Thanks for your advice. I didn't mean it that way, but I see how it can be read as a direct attack on someone's intelligence. I'll avoid such usages in the future.

So as long as we're going to talk about unenforceable personal standards of ethics, maybe the standard (which had been my policy) of "always and everywhere try to vote solely based on quality of discussion" is better than "don't vote when I'm part of the discussion."

The problem with your alternative is that being in an argument alters your judgment of what counts as a good quality post. In additional to the usual "Politics is the mind-killer" truism, remember that we run on corrupted hardware.

You may think that it's better to go by: "Don't do X unless, all things considered, it would work for the greater good." But even if you want to follow that rule, you actually do a better job following it if you just go by "Don't do X", as long as X is easily abused and self-serving. That's the point of the post in the link.

And that's why I think it just doesn't work to say, "Oh, I'm modding down this comment because it's an obectively bad comment, not because I'm in a heated flamewar with them."

If you don't think it's worth your time to correct (what seems to you to be) someone's egregious misapprehension, then don't bother to do so. If you think a comment is poorly argued---maybe just downvote it?

See above for why I don't downvote in arguments I'm currently involved in.

But even setting that policy aside for a minute, you got several upmods, which gave the false impression your post was high quality, when it wasn't, and used a deceptively simple comparison that you didn't understand how to use correctly. Changing you from 3 to 2 wouldn't have done anything; people would still think you had a good point, since they probably didn't know the entire context that led up to the point about Cosmo.

And since the point about Cosmo was strong, and used to highlight a critical hole in Alicorn's point, I couldn't ignore it either.

Now, as long as we're suggesting ways it could have gone better, how about this: why don't you make sure you know what you're talking about before you get involved? In this case, that would mean presenting the evidence your comparison requires: a case of a male-oriented magazine that uses language that the men here consider beyond the pale in its offensiveness.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don't have an example in mind.

That's weird. Perhaps the system could be improved; there's currently nothing to disincentivize this behavior.

I have been driven-by several times. It sucks. Although I disagree with your stated habit of not voting and participating in the same thread, I have voted on your comments only as they've come up and only when I think there is a genuine issue of quality, not indiscriminately and on old comments. (I mention this because I'm probably an obvious suspect in some people's minds.)

I had that happen to me a while back to the tune of 80 karma lost in under half an hour. It's not an appropriate use of the voting system and I hope whoever is/was doing it to you stops.

I may disagree with what you say, but I'll recite the famous Voltaire quote until I'm blue in the face in your defense.

Maybe down-voting old comments shouldn't affect karma. After all, the more comments you make, the more potential karma you can lose from one person going through your history. I could probably lose all of my karma just by offending the wrong person. Besides, someone changing the points of an old comment no one may ever read again from 8 to 7 is hardly improving the quality of discourse.