It really is, though. There is a large difference between looking down upon a behavior, and punishment (public shaming or whatever else, though the first is particularly distasteful). (Not that there has been a clear consensus on the topic*, anyways. I, for one, can see circumstances under which it is warranted, and circumstances under which it’s not. Of course, once there’s an official policy on it, I’d defer to that.)
There is plenty of behavior I observe every day (in “real life”) which I look down upon / which is generally looked down upon. That is not at all the same as those people being fined / thrown in jail / whatever analogue you envision.
I’m sure you’re imaginative enough to come up with such circumstances yourself. But since you asked, Sherlock, enjoy a hypothetical villain’s soliloquy:
‘Well kept gardens die by pacifism’ can be applied here (though it cuts both ways). This community’s unique characteristic is its high signal-to-noise ratio. Consider if someone consistently flooded the board with perceived-no-value-ergo-noise comments. Given the low frequency of comments on this board overall, such a dribble would easily dominate/drown out the daily comment feed. Consistent downvotes to tell that commenter to, in effect, “go away”, could be one response, especially given the near-trivial effort, the use of provided mechanisms and the lack of clear guidelines against (as evident by the frequent discussions on the issue, which did not focus on the technical aspect alone). Note that outright telling someone “this is the wrong place for you, go away” has also occurred. Is this subjective? Of course it is, what else would it be? Note that this was just one example. I could provide many more (as, I hope, could you), depending on time constraints and how finely we partition the categories.
That being said, I see more circumstances under which it is not warranted.
To suggest that a user whose comments you’d find both ubiquitous and worthless would also be so judged by a moderator “examining the case” seems like folly to me. Do you by extension suggest that people always vote the exact same, too? When you downvote a comment, would you expect everyone else to also downvote that comment, because the downvote would be “obvious”? Why would it be different with a moderator.
Such things are evidently subjective. There is a difference between using your own voting to convey a message, and bringing in some authority figure to “examine the case”. All these courses of action are not equal.
I’m sure you can imagine comments that you yourself find interesting, while others find worthless. I myself have written many such comments, little puns in particular. Just imagine a long string of them. There you go.
If a user’s history is controversial (both upvoted and downvoted) versus only downvoted, then punishing you for downvoting all (90%+) of their comments (if they have more than a few) is completely justified.
At any rate, here is an extra filter to prevent false positives even further—if you look at the comments where only the offender has downvoted and you see neutral comments (those which would have neither been downvoted nor upvoted normally) there, then you know there is a problem.
then punishing you for downvoting all (90%+) of their comments … is completely justified
Can I ask for some reasoning underlying this? In particular, I’m interested in what, in general, justifies punishment and who gets to decide whom to punish for what.
I see no discussion on what justifies punishment, I see people saying “I would punish the guy”, “I would not punish the guy”. And the issue on who gets to decide is mostly absent, too, there is only that faceless “we”.
You’re missing the point, you can downvote a comment because you want to see fewer such comments. There is no reason—absent rules—that couldn’t extend to all of a poster’s comments if you want to see fewer comments by that person. There are benefits to sending clear signals. This isn’t some official process—it’s simply an expression of your personal preferences, not anyone else’s. Your “offender” and “punishment” fixation when conflating “I don’t like this behavior” with “this behavior must be punished” is a bit frustrating, given we have rules on a host of issues, but no rule yet on this one. It’s simply using your own karma.
The only time I tried this I quickly gave up, because the poster I didn’t want to see used the monthly quotes threads to karma boost. A malicious user that’s intelligent can pretty much troll however they want and still have positive karma simply by copy/pasting quotes into the the quote threads.
This doesn’t really apply to the topic at hand, but the quote threads are a serious karma problem, because they provide an effort-free way to generate huge amounts of karma.
Yeah, I’m arguing against that mindset as a whole. I’d much rather people only downvote the content they disagree with, and to leave the other comments alone.
Anyway, so you think that it is fine, if for example I got annoyed at you during this discussion and went and downvoted all your unrelated to this comments in order to see fewer comments by you in the future?
I wouldn’t like it, but there is a difference (a rather large one) between not liking it and thinking that person should be punished for it.
I’m not in control of his/her downvote button, he/she is. This topic has come up many times, and yet no consensus has ever been reached. And it wasn’t only because of technical problems, either. Your preferences are your own, just leave me out of them, in a nutshell. (I did sign off on this, but didn’t want to leave your question unanswered. Stupid red letter symbol!)
It really is, though. There is a large difference between looking down upon a behavior, and punishment (public shaming or whatever else, though the first is particularly distasteful). (Not that there has been a clear consensus on the topic*, anyways. I, for one, can see circumstances under which it is warranted, and circumstances under which it’s not. Of course, once there’s an official policy on it, I’d defer to that.)
There is plenty of behavior I observe every day (in “real life”) which I look down upon / which is generally looked down upon. That is not at all the same as those people being fined / thrown in jail / whatever analogue you envision.
* Case in point: This discussion exists.
Go on
I’m sure you’re imaginative enough to come up with such circumstances yourself. But since you asked, Sherlock, enjoy a hypothetical villain’s soliloquy:
‘Well kept gardens die by pacifism’ can be applied here (though it cuts both ways). This community’s unique characteristic is its high signal-to-noise ratio. Consider if someone consistently flooded the board with perceived-no-value-ergo-noise comments. Given the low frequency of comments on this board overall, such a dribble would easily dominate/drown out the daily comment feed. Consistent downvotes to tell that commenter to, in effect, “go away”, could be one response, especially given the near-trivial effort, the use of provided mechanisms and the lack of clear guidelines against (as evident by the frequent discussions on the issue, which did not focus on the technical aspect alone). Note that outright telling someone “this is the wrong place for you, go away” has also occurred. Is this subjective? Of course it is, what else would it be? Note that this was just one example. I could provide many more (as, I hope, could you), depending on time constraints and how finely we partition the categories.
That being said, I see more circumstances under which it is not warranted.
Can you provide an example where this wouldn’t be obvious to the moderator examining the case?
I honestly put a very low probability on the occurrence of even a single punishment due to a false positive..
I’m not going to call out specific users here.
You know, privacy concerns, a strong preference against public shaming, and all that.
s/example/hypothetical/
To suggest that a user whose comments you’d find both ubiquitous and worthless would also be so judged by a moderator “examining the case” seems like folly to me. Do you by extension suggest that people always vote the exact same, too? When you downvote a comment, would you expect everyone else to also downvote that comment, because the downvote would be “obvious”? Why would it be different with a moderator.
Such things are evidently subjective. There is a difference between using your own voting to convey a message, and bringing in some authority figure to “examine the case”. All these courses of action are not equal.
I’m sure you can imagine comments that you yourself find interesting, while others find worthless. I myself have written many such comments, little puns in particular. Just imagine a long string of them. There you go.
If a user’s history is controversial (both upvoted and downvoted) versus only downvoted, then punishing you for downvoting all (90%+) of their comments (if they have more than a few) is completely justified.
At any rate, here is an extra filter to prevent false positives even further—if you look at the comments where only the offender has downvoted and you see neutral comments (those which would have neither been downvoted nor upvoted normally) there, then you know there is a problem.
Can I ask for some reasoning underlying this? In particular, I’m interested in what, in general, justifies punishment and who gets to decide whom to punish for what.
There is a discussion on this exact topic here.
I see no discussion on what justifies punishment, I see people saying “I would punish the guy”, “I would not punish the guy”. And the issue on who gets to decide is mostly absent, too, there is only that faceless “we”.
You’re missing the point, you can downvote a comment because you want to see fewer such comments. There is no reason—absent rules—that couldn’t extend to all of a poster’s comments if you want to see fewer comments by that person. There are benefits to sending clear signals. This isn’t some official process—it’s simply an expression of your personal preferences, not anyone else’s. Your “offender” and “punishment” fixation when conflating “I don’t like this behavior” with “this behavior must be punished” is a bit frustrating, given we have rules on a host of issues, but no rule yet on this one. It’s simply using your own karma.
Anyways, I’m signing off on this.
You’re missing the point that we are not talking about downvotes of specific comments, but downvotes of most comments by an user.
The only time I tried this I quickly gave up, because the poster I didn’t want to see used the monthly quotes threads to karma boost. A malicious user that’s intelligent can pretty much troll however they want and still have positive karma simply by copy/pasting quotes into the the quote threads.
This doesn’t really apply to the topic at hand, but the quote threads are a serious karma problem, because they provide an effort-free way to generate huge amounts of karma.
Yeah, I’m arguing against that mindset as a whole. I’d much rather people only downvote the content they disagree with, and to leave the other comments alone.
Anyway, so you think that it is fine, if for example I got annoyed at you during this discussion and went and downvoted all your unrelated to this comments in order to see fewer comments by you in the future?
I wouldn’t like it, but there is a difference (a rather large one) between not liking it and thinking that person should be punished for it.
I’m not in control of his/her downvote button, he/she is. This topic has come up many times, and yet no consensus has ever been reached. And it wasn’t only because of technical problems, either. Your preferences are your own, just leave me out of them, in a nutshell. (I did sign off on this, but didn’t want to leave your question unanswered. Stupid red letter symbol!)