...and the parent and grandparent got un-synched again. The point of the karma balance post is so that its karma is the opposite of the poll’s karma. When you downvote one of a poll/karma balance pair, you upvote the other.
The point of the karma balance post is so that its karma is the opposite of the poll’s karma.
It is a karma sink, not a balancer that must be equal but opposite. It is a way to short out people’s desires to not reward karma for privilege of providing information, or a way to penalize the poll itself without damaging the data. Since we wouldn’t gain information by having two copies of the same number there is no real need for the karma sink in sync.
What does seem to be a problem here is that your poll comment is (or rather was) negative. Your poll comment should never get a downvote, ever, if people are cooperating in the poll game. Downvoting defeats the purpose of having two separate comments for ‘be top level’ and “don’t be top level”. This just means that the downvoter has chosen not to submit to demands (or acquiesced with the request) to vote according to the prescribed pattern for these particular comments. They aren’t cooperating within the poller’s game. Unfortunately it is not possible to know how many people have just chosen not to play so all such votes corrupt the data rather significantly.
This is where having an explicit poll mechanic would be rather handy.
If you think this shouldn’t be a top-level post, upvote this and downvote the child.
This is the child. Downvote it for karma balance iff you don’t want Dorrika’s post to be top-level.
...and the parent and grandparent got un-synched again. The point of the karma balance post is so that its karma is the opposite of the poll’s karma. When you downvote one of a poll/karma balance pair, you upvote the other.
It is a karma sink, not a balancer that must be equal but opposite. It is a way to short out people’s desires to not reward karma for privilege of providing information, or a way to penalize the poll itself without damaging the data. Since we wouldn’t gain information by having two copies of the same number there is no real need for the karma sink in sync.
What does seem to be a problem here is that your poll comment is (or rather was) negative. Your poll comment should never get a downvote, ever, if people are cooperating in the poll game. Downvoting defeats the purpose of having two separate comments for ‘be top level’ and “don’t be top level”. This just means that the downvoter has chosen not to submit to demands (or acquiesced with the request) to vote according to the prescribed pattern for these particular comments. They aren’t cooperating within the poller’s game. Unfortunately it is not possible to know how many people have just chosen not to play so all such votes corrupt the data rather significantly.
This is where having an explicit poll mechanic would be rather handy.