Of course this also indicates that the current countermeasure may be ineffective, or maybe it wasn’t below −3 when Yvain replied. But if the discussion cuts out after two steps, that might be good enough. Perhaps it should just be impossible to reply to anything if there’s more than two ancestors at −3 or below.
As far as I can tell, all three replies to that comment were made before it hit −3.
(I know that my reply was made with no penalty, and Yvain’s reply was already there at the time; wedrifid’s later comment also suggests that his reply wasn’t penalized.)
Here’s a nice trollfeeding from today:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ece/rationality_quotes_september_2012/7bbl
Of course this also indicates that the current countermeasure may be ineffective, or maybe it wasn’t below −3 when Yvain replied. But if the discussion cuts out after two steps, that might be good enough. Perhaps it should just be impossible to reply to anything if there’s more than two ancestors at −3 or below.
You know what would have prevented this?
If you’d told me in June, when I asked you for moderation guidelines beyond “kill shoe ads”, that I should ban comments like that.
As far as I can tell, all three replies to that comment were made before it hit −3.
(I know that my reply was made with no penalty, and Yvain’s reply was already there at the time; wedrifid’s later comment also suggests that his reply wasn’t penalized.)
But not all the subcomments.
(paid a karma cost to respond to this comment)
But then, the circumvention will be to stop using threaded comments properly and start new comment threads to reply to comments below the threshold.