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JohnH comments on On Debates with Trolls - Less Wrong
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As something of a troll, depending on what is meant by that at least, it is often quite interesting to debate with people that do not hold your point of view and are capable of making decent arguments. Too often one runs into arguments where both sides don't know what they are talking about in the slightest, which is terribly frustrating.
As for the Karma, I have had for a while enough karma to make a top level post, getting it isn't particularly hard. I would have much higher karma if I didn't occasionally post controversial comments.
If I were determined to actually troll I would create a group of accounts and post thoughtful comments for a day or so to build up some karma from outside sources. Then I would up vote one account using the dozen or so other accounts I had to give it plenty of Karma with which to make top level posts even with a decent amount of down votes. To slow the drop off I could continue up-voting that account with the other ones, however this wouldn't be worth while. Better would be to craft on the other accounts a series of posts attacking the top level troll post so that these other accounts get upvoted by tearing into the troll. This could create serial accounts to dominate the recent posts threads over a decently long period of time. I am sure there are ways in which this process could be optimized from the trolls point of view.
I have no intention of ever posting a top level post that is highly controversial. I am not that kind of troll.
Also one could probably create an semiautomatic spammer as well that had the purpose of defeating the karma requirements without much difficulty.
Basically create a core of accounts that is the size of the minimal number of Karma needed to make a top level post. Then one of those accounts needs to get one Karma, which hopefully can't be automated. Then one has to create some banal discussion that includes one post from each of the core accounts which then gets upvoted in a cycle.
Then start creating spam accounts, have it post randomly something like "I agree" on something and have the core accounts upvote that one post so the spam account can post the spam on the top page. Rinse and repeat.
It would be important to avoid detection to have a scripted discussion between the core accounts and to not have the spam accounts post on that discussion except according to the random algorithm that is being used.
There are probably ways to make this simpler to create and there may be easy ways to defeat such a program. This is just an idea.
We can implement a karma minimum for upvotes if that becomes a problem.
One interesting "feature" of the karma system that makes this a lot easier is that fact that upvotes/downvotes of deleted comments still contribute to your karma.
On the topic of karma, why are you downvoting every post I make regardless of content?
(Downvoted for making an accusation without presenting evidence.)
It's a long story, starting with Eugine publicly declaring that he was downvoting the comments I made that he disagreed with, which has seemingly escalated to downvoting every comment I make even where I'm just conducting meta-housekeeping and the like.
I'm not commenting to shame or accuse, I'm trying to understand his motivations.