My instinct is often to upvote or downvote comments/posts based on how much karma I think they should display. E.g., maybe I think two comments by new users both deserve about 10 karma, but one is currently at 10 while the other is currently at 18. I might then strong-downvote the latter comment to bring it to 10, while ignoring the former comment. This is all well and good, except under your system, it would lead to two equally good comments conferring +9 karma on one new user and somewhere between −7 and −15 karma on another.
The ideal solution to this might be for me to try to retrain my voting habits rather than modify the system to accommodate them. This is harder if my voting habits are shared by others, though.
One option might be to weight downvotes more heavily the lower the post/comment’s karma was when the downvote occurred? I’m a lot more willing to downvote (and strong-downvote) something that currently has +70 karma than something that currently has +10 karma, because I’m likelier to think that the +70 is an overestimate and that lowering that total a bit is harmless. But that greater willingness means that my average downvote of a +70 post means a lot less than my average downvote of a +10 post.
My instinct is often to upvote or downvote comments/posts based on how much karma I think they should display. E.g., maybe I think two comments by new users both deserve about 10 karma, but one is currently at 10 while the other is currently at 18. I might then strong-downvote the latter comment to bring it to 10, while ignoring the former comment. This is all well and good, except under your system, it would lead to two equally good comments conferring +9 karma on one new user and somewhere between −7 and −15 karma on another.
The ideal solution to this might be for me to try to retrain my voting habits rather than modify the system to accommodate them. This is harder if my voting habits are shared by others, though.
One option might be to weight downvotes more heavily the lower the post/comment’s karma was when the downvote occurred? I’m a lot more willing to downvote (and strong-downvote) something that currently has +70 karma than something that currently has +10 karma, because I’m likelier to think that the +70 is an overestimate and that lowering that total a bit is harmless. But that greater willingness means that my average downvote of a +70 post means a lot less than my average downvote of a +10 post.
I think I agree, something in this direction may be a better approach.