I think this is an important risk, even though people are tired of meta discussion (and these posts are way too long for their useful content). This use case should be captured in some plan. Right now all we have is possibility of shutting down and possibly recovering from an archive, and that is not a good solution.
People with 0 Karma can still upvote, so there is a danger that new members will just upvote each other quickly. This problem could be solved if there is enough latency between a point where a user starts participating and where they can influence moderation by voting, i.e. only allow voting (both upvoting and downvoting) after a significant threshold, something like 500 Karma points, so that it would take at least a month at typical Karma gain rates of very active users to get there, sufficient for vetting of new members.
Current limitation of 4xKarma on downvoting amplifies initial votes, so can run out of control if applied to upvoting. If upvoting is limited to, say, 0.5xKarma, then any vote granted to a new member releases the potential effect of 1+0.5+0.5^2+...=2 points; if it’s 0.9xKarma, it has the potential effect of 10 points, and 1xKarma is critical, with potentially unlimited effect. So below 500 points where we may decide that a new user is known to be acculturated enough, no more than about 0.5xKarma of upvotes should be allowed.
People with 0 Karma can still upvote, so there is a danger that new members will just upvote each other quickly. This problem could be solved if there is enough latency between a point where a user starts participating and where they can influence moderation by voting, i.e. only allow voting (both upvoting and downvoting) after a significant threshold, something like 500 Karma points, so that it would take at least a month at typical Karma gain rates of very active users to get there, sufficient for vetting of new members.
I made a very similar proposal recently, just set at 1000 karma. There is some discussion there on the ups and downs of such an approach behind the link.
I think this is an important risk, even though people are tired of meta discussion (and these posts are way too long for their useful content). This use case should be captured in some plan. Right now all we have is possibility of shutting down and possibly recovering from an archive, and that is not a good solution.
People with 0 Karma can still upvote, so there is a danger that new members will just upvote each other quickly. This problem could be solved if there is enough latency between a point where a user starts participating and where they can influence moderation by voting, i.e. only allow voting (both upvoting and downvoting) after a significant threshold, something like 500 Karma points, so that it would take at least a month at typical Karma gain rates of very active users to get there, sufficient for vetting of new members.
Current limitation of 4xKarma on downvoting amplifies initial votes, so can run out of control if applied to upvoting. If upvoting is limited to, say, 0.5xKarma, then any vote granted to a new member releases the potential effect of 1+0.5+0.5^2+...=2 points; if it’s 0.9xKarma, it has the potential effect of 10 points, and 1xKarma is critical, with potentially unlimited effect. So below 500 points where we may decide that a new user is known to be acculturated enough, no more than about 0.5xKarma of upvotes should be allowed.
I made a very similar proposal recently, just set at 1000 karma. There is some discussion there on the ups and downs of such an approach behind the link.