Then I confess I am at a loss as to what your point in all this was, as you seem to have stated is a rejection of something that other people said without any real explanation as to what you’re rejecting, or why.
As I stated, I intend no point other than those particular assertions made in my posts.
If you insist that I must only deploy arguments in support of a particular political agenda then said agenda is this: Bad arguments and hypocrisy presented in support of positions I approve of are still bad arguments and hypocrisy.
I don’t normally remark on such things, but I’m a bit discouraged to note the following:
The parent comment was the first time Cameron_Taylor has posted anything in roughly a month, in a long-dead argument in which he and I were disagreeing.
At roughly the same time the parent comment was posted, roughly the last 80 or so posts I’ve made were all voted down, consecutively, once each, for no discernable reason.
I recall at least two other commenters mentioning being voted down suddenly on multiple unrelated comments previously while arguing with Cameron_Taylor.
Karma is easy-come, easy-go, but I’m thinking that someone is not exactly participating in good faith here.
By way of confirmation, this has indeed happened to both myself and at least one other commenter previously (I’ll leave it to them whether they want to reveal themselves). I had been waiting to see whether it would happen again to be sure, but we now seem to have pretty good evidence of bad faith.
As SoullessAutomaton notes, the karma itself is not much of an issue, but it’s nonetheless rather disappointing to see this sort of behavior. It’s not immediately clear whether there’s much to be done about it other than public shaming, but as a possible means of preventing this happening again, I don’t suppose there’s any way to revoke the downvoting privileges of those who seem to be abusing the system?
For the record, I’ve been known to downvote large numbers of posts at once (since I’m only here looking at comments for short periods of time, and downvote a lot of posts) but I read them first. Not so much lately, due to the extremely limited number of downvotes available.
While I do not profess to understand the motivation for it, your apparent conviction that a substantial percentage of comments ought to be voted down is of an entirely different character than a mass downvoting aimed at a specific person, targetting what seems to be all of their comments from the past three weeks or so. The latter kind of behavior I would expect on sites like Digg; I tend to expect better of people here.
Let’s consider a less convenient possible world. I come across several stupid comments, realize that the author has a lot of karma, and then start reading their old comments. Careful reading, including the context when necessary, leads me to believe half of their old comments are bad or overrated, and deserving of a downvote. I would argue that making those downvotes is justified, but I’d like to think I have better things to do than read and vote on comments on dead threads.
Edit: this comment may be confusing, please read my follow up to orthonormal.
I’m sorry I was unclear. I didn’t mean to suggest that this was an alternative explanation for this event. In fact, as you point out, the hypothetical I described contradicts SA’s testimony in an important way (the proportion of the comments downvoted).
The reason I brought up the hypothetical was to promote discussion about scenarios that are more difficult to evaluate than what actually appears to have occurred.
The reason the subject came up at all is because this instance was particularly blatant. Otherwise, we don’t generally have enough information to evaluate other scenarios reliably—this is why Eliezer wants a way to monitor voting abuse.
Even so I’m willing to grant that it could be something innocuous (and will apologize if that is the case), but the evidence so far leans toward abuse.
If you want to promote discussion about the issue, a top-level post is probably in order, as you yourself previously noted; feel free to make one.
Then I confess I am at a loss as to what your point in all this was, as you seem to have stated is a rejection of something that other people said without any real explanation as to what you’re rejecting, or why.
As I stated, I intend no point other than those particular assertions made in my posts.
If you insist that I must only deploy arguments in support of a particular political agenda then said agenda is this: Bad arguments and hypocrisy presented in support of positions I approve of are still bad arguments and hypocrisy.
I don’t normally remark on such things, but I’m a bit discouraged to note the following:
The parent comment was the first time Cameron_Taylor has posted anything in roughly a month, in a long-dead argument in which he and I were disagreeing.
At roughly the same time the parent comment was posted, roughly the last 80 or so posts I’ve made were all voted down, consecutively, once each, for no discernable reason.
I recall at least two other commenters mentioning being voted down suddenly on multiple unrelated comments previously while arguing with Cameron_Taylor.
Karma is easy-come, easy-go, but I’m thinking that someone is not exactly participating in good faith here.
By way of confirmation, this has indeed happened to both myself and at least one other commenter previously (I’ll leave it to them whether they want to reveal themselves). I had been waiting to see whether it would happen again to be sure, but we now seem to have pretty good evidence of bad faith.
As SoullessAutomaton notes, the karma itself is not much of an issue, but it’s nonetheless rather disappointing to see this sort of behavior. It’s not immediately clear whether there’s much to be done about it other than public shaming, but as a possible means of preventing this happening again, I don’t suppose there’s any way to revoke the downvoting privileges of those who seem to be abusing the system?
I was the other commenter, and confirm the observation.
This is unfortunate, perhaps there should be a top level post to discuss the wise way to respond.
For the record, I’ve been known to downvote large numbers of posts at once (since I’m only here looking at comments for short periods of time, and downvote a lot of posts) but I read them first. Not so much lately, due to the extremely limited number of downvotes available.
While I do not profess to understand the motivation for it, your apparent conviction that a substantial percentage of comments ought to be voted down is of an entirely different character than a mass downvoting aimed at a specific person, targetting what seems to be all of their comments from the past three weeks or so. The latter kind of behavior I would expect on sites like Digg; I tend to expect better of people here.
Let’s consider a less convenient possible world. I come across several stupid comments, realize that the author has a lot of karma, and then start reading their old comments. Careful reading, including the context when necessary, leads me to believe half of their old comments are bad or overrated, and deserving of a downvote. I would argue that making those downvotes is justified, but I’d like to think I have better things to do than read and vote on comments on dead threads.
Edit: this comment may be confusing, please read my follow up to orthonormal.
Don’t use “least convenient possible world” to mean “a different hypothesis to explain what you’re seeing”. We don’t want the usage to get confused.
EDIT: Also, it’s unlikely for this effect to result in every one of SA’s last 80 comments being downvoted once.
I’m sorry I was unclear. I didn’t mean to suggest that this was an alternative explanation for this event. In fact, as you point out, the hypothetical I described contradicts SA’s testimony in an important way (the proportion of the comments downvoted).
The reason I brought up the hypothetical was to promote discussion about scenarios that are more difficult to evaluate than what actually appears to have occurred.
The reason the subject came up at all is because this instance was particularly blatant. Otherwise, we don’t generally have enough information to evaluate other scenarios reliably—this is why Eliezer wants a way to monitor voting abuse.
Even so I’m willing to grant that it could be something innocuous (and will apologize if that is the case), but the evidence so far leans toward abuse.
If you want to promote discussion about the issue, a top-level post is probably in order, as you yourself previously noted; feel free to make one.
I’ve previously asked Tricycle for the ability to monitor this sort of thing. I will ask them again.
For the record, this sort of systematic downvoting is not only not in good faith, but grounds for removal of the ability to downvote.