As a matter of principle I think we should ignore such worries. (I’m aware that that’s easier for me to say, since I’ve been here for ages and have a reasonable supply of karma.) In response to intimidation attempts one should refuse to be intimidated, because that reduces the incentive to attempt intimidation.
It would be helpful, but it’s definitely not worth starting witch-hunts over. I don’t personally care for Reddit-style unlimited voting (the technically-present limit on downvoting is pretty irrelevant unless you want to absolutely mass-downvote people) but it does seem to even out to something approximating a balanced view from the community.
Even though I’m pretty new here, I likewise have enough karma that I’m not going to be intimidated by a single downvote on a bunch of my posts. On the other hand, because I’m new here, I’m somewhat conscious of the fact that this is an established community with some unwritten rules to go along with the written ones, and I’m therefore attempting to determine what is and is not considered acceptable around here.
If the downvoter’s intention is to discourage discussions like this, that backfired pretty badly; I now consider that person a coward and/or irrational, in that they either are afraid to or simply cannot justify their actions, and I am opposed to cooperating with their desires on that front alone. Oh, and I got more karma for my “what gives?” comment than I lost to all the downvotes I got on this thread anyhow. None of the comments seem to have been downvoted more than once, so it definitely resembles the work of a single person (NRx or otherwise) and not a community standard.
that backfired [...]; I now consider that person a coward and/or irrational
But unless you know who that person is, the fact that you believe “whoever did the mass-downvoting is an irrational coward” doesn’t actually harm the mass-downvoter. So it’s not clear how badly it really backfires.
(For this reason (1) I tend to deliberately post more when I find myself being mass-downvoted and (2) the technical measure I would most like to see against mass-downvoting is something that automatically publishes information about all recent mass-downvotes on a regular basis.)
The “backfired” I was referring to is that I now see this as a topic that is deemed more interesting to the community rather than less, and therefore one that there’s benefit to participating in. It’s true that the downvoter in question incurs no penalty aside from the limited impact on their pool of allowable downvotes, but they do also get to see this discussion they dislike so much continuing...
EDIT: I’d be in favor on some kind of anti-mass-downvote system.
the technical measure I would most like to see against mass-downvoting
LW could also employ the technique commonly used to prevent brute-forcing logins—limits on the rate of downvoting. Basically, the forum could allow (the numbers are arbitrary and are just examples here) 10 downvotes within 10 minutes, 15 within an hour, 20 within a day, 25 within two days, etc.
Yup. Though some of the mass-downvoting I’ve had has been gradual—a few points a day for several days—so it seems at least one LW mass-downvoter might not be so badly inconvenienced by this. (Have there been multiple LW mass-downvoters? I don’t know.)
Well, a few points for a few days doesn’t sound like mass-downvoting to me. Downvoting is a useful function, I don’t think we should be heading towards the situation when it would require an advance application for permission to downvote submitted in triplicate to a Very Important Committee.
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that, or anything sufficiently like it to warrant concern.
The behaviour I’m talking about is: A goes through all B’s old comments, systematically downvoting a few of them every day for some time. Not selecting particularly bad old comments, you understand; the comments themselves are irrelevant. The only goal is to be able to reduce A’s karma by a lot more than a single downvote would, without making it too blatant what you’re doing.
(Why old comments? 1. So it’s less obvious to anyone other than B what’s happening. 2. Because A has already downvoted all B’s recent comments.)
Well, you’re talking about the state of mind of the downvoter. Unfortunately, the technology to detect that isn’t available at the moment. What LW software can detect is that user X downvoted N1 comments by user Y on day 1, N2 comments on day 2, etc. As long as N is “a few”, I would be wary of drawing “mass-downvoting” conclusions from this pattern.
Also, I would recommend not getting into a technological arms race with people want to game the karma system.
This is the advantage of merely publicizing their behaviour rather than attempting to prevent it. Even if you get false positives or false negatives, the adverse consequences aren’t severe.
As a matter of principle I think we should ignore such worries. (I’m aware that that’s easier for me to say, since I’ve been here for ages and have a reasonable supply of karma.) In response to intimidation attempts one should refuse to be intimidated, because that reduces the incentive to attempt intimidation.
I thought people would think I was paranoid. It would be helpful if we could punish the defector.
It would be helpful, but it’s definitely not worth starting witch-hunts over. I don’t personally care for Reddit-style unlimited voting (the technically-present limit on downvoting is pretty irrelevant unless you want to absolutely mass-downvote people) but it does seem to even out to something approximating a balanced view from the community.
Even though I’m pretty new here, I likewise have enough karma that I’m not going to be intimidated by a single downvote on a bunch of my posts. On the other hand, because I’m new here, I’m somewhat conscious of the fact that this is an established community with some unwritten rules to go along with the written ones, and I’m therefore attempting to determine what is and is not considered acceptable around here.
If the downvoter’s intention is to discourage discussions like this, that backfired pretty badly; I now consider that person a coward and/or irrational, in that they either are afraid to or simply cannot justify their actions, and I am opposed to cooperating with their desires on that front alone. Oh, and I got more karma for my “what gives?” comment than I lost to all the downvotes I got on this thread anyhow. None of the comments seem to have been downvoted more than once, so it definitely resembles the work of a single person (NRx or otherwise) and not a community standard.
But unless you know who that person is, the fact that you believe “whoever did the mass-downvoting is an irrational coward” doesn’t actually harm the mass-downvoter. So it’s not clear how badly it really backfires.
(For this reason (1) I tend to deliberately post more when I find myself being mass-downvoted and (2) the technical measure I would most like to see against mass-downvoting is something that automatically publishes information about all recent mass-downvotes on a regular basis.)
The “backfired” I was referring to is that I now see this as a topic that is deemed more interesting to the community rather than less, and therefore one that there’s benefit to participating in. It’s true that the downvoter in question incurs no penalty aside from the limited impact on their pool of allowable downvotes, but they do also get to see this discussion they dislike so much continuing...
EDIT: I’d be in favor on some kind of anti-mass-downvote system.
LW could also employ the technique commonly used to prevent brute-forcing logins—limits on the rate of downvoting. Basically, the forum could allow (the numbers are arbitrary and are just examples here) 10 downvotes within 10 minutes, 15 within an hour, 20 within a day, 25 within two days, etc.
Yup. Though some of the mass-downvoting I’ve had has been gradual—a few points a day for several days—so it seems at least one LW mass-downvoter might not be so badly inconvenienced by this. (Have there been multiple LW mass-downvoters? I don’t know.)
Well, a few points for a few days doesn’t sound like mass-downvoting to me. Downvoting is a useful function, I don’t think we should be heading towards the situation when it would require an advance application for permission to downvote submitted in triplicate to a Very Important Committee.
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that, or anything sufficiently like it to warrant concern.
The behaviour I’m talking about is: A goes through all B’s old comments, systematically downvoting a few of them every day for some time. Not selecting particularly bad old comments, you understand; the comments themselves are irrelevant. The only goal is to be able to reduce A’s karma by a lot more than a single downvote would, without making it too blatant what you’re doing.
(Why old comments? 1. So it’s less obvious to anyone other than B what’s happening. 2. Because A has already downvoted all B’s recent comments.)
Do you think this is a “useful function”?
Well, you’re talking about the state of mind of the downvoter. Unfortunately, the technology to detect that isn’t available at the moment. What LW software can detect is that user X downvoted N1 comments by user Y on day 1, N2 comments on day 2, etc. As long as N is “a few”, I would be wary of drawing “mass-downvoting” conclusions from this pattern.
Also, I would recommend not getting into a technological arms race with people want to game the karma system.
This is the advantage of merely publicizing their behaviour rather than attempting to prevent it. Even if you get false positives or false negatives, the adverse consequences aren’t severe.