Please correct me if I’m misreading you here. You don’t trust yourself to assess whether a comment deserves a downvote, because humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases, and yet somehow you do trust yourself to assess that the other person has no idea of what she’s talking about, even though humans are subject to an arrayofegocentricbiases?
You might want to consider doing this the other way, extending interpretive charity but not karmic charity. In fact, I hereby urge you to vote however you want to on whatever comments you want to. After all, a few undeserved downvotes are of little importance, whereas, say, continuous swipes at other people’s intellectual competence and integrity (e.g., “Yeah, wanna rethink that one?” “This is the part where you’re supposed to realize the absurdity of your original response to my reaction,” “I heard you make an all-too-convenient claim about what you were, like, totally about to do,” “Now for the hard part!” “You’re kidding. It never occured to you [...]?” “a deceptively simple comparison that you didn’t understand how to use correctly,” “doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you,” “if you could present such evidence, or even realize its applicability, you would have already done so,” “why don’t you make sure you know what you’re talking about [...]?” “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don’t have an example,” &c.) have a tendency to drag the quality of discourse down. It’s worth keeping in mind that the karma system is supposed to be a mechanism that exists in the service promoting good discussion; discussion does not exist in the service of amassing karma points. I would much rather someone abuse her voting power than constantly taunt and belittle people.
I would much rather someone abuse her voting power than constantly taunt and belittle people.
If only because the former is much easier to correct. I frequently upvote comments (including ones I disagree with) with negative scores that seem to have no obvious, objective flaws, on the assumption that they were downvoted for disagreement.
The danger here is that someone else might later upvote because they think it’s a good comment, and thus your ‘corrective’ upvote is misplaced (as if you’d come along later you’d never have made it)
I have replied in the other thread.
Please correct me if I’m misreading you here. You don’t trust yourself to assess whether a comment deserves a downvote, because humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases, and yet somehow you do trust yourself to assess that the other person has no idea of what she’s talking about, even though humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases?
You might want to consider doing this the other way, extending interpretive charity but not karmic charity. In fact, I hereby urge you to vote however you want to on whatever comments you want to. After all, a few undeserved downvotes are of little importance, whereas, say, continuous swipes at other people’s intellectual competence and integrity (e.g., “Yeah, wanna rethink that one?” “This is the part where you’re supposed to realize the absurdity of your original response to my reaction,” “I heard you make an all-too-convenient claim about what you were, like, totally about to do,” “Now for the hard part!” “You’re kidding. It never occured to you [...]?” “a deceptively simple comparison that you didn’t understand how to use correctly,” “doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you,” “if you could present such evidence, or even realize its applicability, you would have already done so,” “why don’t you make sure you know what you’re talking about [...]?” “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don’t have an example,” &c.) have a tendency to drag the quality of discourse down. It’s worth keeping in mind that the karma system is supposed to be a mechanism that exists in the service promoting good discussion; discussion does not exist in the service of amassing karma points. I would much rather someone abuse her voting power than constantly taunt and belittle people.
If only because the former is much easier to correct. I frequently upvote comments (including ones I disagree with) with negative scores that seem to have no obvious, objective flaws, on the assumption that they were downvoted for disagreement.
The danger here is that someone else might later upvote because they think it’s a good comment, and thus your ‘corrective’ upvote is misplaced (as if you’d come along later you’d never have made it)
I’ve actually removed upvotes for precisely that reason, when I’ve noticed it happen.