If that was automatic, it would be a problem for me. I often go back through the recent comments listing and do a flurry of quality-control voting; otherwise, comments on older posts slip through the cracks.
I worry that some people may hold conflicting views on what the comments are for.
First, comments may act as little notes, contributing a piece of information or insight, relevant to the context in which it’s made.
Second, comments may serve communication, letting a specific person know something, correcting a mistake, voicing an opinion, adding a detail to resolve an earlier misunderstanding.
Relevant communication must not be punished. There is no way to support a conversation without these communication comments that are not intended to hold generally appreciated pearls of wisdom in them.
I think this better reflects conflicting views on what voting is for. I don’t vote something down as punishment; I vote it down because I don’t think it’s interesting enough to belong at the top of the page.
If posting a certain kind of comments results in expected decrease in karma, people will avoid doing that, so there is an inseparable component of punishment. What you say would only work if there were two separate comment ratings, one for other readers, and one for the writer. Essentially, the hard/soft voting distinction developed to play this role.
I suppose that’s true if people would really take a decrease in karma as a reason not to post a comment. If people are doing that, they probably should be punished for it.
I said userpage, not recent comments. If you don’t often view all comments of just a single user and then issue 20 or more downvotes in quick succession, I wasn’t suggesting anything that would affect you. There are lots of abuses that can’t easily be caught, but abuse like I’ve outlined, which based on comments here has occurred a few times recently, should be easy to catch.
If that was automatic, it would be a problem for me. I often go back through the recent comments listing and do a flurry of quality-control voting; otherwise, comments on older posts slip through the cracks.
I worry that some people may hold conflicting views on what the comments are for.
First, comments may act as little notes, contributing a piece of information or insight, relevant to the context in which it’s made.
Second, comments may serve communication, letting a specific person know something, correcting a mistake, voicing an opinion, adding a detail to resolve an earlier misunderstanding.
Relevant communication must not be punished. There is no way to support a conversation without these communication comments that are not intended to hold generally appreciated pearls of wisdom in them.
I think this better reflects conflicting views on what voting is for. I don’t vote something down as punishment; I vote it down because I don’t think it’s interesting enough to belong at the top of the page.
If posting a certain kind of comments results in expected decrease in karma, people will avoid doing that, so there is an inseparable component of punishment. What you say would only work if there were two separate comment ratings, one for other readers, and one for the writer. Essentially, the hard/soft voting distinction developed to play this role.
I suppose that’s true if people would really take a decrease in karma as a reason not to post a comment.
If people are doing that, they probably should be punished for it.
I’ll see about adding the ability to vote down comments that weren’t posted for not being posted.
My (somewhat limited) knowledge of Python suggests to me that this would not be an easy task; I daresay it might be nearly impossible.
But I agree—we should implement something like that if we can.
You are evil.
I have to know—in what sense did you mean this? “not morally good”? “deviously scheming to align the world with my preferences”? “hates paladins”?
For now, I’ll just take it as a compliment.
I said userpage, not recent comments. If you don’t often view all comments of just a single user and then issue 20 or more downvotes in quick succession, I wasn’t suggesting anything that would affect you. There are lots of abuses that can’t easily be caught, but abuse like I’ve outlined, which based on comments here has occurred a few times recently, should be easy to catch.