I want to point out that it is possible that some of these downvotes* could be honest assessments of a comment history. If a user notices you by reading one comment, that user might become interested in other comments you’ve written, and if this person didn’t like one comment, he may also dislike other comments in which you express similar ideas.
* Which were not from me, because i have not read the conversation you linked to.
I say this because i realize that i have (arguably) done it before. I noticed a comment from one particular user which deserved to be downvoted. Then i read all the related conversations and downvoted the other comments in which that user repeated more or less the same thing. Then, i began reading earlier conversations in which that user had participated, and found that many of this user’s comments were bad for similar reasons, but i did upvote about 10% of them that were good.
Overall, the user who had been downvoted saw a sudden karma drop within several minutes; they specifically made an accusation of retributive downvoting.
Long story short: on at least one occasion, a user who complained about mass downvoting was actually experiencing a rapid series of honest downvotes.
I would argue that when you do this, you owe it to the person you are downvoting to explain WHY you believe they are systematically wrong. A series of downvotes + one helpful comment is far preferable to a simple series of downvotes, even if it costs you karma to do so. As an example:
See, just smacking someone without telling them WHY you’re smacking them leaves them to all sorts of conjecture as to what happened—if whomever had downvoted 30+ of my posts had left a single comment explaining why, I could have learned from it. As it is, I have no evidence to distinguish retribution from legitimate correction, and no data with which to correct myself even if it IS an attempt at legitimate correction.
Actually, thinking on this further, a series of downvotes plus an immediate comment explaining why is EXACTLY the right behavior—the sudden plunge in karma will get the user’s attention, which they can then direct to the reply—the combination of mild social shaming, “score penalizing” and corrective explanation is a quite powerful way to drive home a lesson.
Nonetheless, it would be a courtesy to send some written message if there is a common reason for the downvotes—at least for established user. If you’ve talked about more than one topic—like monkeymind didn’t—it’s hard to know from downvotes of old posts what someone wants less of.
I think any message of this sort is likely to lead to some unpleasantness. “Hey, I just downvoted a whole bunch of your old posts, but it’s ok because I actually did think that all of those posts were bad.” Downvote things that deserve to get downvoted, but don’t make a scene out of it that’s just going to poison the discussion.
I want to point out that it is possible that some of these downvotes* could be honest assessments of a comment history. If a user notices you by reading one comment, that user might become interested in other comments you’ve written, and if this person didn’t like one comment, he may also dislike other comments in which you express similar ideas.
* Which were not from me, because i have not read the conversation you linked to.
I say this because i realize that i have (arguably) done it before. I noticed a comment from one particular user which deserved to be downvoted. Then i read all the related conversations and downvoted the other comments in which that user repeated more or less the same thing. Then, i began reading earlier conversations in which that user had participated, and found that many of this user’s comments were bad for similar reasons, but i did upvote about 10% of them that were good.
Overall, the user who had been downvoted saw a sudden karma drop within several minutes; they specifically made an accusation of retributive downvoting.
Long story short: on at least one occasion, a user who complained about mass downvoting was actually experiencing a rapid series of honest downvotes.
I would argue that when you do this, you owe it to the person you are downvoting to explain WHY you believe they are systematically wrong. A series of downvotes + one helpful comment is far preferable to a simple series of downvotes, even if it costs you karma to do so. As an example:
my response to an apparent troll comment on Brain Preservation
See, just smacking someone without telling them WHY you’re smacking them leaves them to all sorts of conjecture as to what happened—if whomever had downvoted 30+ of my posts had left a single comment explaining why, I could have learned from it. As it is, I have no evidence to distinguish retribution from legitimate correction, and no data with which to correct myself even if it IS an attempt at legitimate correction.
Actually, thinking on this further, a series of downvotes plus an immediate comment explaining why is EXACTLY the right behavior—the sudden plunge in karma will get the user’s attention, which they can then direct to the reply—the combination of mild social shaming, “score penalizing” and corrective explanation is a quite powerful way to drive home a lesson.
I do this regularly. Finding comments worthy of downvotes is a (necessary) chore, but user histories are low-hanging fruit.
Nonetheless, it would be a courtesy to send some written message if there is a common reason for the downvotes—at least for established user. If you’ve talked about more than one topic—like monkeymind didn’t—it’s hard to know from downvotes of old posts what someone wants less of.
I think any message of this sort is likely to lead to some unpleasantness. “Hey, I just downvoted a whole bunch of your old posts, but it’s ok because I actually did think that all of those posts were bad.” Downvote things that deserve to get downvoted, but don’t make a scene out of it that’s just going to poison the discussion.