Out of curiosity, is he still serial downvoting? I thought of something that may convince him to stop: Instead of deleting his accounts, disable them and convert all their downvotes against known targets into upvotes (and make sure he knows that). If all his efforts end up benefiting the very people he’s trying to hurt, well...
I think all downvotes—perhaps in fact all votes, up or down—of all Eugine’s accounts should be undone (not turned into upvotes, that would be going too far) as the accounts are zapped. (I think Eugine does what he does largely as a form of culture-war, and I think it’s at least possible he’s rational enough to be less inclined to do it if its effects are completely obliterated every time.)
I think the moderators may have some more general and glorious plan for dealing with Eugine-like problems, and may not want to act too vigorously in case doing so somehow conflicts with what they want to do later (e.g., by erasing useful information about what Eugine’s various incarnations did when). I am not convinced that they’re making the tradeoff optimally—but being an LW mod must be a thankless enough task that I feel bad making even the very mild criticism in this sentence.
[EDITED to add: I should confess that I am not an impartial observer here; it looks to me as if whenever Eugine gets an account over +10 karma the first thing he does is to start downvoting my comments, and I’m getting bored of it.]
I don’t read Error’s proposal as being about spiting him, but about deterring his antisocial activities. (But I agree that Error’s specific proposal goes too far. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence, etc.)
You could perhaps nullify the upvotes after a few months to preserve the system in the long run. The idea is that the short-term effect of his actions should be net-negative from his own perspective.
Other ways of achieving the same effect may also work; that was just what I came up with after five minutes of thinking about it.
Yeah, this is one of the points where I agree with Lumifer. I’m one of Eugine Neir’s biggest targets, as is gjm, but I think reversing karma is not the best move. Negating the karma would be optimal here.
Out of curiosity, is he still serial downvoting? I thought of something that may convince him to stop: Instead of deleting his accounts, disable them and convert all their downvotes against known targets into upvotes (and make sure he knows that). If all his efforts end up benefiting the very people he’s trying to hurt, well...
Yes, still serial-downvoting.
I think all downvotes—perhaps in fact all votes, up or down—of all Eugine’s accounts should be undone (not turned into upvotes, that would be going too far) as the accounts are zapped. (I think Eugine does what he does largely as a form of culture-war, and I think it’s at least possible he’s rational enough to be less inclined to do it if its effects are completely obliterated every time.)
I think the moderators may have some more general and glorious plan for dealing with Eugine-like problems, and may not want to act too vigorously in case doing so somehow conflicts with what they want to do later (e.g., by erasing useful information about what Eugine’s various incarnations did when). I am not convinced that they’re making the tradeoff optimally—but being an LW mod must be a thankless enough task that I feel bad making even the very mild criticism in this sentence.
[EDITED to add: I should confess that I am not an impartial observer here; it looks to me as if whenever Eugine gets an account over +10 karma the first thing he does is to start downvoting my comments, and I’m getting bored of it.]
Making karma an even less useful indicator strikes me as a poor trade-off for spiting Eugine...
I don’t read Error’s proposal as being about spiting him, but about deterring his antisocial activities. (But I agree that Error’s specific proposal goes too far. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence, etc.)
as a one-off action, or as a threat alone, it might be viable as a deterrent.
You could perhaps nullify the upvotes after a few months to preserve the system in the long run. The idea is that the short-term effect of his actions should be net-negative from his own perspective.
Other ways of achieving the same effect may also work; that was just what I came up with after five minutes of thinking about it.
Yeah, this is one of the points where I agree with Lumifer. I’m one of Eugine Neir’s biggest targets, as is gjm, but I think reversing karma is not the best move. Negating the karma would be optimal here.
Turning downvotes into upvotes—no. That’s adding noise to the system.
Removing downvotes—yes. That’s removing something we already consider a noise.