“6 Karma across 11 votes” is, like, not good. It’s about what I’d expect from a comment that is “mildly toxic [but] does raise [a] valid consideration” and “none of the offenses … are particularly heinous”, as you put it. (For better or worse, comments here generally don’t get downvoted into the negative unless they’re pretty heinous; as I write this only one comment on this post has been voted to zero, and that comment’s only response describes it as “borderline-unintelligible”.) It sounds like you’re interpreting the score as something like qualified approval because it’s above zero, but taking into account the overall voting pattern I interpret the score more like “most people generally dislike the comment and want to push it to the back of the line, even if they don’t want to actively silence the voice”. This would explain Rob calibrating the strength of his downvote over time.
“6 Karma across 11 votes” is, like, not good. It’s about what I’d expect from a comment that is “mildly toxic [but] does raise [a] valid consideration” and “none of the offenses … are particularly heinous”, as you put it. (For better or worse, comments here generally don’t get downvoted into the negative unless they’re pretty heinous; as I write this only one comment on this post has been voted to zero, and that comment’s only response describes it as “borderline-unintelligible”.) It sounds like you’re interpreting the score as something like qualified approval because it’s above zero, but taking into account the overall voting pattern I interpret the score more like “most people generally dislike the comment and want to push it to the back of the line, even if they don’t want to actively silence the voice”. This would explain Rob calibrating the strength of his downvote over time.
This is really helpful. Thanks!