I’ve experienced the same thing. I used to be annoyed when my karma suddenly dropped by 10 points, but more recently I had a 100 point drop within a time span of less than an hour. I’m guessing I’m growing more susceptible to it as my post count increases. I honestly don’t know what to do about this kind of thing, so for now I’ve decided to simply abstain from caring too much.
It would be nice if there were some sort of forum rule that prevented people from downvoting a single person too many times. That’s the best solution I can see right now, though it’s not perfect.
In your case, the vast majority of your comments are highly political, and frankly, unnecessarily emotional. It is far more likely therefore that people are simply reading the comments threads you are in, and downvoting comments as they read them.
I’ve also recently experienced a 100 point drop in total karma, between one night and the next morning, and my comments are not usually nearly that controversial. I have enough karma, and enough experience to get used to occasional downvotes, that it’s not a major source of distress, but I would not be surprised if mass-downvoting is becoming more common.
This doesn’t explain why all of my posts get downvoted at the same time, including posts that are entirely unrelated. A 100 point karma drop where before my posts were contentious but still mostly positive is an anomaly that should not be explained away so easily. Bear in mind that it’s not an either/or thing: people can downvote and upvote my posts for legitimate reasons, which is fine, while others block downvote, which is not fine. You can acknowledge the existence of block downvoting while still disliking my posts, that’s totally ok.
Huh? That’s a strangely hostile thing to say. Surely if I repeatedly experience my posts getting gradually upvoted only to then having them all suddenly downvoted so i go from +40 to −60 karma and all my positive posts are now negative… Then that’s exactly what the OP is about? The only signal I get from that is that a couple people really dislike me/ my style of writing, and I don’t think it makes sense to change entirely or go away purely because of that. That does not mean that I ignore what information each individual post’s karma provides, however.
I’ve experienced the same thing. I used to be annoyed when my karma suddenly dropped by 10 points, but more recently I had a 100 point drop within a time span of less than an hour. I’m guessing I’m growing more susceptible to it as my post count increases. I honestly don’t know what to do about this kind of thing, so for now I’ve decided to simply abstain from caring too much.
It would be nice if there were some sort of forum rule that prevented people from downvoting a single person too many times. That’s the best solution I can see right now, though it’s not perfect.
In your case, the vast majority of your comments are highly political, and frankly, unnecessarily emotional. It is far more likely therefore that people are simply reading the comments threads you are in, and downvoting comments as they read them.
I’ve also recently experienced a 100 point drop in total karma, between one night and the next morning, and my comments are not usually nearly that controversial. I have enough karma, and enough experience to get used to occasional downvotes, that it’s not a major source of distress, but I would not be surprised if mass-downvoting is becoming more common.
This doesn’t explain why all of my posts get downvoted at the same time, including posts that are entirely unrelated. A 100 point karma drop where before my posts were contentious but still mostly positive is an anomaly that should not be explained away so easily. Bear in mind that it’s not an either/or thing: people can downvote and upvote my posts for legitimate reasons, which is fine, while others block downvote, which is not fine. You can acknowledge the existence of block downvoting while still disliking my posts, that’s totally ok.
Not the same thing. Don’t ignore the signal: either change your mode of participation, or go away.
Huh? That’s a strangely hostile thing to say. Surely if I repeatedly experience my posts getting gradually upvoted only to then having them all suddenly downvoted so i go from +40 to −60 karma and all my positive posts are now negative… Then that’s exactly what the OP is about? The only signal I get from that is that a couple people really dislike me/ my style of writing, and I don’t think it makes sense to change entirely or go away purely because of that. That does not mean that I ignore what information each individual post’s karma provides, however.
Why?