I’m in favor of the lower limit. There’s no reason that a spammer would be able to get even 1 vote, so that should take care of the problem by itself.
Getting 5 karma in the discussion section is easier than the main page, as there are more posts that a newbie can contribute to.
Plus, we don’t want to drive away people who are frustrated that they aren’t able to comment on discussion posts.
A spammer could very straightforwardly get as many votes as they wanted by creating sufficient accounts to that end. This would be exactly as effective as a dialog on the submit page that says “Put the letter after Q in the alphabet in the dialog to submit”: ie it will stop any bot that is not tuned to this site, but allow through any that is.
Not giving zero-Karma users leave to vote will stop this breach as well. (A more thorough solution would involve a form of conserved Karma currency—I wonder if this is in use anywhere—you could even introduce advanced instruments such as Karma loans.)
Yes, requiring karma to vote would stop this and would I think be a good idea, though it’s more development effort still. After that, see Raph Levien’s paper on “Attack Resistant Trust Metrics”.
On StackExchange sites, downvoting costs you karma—so it’s not a conserved Karma currency, but it’s still a use of Karma to prevent unwanted behaviors.
This is an interesting idea. The main qualm I have is with spam- am I going to spend my precious karma on hiding jewelry advertisements?- but otherwise it seems the right disincentive for being critical.
Well, ideally if a moderator deleted your comment as spam you’d get your karma back; or maybe downvoting shouldn’t be used as a way to deal with spam (there is a “report” button for that).
Down-voting contributes to site negativity, bad vibes, etc. On the other hand you don’t want to discourage users from interacting and providing feedback too much. It would be interesting to learn more about where the sweet spot here lies.
Captcha posts from new accounts for X amount of time, then? (Or X amount of time starting with their first post). Allow mods to short-circuit the time for posters deemed sufficiently human.
Crowdsource idea: Make “verified human” a separate flag in accounts. Designate a trusted circle as verified human. Allow any verified human to verify others as human. Posters of unknown species have posts start at −1 or −5. (I guess this is a degenerate case of /. meta-mod).
I’m in favor of the lower limit. There’s no reason that a spammer would be able to get even 1 vote, so that should take care of the problem by itself. Getting 5 karma in the discussion section is easier than the main page, as there are more posts that a newbie can contribute to. Plus, we don’t want to drive away people who are frustrated that they aren’t able to comment on discussion posts.
A spammer could very straightforwardly get as many votes as they wanted by creating sufficient accounts to that end. This would be exactly as effective as a dialog on the submit page that says “Put the letter after Q in the alphabet in the dialog to submit”: ie it will stop any bot that is not tuned to this site, but allow through any that is.
Not giving zero-Karma users leave to vote will stop this breach as well. (A more thorough solution would involve a form of conserved Karma currency—I wonder if this is in use anywhere—you could even introduce advanced instruments such as Karma loans.)
Yes, requiring karma to vote would stop this and would I think be a good idea, though it’s more development effort still. After that, see Raph Levien’s paper on “Attack Resistant Trust Metrics”.
Not as such, but the same purpose is frequently served by making votes give karma according to the karma of the voter.
On StackExchange sites, downvoting costs you karma—so it’s not a conserved Karma currency, but it’s still a use of Karma to prevent unwanted behaviors.
I would get a lot of pleasure out of spending my karma to penalise stupidity. Let me at them. :D
This is an interesting idea. The main qualm I have is with spam- am I going to spend my precious karma on hiding jewelry advertisements?- but otherwise it seems the right disincentive for being critical.
Well, ideally if a moderator deleted your comment as spam you’d get your karma back; or maybe downvoting shouldn’t be used as a way to deal with spam (there is a “report” button for that).
Down-voting contributes to site negativity, bad vibes, etc. On the other hand you don’t want to discourage users from interacting and providing feedback too much. It would be interesting to learn more about where the sweet spot here lies.
Exactly. But for now, that should be good enough.
The proposal is a karma requirement for making new discussion section posts not commenting on them.
Captcha posts from new accounts for X amount of time, then? (Or X amount of time starting with their first post). Allow mods to short-circuit the time for posters deemed sufficiently human.
Crowdsource idea: Make “verified human” a separate flag in accounts. Designate a trusted circle as verified human. Allow any verified human to verify others as human. Posters of unknown species have posts start at −1 or −5. (I guess this is a degenerate case of /. meta-mod).
Those solutions would require a bunch of new code. Much easier to withhold posting powers from users with under 5 karma.
Sorry, misread the post. I should probably stop reading LW at 6 A.M. and wait until I’m more awake.