What if somebody else had a similar button, but with 1 in 100,000 probability. Would it be ok to threaten to push your 1 in a million button if the other guy pressed his 1 in 100,000 button? If you had reason to believe that the other guy, for some reason, would take your threat seriously, but wasn't taking the threat of his own button seriously?

OK, that got kind of convoluted, but do you see what I'm saying?

Aha! This has happened several times now, and waitingforgodel mentioned something in his reply which clarified what happened. He started from the link to Roko's name on the top contributors link, which produces only a vague comment about something having been deleted, without the reason, details, or link. Anyone with access to Google can track down the link, but it'll take them some time, during which they get to fume without an explanation; and it's pretty much random which part of the story they'll start out at.

I don't really object to people who really want to see it tracking down the post and comments, and I realize they certainly can't be gotten rid of, having been public on the internet for awhile and recognized as controversial. But having people encounter a vague hint at first, and having to track it down - that generates negative emotion, and puts them in an irrational state of mind that makes them want to go start a flamewar about it. It would be much better if the first thing they encountered was a truthful but nonspecific overview of what happened, rather than a tantalizing hint.

Therefore, the solution is for four people to pass 8082 karma. I am going through the archives and voting up worthy posts by contributors 8-10 (cousin_it, AnnaSalamon and Vladimir_Nesov). I will also try to pass that karma mark myself, by finishing up the collection of half-written article ideas I have lying around. (It's quite a stretch, but it's also a usable motivator for an otherwise worthy goal).

(Edited to add: I don't normally support doing funky things with the karma system, but this is important.)