If by “the above-quoted comment” you mean “I’d love to know [...]”:
Yup.
I see no evidence that that has had three downvotes...
The evidence is gone now, but it did have a score of −2 when I wrote my first comment on this thread.
nor did I make any comment on its merit (it was its grandparent that I commented on), and I therefore have no idea why you’d be asking me that question.
Ah, I see. When you wrote that you thought I was going beyond the available evidence, you weren’t referring to the score of the “I’d love to know [...]” comment. I was referring to it, and I thought you were too.
If you mean the one that begins “Taking that as a serious comment”: [etc.]
I think the root of our misunderstanding is that in the sequence
Annoyance: blah blah blah
Annoyance: blah blah the above comment blah blah
you: blah blah the above comment blah blah
I took your “the above comment” to refer to Annoyance’s first comment (the same one as he meant when he used the same phrase) whereas you were referring to his second (the one you were replying to).
For what it’s worth, I have an alternative hypothesis for the downvotes on Annoyance’s second comment too (though not as compelling as the one I have for his first): at least three people hate it (here and on other sites like Reddit, Hacker News, etc.) when people complain about getting downvoted, and perceived Annoyance’s second comment as a complaint. (That perception may have been influenced by other interactions with Annoyance, but that’s not the same thing as punishing him for those other interactions.)
That perception may have been influenced by other interactions with Annoyance, but that’s not the same thing as punishing him for those other interactions.
I will confess to a certain degree of, pun unintended, annoyance with some of his previous comments. However, it seems to me that downvoting the comment in question (the second one, about downvotes) is unfair. Given that a downvote conveys very little information in itself, requesting additional feedback on the reason for a downvote ought to be perfectly acceptable as a method of interpreting the feedback.
I think the voting system would benefit from one or more of a few modifications:
Limiting downvotes per user, to restrict grudge downvotes
Allowing downvotes only on comments you’ve replied to (no downvote without an reason, in other words)
Enforce a social standard that requesting clarification on downvotes is acceptable
Replace voting with a sliding scale of quality instead of up/down, and for every user who has previously voted on a comment that views a thread, treat that as a vote for 50%/average/&c.
I have voiced my disagreement with this elsewhere, but I must reiterate that I am not in favor of restricting downvotes to comments you’ve replied to. Replying to a troll, for instance, is the wrong thing to do.
Also, that unnecessarily makes upvoting easier than downvoting. I happily downvote any comment that I think doesn’t add anything to the discussion at hand, and it already takes up too much of my time.
If limiting downvotes sounds reasonable, upvotes should be limited accordingly. And the automatic upvote to one’s own comments should be included under that limit. Though I’m altogether against such limits.
I have voiced my disagreement with this elsewhere, but I must reiterate that I am not in favor of restricting downvotes to comments you’ve replied to. Replying to a troll, for instance, is the wrong thing to do.
Good point. I retract that suggestion.
And the automatic upvote to one’s own comments should be included under that limit.
The automatic upvote to one’s own comments is slated to be removed, with the stated intent to normalize comment scores to a baseline of 0. There’s an issue entered in LW’s Google Code issue tracker for this already.
Yup.
The evidence is gone now, but it did have a score of −2 when I wrote my first comment on this thread.
Ah, I see. When you wrote that you thought I was going beyond the available evidence, you weren’t referring to the score of the “I’d love to know [...]” comment. I was referring to it, and I thought you were too.
I have no problem with any of that.
I think the root of our misunderstanding is that in the sequence
Annoyance: blah blah blah
Annoyance: blah blah the above comment blah blah
you: blah blah the above comment blah blah
I took your “the above comment” to refer to Annoyance’s first comment (the same one as he meant when he used the same phrase) whereas you were referring to his second (the one you were replying to).
For what it’s worth, I have an alternative hypothesis for the downvotes on Annoyance’s second comment too (though not as compelling as the one I have for his first): at least three people hate it (here and on other sites like Reddit, Hacker News, etc.) when people complain about getting downvoted, and perceived Annoyance’s second comment as a complaint. (That perception may have been influenced by other interactions with Annoyance, but that’s not the same thing as punishing him for those other interactions.)
That’s a reasonably plausible hypothesis—I’m glad I asked. This is my first experience with rated comments, so I wasn’t aware that was common.
A search for other people who have commented about receiving down votes turned up this thread. It seems karma-punishing is common too.
I will confess to a certain degree of, pun unintended, annoyance with some of his previous comments. However, it seems to me that downvoting the comment in question (the second one, about downvotes) is unfair. Given that a downvote conveys very little information in itself, requesting additional feedback on the reason for a downvote ought to be perfectly acceptable as a method of interpreting the feedback.
I think the voting system would benefit from one or more of a few modifications:
Limiting downvotes per user, to restrict grudge downvotes
Allowing downvotes only on comments you’ve replied to (no downvote without an reason, in other words)
Enforce a social standard that requesting clarification on downvotes is acceptable
Replace voting with a sliding scale of quality instead of up/down, and for every user who has previously voted on a comment that views a thread, treat that as a vote for 50%/average/&c.
I have voiced my disagreement with this elsewhere, but I must reiterate that I am not in favor of restricting downvotes to comments you’ve replied to. Replying to a troll, for instance, is the wrong thing to do.
Also, that unnecessarily makes upvoting easier than downvoting. I happily downvote any comment that I think doesn’t add anything to the discussion at hand, and it already takes up too much of my time.
If limiting downvotes sounds reasonable, upvotes should be limited accordingly. And the automatic upvote to one’s own comments should be included under that limit. Though I’m altogether against such limits.
Good point. I retract that suggestion.
The automatic upvote to one’s own comments is slated to be removed, with the stated intent to normalize comment scores to a baseline of 0. There’s an issue entered in LW’s Google Code issue tracker for this already.