I looked at the comments of private_messaging, and it looks like someone is mass downvoting him (I initially noticed this when I noticed this comment replying to me was downvoted for no obvious reason). I decided to experiment by giving him a compensatory mass upvote. So far I upvoted what is currently the first page of his comment history (from here to here in his comment history; amongst these this was already upvoted by me for independent reasons). However, it looks like the mass downvote went farther. I suggest anyone who agrees with me that private_message received a mass-downvote to continue for me the compensatory mass upvote and publicly declare which posts they upvoted to avoid double-counting. I also suggest that people say what they think about compensatory mass upvotes in general.
I’m uncomfortable with mass-upvoting people’s comments even if they are known to have been mass-downvoted; it might make them feel slightly better, but it’s difficult to figure out how much to compensate them (especially if the target has a contentious history with the site, as private_messaging does), and it weakens karma as a signal of a post’s reception just as much as mass downvotes do.
If you believe individual comments to have been downvoted below their worth, by all means upvote them by way of compensation. But I wouldn’t make a policy of it if I were you; if their karma’s been pushed down enough to affect their posting privileges, I might tentatively endorse it as a patch, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
For me it was just a response to the abstract “someone is being wronged”, and I did not think about how great the stakes were when I did this. In addition, I’m experimenting with a new idea which may have possible objections, and “it’s not that important anyways” as you indicate is one of them.
I looked at the comments of private_messaging, and it looks like someone is mass downvoting him (I initially noticed this when I noticed this comment replying to me was downvoted for no obvious reason). I decided to experiment by giving him a compensatory mass upvote. So far I upvoted what is currently the first page of his comment history (from here to here in his comment history; amongst these this was already upvoted by me for independent reasons). However, it looks like the mass downvote went farther. I suggest anyone who agrees with me that private_message received a mass-downvote to continue for me the compensatory mass upvote and publicly declare which posts they upvoted to avoid double-counting. I also suggest that people say what they think about compensatory mass upvotes in general.
I’m uncomfortable with mass-upvoting people’s comments even if they are known to have been mass-downvoted; it might make them feel slightly better, but it’s difficult to figure out how much to compensate them (especially if the target has a contentious history with the site, as private_messaging does), and it weakens karma as a signal of a post’s reception just as much as mass downvotes do.
If you believe individual comments to have been downvoted below their worth, by all means upvote them by way of compensation. But I wouldn’t make a policy of it if I were you; if their karma’s been pushed down enough to affect their posting privileges, I might tentatively endorse it as a patch, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I don’t understand why people care so much about Karma, especially effects they know are coming from a small number (1?) of serial downvoters.
Let me be more direct: Yes, it’s not such a big deal.
For me it was just a response to the abstract “someone is being wronged”, and I did not think about how great the stakes were when I did this. In addition, I’m experimenting with a new idea which may have possible objections, and “it’s not that important anyways” as you indicate is one of them.