which comments I thought were best/worst. Sometimes a later clarification makes an earlier comment worth more.
I humbly recommend you cancel any votes for or against me in exchanges you’ve been involved in.
I would not have honored such a request. My opinion still matters, even if you talking to me.
You’re kidding. It never occurred to you that you might not be neutral enough to accurately moderate during an argument you’re personally involved in?
What’s your “working theory” for why the site prevents upvoting your own comment, “even though” you could just register with a different name and upvote as a sockpuppet?
Note that one can both upvote and downvote comments in an exchange they’re involved in. I don’t have an explicit ethic of not voting in exchanges where I’m involved, but I’ve frequently upvoted comments that have disagreed with me and (IIRC) rarely downvoted them. I would suspect many people to be the same, and see little trouble with the practice. If you want to avoid a bias, “in exchanges where you’ve participated, only upvote comments that disagree with you (or are neutral), and only downvote comments that agree with you (or are neutral)” would sound like a better policy than an explicit ban on any voting.
While you do expect to be more biased than usual in the discussions you are involved in, in some cases the judgment is certain enough to not need this injunction.
I didn’t touch the old threads but last night I did vote down an entire thread of argument between you and thomblake (voting down each of your posts). This might have been part of your conspicuous drop. Nothing against either of you but when the argument is just about what you said or didn’t say it is of little interest to anyone else here and should be taken to private messages if you want to continue. I don’t know how else to kill bad, useless arguments that clog the recent comments section except to vote every comment in them down. If people feel this is inappropriate please let me know and I won’t do it in the future.
I agree that this is an appropriate use of voting, and that the conversation was of little interest to anyone else so probably should not have been made into theater. Good job.
As a rule of thumb, I usually don’t pay much attention to comment threads that consist of two people going hammer and tongs, and the nesting depth driving the subthread off the top page for the post.
You mean this one? Yes, it was quite a waste of time trying to explain to someone why not every accusation needs to be taken seriously, and I apologize for dignifying the opposing positions.
It would be nice if the people downvoting you would state who they were and why (It’s not me). I can think of two hypotheses:
A) There’s a cabal of feminists trying to suppress your view and you in particular
B) People in general have judged your comments in these threads of less quality
A) sounds unlikely (due to the sort of people who seem to frequent this site) but I will grant that it’s possible, and B) agrees with my own subjective judgment.
If you’ve lost karma on really old posts in unrelated topics then it would seem to be reasonable to conclude that one or two people are irrationally voting you down, however...
This recent 30+ point drop is almost all from the old threads, not the recent ones. I was up to ~300, then these recent −5s on recent threads took it down to ~265. After that, I took the 30 point hit on old threads over a short period.
How old? If it’s less than a week, it might just be somebody catching up on old comments. (If it’s more than a week, that would be suspicious, of course.)
I had that happen to me a while back to the tune of 80 karma lost in under half an hour. It’s not an appropriate use of the voting system and I hope whoever is/was doing it to you stops.
I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll recite the famous Voltaire quote until I’m blue in the face in your defense.
I have been driven-by several times. It sucks. Although I disagree with your stated habit of not voting and participating in the same thread, I have voted on your comments only as they’ve come up and only when I think there is a genuine issue of quality, not indiscriminately and on old comments. (I mention this because I’m probably an obvious suspect in some people’s minds.)
Maybe down-voting old comments shouldn’t affect karma. After all, the more comments you make, the more potential karma you can lose from one person going through your history. I could probably lose all of my karma just by offending the wrong person. Besides, someone changing the points of an old comment no one may ever read again from 8 to 7 is hardly improving the quality of discourse.
Besides, someone changing the points of an old comment no one may ever read again from 8 to 7 is hardly improving the quality of discourse.
I disagree. The idea is that people will read the old comments again, and the score of comments gives an impression to a random passerby what the community is about.
Sure, so long as it doesn’t give the impression that that is what the community was about at that time. This community is a moving target, and ideas and opinions change. If we decide to update old comments with new votes, do we risk losing something of archival interest? If we vote up a comment that says ‘A is B’, and a year later vote up a comment that says ‘A is not B’, going back and voting down the ‘A is B’ comment gives the false impression that this community is remarkably consistent. I think I’m blowing this out of proportion, though.
I would presume that the number of people willing to systematically downvote all of a particular person’s comments is rather low. Is this a rather common problem? Or does it just show up once a few months?
I’ve had drops of 5 or 6 karma at a time as someone goes through and downvotes all my comments in a particular thread, but I think that’s the price we have to pay; by and large, the karma system here seems to work very well, and provides a very useful method of gauging posts.
Not to be a punk, but were all of those posts deserving of being downvoted? I have no qualms with downvoting posts in batches as long as those posts would have been downvoted anyway. Periodically I read older articles or read the recent posts of certain people. If I find a thread of comments I think should be up or downvoted I do so. This may hit one person with 5 or 6 votes all at once.
I don’t think that getting 30 downvotes after a particularly volatile thread is necessarily misuse of the karma system. I can see how it would happen through legitimate use. As long as each vote was made within the full context of the comment, a drop of 30 is very plausible.
It is, however, much more convenient to say that someone is picking on you than to consider that no one bothered to read your comments until now.
This being said, SilasBarta’s notes about his recent hits do not appear to follow a legitimate pattern. I am not trying to point at anyone here, least of all SilasBarta; I am just noting that cries of, “Unfair!” don’t always point to someone abusing the system.
[B]y and large, the karma system here seems to work very well, and provides a very useful method of gauging posts.
I completely agree. I find the karma system very helpful.
As another data point here, someone seems to be doing the same thing to me, only in reverse—I just gained 20 or so karma in a short time period, and none of it apparently on recent comments. I don’t see how this could be someone trying to abuse the system, unless I have some insane stalker fan or something.
ETA: or a Tyler Durden sockpuppet.
ETA2: SoullessAutomaton’s comment seems the most plausible.
Maybe someone who knows your voting habits and and wants to annoy you by searching through your history for your worst comments, in order to put upvotes on mediocre comments that you’ll never be able to downvote?
Never underestimate the number of people on the internet with too much free time and too little sense. I don’t think this is a problem right now, though. Of course, if it does become a problem, it’s the kind that would be hard to identify.
From a database point, it may actually be very easy to find the culprits. I do not know if there is a timestamp on voting, but a sudden influx of downvotes from a particular person should be relatively obvious.
Not that I think any sort of data police needs to exist right now. Even if someone did start messing with the karma system I would rather the developers keep the features coming than worry about a troll.
Eliezer has mentioned trying to get such a monitoring feature built if it becomes apparent that it is becoming a frequent problem. It’s not to that point yet, apparently.
I’m sorry, but I have never seen you do this; I’ve repeatedly had to correct extremely uncharitable interpretations of my position from you.
...Except the time I accused you of kitten torture. Oh right, that wasn’t baseless, because the existence of an accusation proves a basis (???)
Yes, you’ve shown a general pattern of “Bad commenter! No karma for you!” as an alternative to actual articulation of where others’ claims are in error.
(That’s not something to be proud of.)
By your own standard, you suggest I should have just downvote comments like bogus’s rather than even telling him what my position actually is. This is fruitful for discussion, why?
Sadly, my ethics prevent me from modding comments in exchanges I’m directly involved in. It’s probably a vestige of listening to advice like Alicorn’s, and it puts me at a disadvantage against people who view the downmod as equivalent to an argument.
Know anyone like that?
Let’s give it a rest, please.
Honestly, this notion never occurred to me. I interpret downvotes (upvotes) as a “I would like to see fewer (more) comments like this,” and feel free to vote on exchanges I’m involved in, trying to base my votes on quality of discussion and argument, rather than strictly whether I agree or not. Do you think your standard should be a community norm (even if it can’t be enforced)?
You’re kidding. It never occurred to you that you might not be neutral enough to accurately moderate during an argument you’re personally involved in?
What’s your “working theory” for why the site prevents upvoting your own comment, “even though” you could just register with a different name and upvote as a sockpuppet?
Great, but why don’t you think your involvement compromises your ability to do so neutrally, especially when it’s a heated discussion? (Btw, on Slashdot, you’re prevented from moderating on any discussion where you’ve posted anywhere, which is probably where I got that ethic, plus previous EY rationality writings about when one’s neutrality is compromised.)
Yes. I assumed people already had my level of restraint. But, like with following feminist advice, “no good deed goes unpunished”. I have a much lower karma level, and others a higher karma level, because I followed obvious rules about watching one’s own bias.
I humbly recommend you cancel any votes for or against me in exchanges you’ve been involved in.
I guess I’m just retarded???
Done.
I agree that drive-by mass downvoting out of personal animosity is bad, and it is of course unjust that you have apparently been subjected to it. But again, you should also consider that a nontrivial proportion of your recent karma loss has been because people legitimately find many of your recent comments to be of low-quality. For example, your tone is oftentimes rather hostile and condescending (“Can you do it? No? Then you don’t have a point,” “Like any bad lie, your position has forced you into defending ever-more-absurd positions,” “Know anyone like that?”, “There is no hope for this one,” “Is that too much to ask of you these days?” &c.), and maybe you can see why some people might think this worthy of a downvote?
No, you’re not retarded, but you could provide a better explanation for why it never occurred to you that you have a bias during a flamewar.
Holy ----! Since I last came here an hour or so ago, my karma shot up about a hundred points.
I don’t know how much of that was you, but I very much appreciate that you are taking my suggestion.
I accounted for this already. There were severe downmods for recent comments, accumulating over the past 18 hours. Then, in a much shorter period, I lost ~30 more, mainly on much older comments.
I accept that my tone has gotten worse recently. But please, take a second look at that exchange. You refuted one analogy with another one which revealed you didn’t understand the topic. To untangle your misunderstanding required me to restate the context of the conversation, and then spell out the mapping in your proposed analogy, basically, doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you.
I derived what your analogy needed to contain for it to be relevant to my point. But, if you could present such evidence, or even realize its applicability, you would have already done so.
And so I had to spend far disproportionate time responding to you, compared to your investment in the discussion. Yes, I could have said something instead, like, “Is there a quote from a men’s magazine that meets the criteria? I don’t think there is, which is what you need to make your point applicable.” But please understand my frustration there.
“Do all the intellectual heavy lifting for you” could potentially sound antagonistic. Someone can be wrong (and you can explain why you think so) without you need to bring in meta-discussion about their intellectual skills.
Since I agree with you more often than not, I often find myself wishing that your substantive points were made in a different tone.
Thanks for your advice. I didn’t mean it that way, but I see how it can be read as a direct attack on someone’s intelligence. I’ll avoid such usages in the future.
There’s no further explanation! It really didn’t occur to me that that was a reason to not vote! And it’s still not obvious to me that not-voting is unambiguously the right ethical standard. Of course I agree that it’s unethical to downvote a comment solely because you don’t like the conclusion or you don’t like the commenter—but that remains true whether or not you’re personally involved in the conversation. So as long as we’re going to talk about unenforceable personal standards of ethics, maybe the standard (which had been my policy) of “always and everywhere try to vote solely based on quality of discussion” is better than “don’t vote when I’m part of the discussion.”
Not very much. During the recent madness, I had downvoted you I think maybe three or four times, and upvoted you I think once, all of which have now been cancelled.
Sure. Notice that I wrote that a “a nontrivial proportion of your recent karma loss” (emphasis added) could be legitimate; I didn’t mean to suggest that all of it was.
If you don’t think it’s worth your time to correct (what seems to you to be) someone’s egregious misapprehension, then don’t bother to do so. If you think a comment is poorly argued—maybe just downvote it?
The problem with your alternative is that being in an argument alters your judgment of what counts as a good quality post. In additional to the usual “Politics is the mind-killer” truism, remember that we run on corrupted hardware.
You may think that it’s better to go by: “Don’t do X unless, all things considered, it would work for the greater good.” But even if you want to follow that rule, you actually do a better job following it if you just go by “Don’t do X”, as long as X is easily abused and self-serving. That’s the point of the post in the link.
And that’s why I think it just doesn’t work to say, “Oh, I’m modding down this comment because it’s an obectively bad comment, not because I’m in a heated flamewar with them.”
See above for why I don’t downvote in arguments I’m currently involved in.
But even setting that policy aside for a minute, you got several upmods, which gave the false impression your post was high quality, when it wasn’t, and used a deceptively simple comparison that you didn’t understand how to use correctly. Changing you from 3 to 2 wouldn’t have done anything; people would still think you had a good point, since they probably didn’t know the entire context that led up to the point about Cosmo.
And since the point about Cosmo was strong, and used to highlight a critical hole in Alicorn’s point, I couldn’t ignore it either.
Now, as long as we’re suggesting ways it could have gone better, how about this: why don’t you make sure you know what you’re talking about before you get involved? In this case, that would mean presenting the evidence your comparison requires: a case of a male-oriented magazine that uses language that the men here consider beyond the pale in its offensiveness.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don’t have an example in mind.
I have replied in the other thread.
Please correct me if I’m misreading you here. You don’t trust yourself to assess whether a comment deserves a downvote, because humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases, and yet somehow you do trust yourself to assess that the other person has no idea of what she’s talking about, even though humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases?
You might want to consider doing this the other way, extending interpretive charity but not karmic charity. In fact, I hereby urge you to vote however you want to on whatever comments you want to. After all, a few undeserved downvotes are of little importance, whereas, say, continuous swipes at other people’s intellectual competence and integrity (e.g., “Yeah, wanna rethink that one?” “This is the part where you’re supposed to realize the absurdity of your original response to my reaction,” “I heard you make an all-too-convenient claim about what you were, like, totally about to do,” “Now for the hard part!” “You’re kidding. It never occured to you [...]?” “a deceptively simple comparison that you didn’t understand how to use correctly,” “doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you,” “if you could present such evidence, or even realize its applicability, you would have already done so,” “why don’t you make sure you know what you’re talking about [...]?” “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don’t have an example,” &c.) have a tendency to drag the quality of discourse down. It’s worth keeping in mind that the karma system is supposed to be a mechanism that exists in the service promoting good discussion; discussion does not exist in the service of amassing karma points. I would much rather someone abuse her voting power than constantly taunt and belittle people.
If only because the former is much easier to correct. I frequently upvote comments (including ones I disagree with) with negative scores that seem to have no obvious, objective flaws, on the assumption that they were downvoted for disagreement.
The danger here is that someone else might later upvote because they think it’s a good comment, and thus your ‘corrective’ upvote is misplaced (as if you’d come along later you’d never have made it)
I’ve actually removed upvotes for precisely that reason, when I’ve noticed it happen.
For what it’s worth, I vote in threads in which I am active. Namely, I downvote and explain my downvote or upvote and add what I hope is a useful insight.
If I feel like I am getting emotional about anything or the topic is tilting personal I usually wait until the whole thing is finished and then go back through the thread and vote on which comments I thought were best/worst. Sometimes a later clarification makes an earlier comment worth more.
I would not have honored such a request. My opinion still matters, even if you talking to me.
Note that one can both upvote and downvote comments in an exchange they’re involved in. I don’t have an explicit ethic of not voting in exchanges where I’m involved, but I’ve frequently upvoted comments that have disagreed with me and (IIRC) rarely downvoted them. I would suspect many people to be the same, and see little trouble with the practice. If you want to avoid a bias, “in exchanges where you’ve participated, only upvote comments that disagree with you (or are neutral), and only downvote comments that agree with you (or are neutral)” would sound like a better policy than an explicit ban on any voting.
While you do expect to be more biased than usual in the discussions you are involved in, in some cases the judgment is certain enough to not need this injunction.
If it’s that certain, then it will probably get enough downvotes from people not involved in the discussion.
Wow, in a short time span I just dropped by about 15 karma, distributed between ongoing and past discussions.
Real mature, that.
ETA: Okay, I went from 264 to 236 in under two hours, virtually all from downmods on old comments. This is ridiculous.
I didn’t touch the old threads but last night I did vote down an entire thread of argument between you and thomblake (voting down each of your posts). This might have been part of your conspicuous drop. Nothing against either of you but when the argument is just about what you said or didn’t say it is of little interest to anyone else here and should be taken to private messages if you want to continue. I don’t know how else to kill bad, useless arguments that clog the recent comments section except to vote every comment in them down. If people feel this is inappropriate please let me know and I won’t do it in the future.
I agree that this is an appropriate use of voting, and that the conversation was of little interest to anyone else so probably should not have been made into theater. Good job.
As a rule of thumb, I usually don’t pay much attention to comment threads that consist of two people going hammer and tongs, and the nesting depth driving the subthread off the top page for the post.
You mean this one? Yes, it was quite a waste of time trying to explain to someone why not every accusation needs to be taken seriously, and I apologize for dignifying the opposing positions.
It would be nice if the people downvoting you would state who they were and why (It’s not me). I can think of two hypotheses:
A) There’s a cabal of feminists trying to suppress your view and you in particular
B) People in general have judged your comments in these threads of less quality
A) sounds unlikely (due to the sort of people who seem to frequent this site) but I will grant that it’s possible, and B) agrees with my own subjective judgment.
If you’ve lost karma on really old posts in unrelated topics then it would seem to be reasonable to conclude that one or two people are irrationally voting you down, however...
This recent 30+ point drop is almost all from the old threads, not the recent ones. I was up to ~300, then these recent −5s on recent threads took it down to ~265. After that, I took the 30 point hit on old threads over a short period.
That’s weird. Perhaps the system could be improved; there’s currently nothing to disincentivize this behavior.
One might hope the fact that it is clearly wrong to be enough. But I suppose one might hope for a pony as well.
How old? If it’s less than a week, it might just be somebody catching up on old comments. (If it’s more than a week, that would be suspicious, of course.)
Yes, more than a week. I remember a thread where I had 8 and 4 and it went to 7 and 3.
Btw, 231 now. That’s over a 30 drop, probably due mostly to one person. Quite some “catching up”!
I had that happen to me a while back to the tune of 80 karma lost in under half an hour. It’s not an appropriate use of the voting system and I hope whoever is/was doing it to you stops.
I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll recite the famous Voltaire quote until I’m blue in the face in your defense.
Please. Voltaire misquote!
Only somewhat, I thought. The sentiment is identical but the misquote is catchier.
ETA: Wikiquote seems to think even that quote is apocryphal, so nevermind, I guess.
I hear tell it’s from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who was explicitly trying to say something Voltaire would agree with.
Pfft—I’m just being silly. Besides, I only know about that one because of webcomics.
I have been driven-by several times. It sucks. Although I disagree with your stated habit of not voting and participating in the same thread, I have voted on your comments only as they’ve come up and only when I think there is a genuine issue of quality, not indiscriminately and on old comments. (I mention this because I’m probably an obvious suspect in some people’s minds.)
Maybe down-voting old comments shouldn’t affect karma. After all, the more comments you make, the more potential karma you can lose from one person going through your history. I could probably lose all of my karma just by offending the wrong person. Besides, someone changing the points of an old comment no one may ever read again from 8 to 7 is hardly improving the quality of discourse.
I disagree. The idea is that people will read the old comments again, and the score of comments gives an impression to a random passerby what the community is about.
Of note, I certainly read old comments and vote on them all the time and consider all posts open discussion.
Sure, so long as it doesn’t give the impression that that is what the community was about at that time. This community is a moving target, and ideas and opinions change. If we decide to update old comments with new votes, do we risk losing something of archival interest? If we vote up a comment that says ‘A is B’, and a year later vote up a comment that says ‘A is not B’, going back and voting down the ‘A is B’ comment gives the false impression that this community is remarkably consistent. I think I’m blowing this out of proportion, though.
I would presume that the number of people willing to systematically downvote all of a particular person’s comments is rather low. Is this a rather common problem? Or does it just show up once a few months?
Well, it’s happened before at least a few times.
I’ve had drops of 5 or 6 karma at a time as someone goes through and downvotes all my comments in a particular thread, but I think that’s the price we have to pay; by and large, the karma system here seems to work very well, and provides a very useful method of gauging posts.
Not to be a punk, but were all of those posts deserving of being downvoted? I have no qualms with downvoting posts in batches as long as those posts would have been downvoted anyway. Periodically I read older articles or read the recent posts of certain people. If I find a thread of comments I think should be up or downvoted I do so. This may hit one person with 5 or 6 votes all at once.
I don’t think that getting 30 downvotes after a particularly volatile thread is necessarily misuse of the karma system. I can see how it would happen through legitimate use. As long as each vote was made within the full context of the comment, a drop of 30 is very plausible.
It is, however, much more convenient to say that someone is picking on you than to consider that no one bothered to read your comments until now.
This being said, SilasBarta’s notes about his recent hits do not appear to follow a legitimate pattern. I am not trying to point at anyone here, least of all SilasBarta; I am just noting that cries of, “Unfair!” don’t always point to someone abusing the system.
I completely agree. I find the karma system very helpful.
As another data point here, someone seems to be doing the same thing to me, only in reverse—I just gained 20 or so karma in a short time period, and none of it apparently on recent comments. I don’t see how this could be someone trying to abuse the system, unless I have some insane stalker fan or something.
ETA: or a Tyler Durden sockpuppet.
ETA2: SoullessAutomaton’s comment seems the most plausible.
Maybe someone who knows your voting habits and and wants to annoy you by searching through your history for your worst comments, in order to put upvotes on mediocre comments that you’ll never be able to downvote?
(Tongue in cheek, obviously)
I’d say the initial comment probably was worthy of the downvote, but the rest weren’t.
Fair enough.
Never underestimate the number of people on the internet with too much free time and too little sense. I don’t think this is a problem right now, though. Of course, if it does become a problem, it’s the kind that would be hard to identify.
From a database point, it may actually be very easy to find the culprits. I do not know if there is a timestamp on voting, but a sudden influx of downvotes from a particular person should be relatively obvious.
Not that I think any sort of data police needs to exist right now. Even if someone did start messing with the karma system I would rather the developers keep the features coming than worry about a troll.
Eliezer has mentioned trying to get such a monitoring feature built if it becomes apparent that it is becoming a frequent problem. It’s not to that point yet, apparently.