I don’t think you’re correctly using the phrase “karma sinks.” Or at least, you’re not using it the way I see it is typically used on LW. Karma sinks refer to comments users make in order for other commentators to purposefully downvote if they upvoted another specific comment. This is so we can do things like straw polls without the polling user gaining tens or hundreds of karma.
That might be unclear, so I’ll give an example. I recently made a comment asking whether people would be interested in a New Jersey meetup. I could have also asked those interested to upvote my comment so I could have a rough estimate of how many people are interested. As per community norms, I would also make a second comment for users to downvote if and only if they upvoted the first comment. This second post (the karma sink) would help assure my net gain is 0.
Anyway, that doesn’t invalidate your point. But for clearer communication, you may want to use a phrase like “positive feedback loop.” That seems to better describe what you’re talking about, where downvotes make it more likely that other users will also downvote, which in turn leads to even more downvotes, and so on.
I don’t think you’re correctly using the phrase “karma sinks.” Or at least, you’re not using it the way I see it is typically used on LW. Karma sinks refer to comments users make in order for other commentators to purposefully downvote if they upvoted another specific comment. This is so we can do things like straw polls without the polling user gaining tens or hundreds of karma.
That might be unclear, so I’ll give an example. I recently made a comment asking whether people would be interested in a New Jersey meetup. I could have also asked those interested to upvote my comment so I could have a rough estimate of how many people are interested. As per community norms, I would also make a second comment for users to downvote if and only if they upvoted the first comment. This second post (the karma sink) would help assure my net gain is 0.
Anyway, that doesn’t invalidate your point. But for clearer communication, you may want to use a phrase like “positive feedback loop.” That seems to better describe what you’re talking about, where downvotes make it more likely that other users will also downvote, which in turn leads to even more downvotes, and so on.
I think you mean “positive feedback loop” of downvotes.
Ah, silly me. Correcting some else while making a mistake. You’re correct, thanks.
Another possibility might be “information cascade”, which refers to this specific phenomenon.