Open Thread, January 15-31, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

(I plan to make these threads from now on. Downvote if you disapprove. If I miss one, feel free to do it yourself.)

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

(I plan to make these threads from now on. Downvote if you disapprove. If I miss one, feel free to do it yourself.)

I sometimes run into a situation where I see a comment I'm ambivalent about about, that I would normally not vote on. However, this comment also has an extreme vote total, either very high or very low. I would prefer this comment to be more like 0, but I'm not sure it's acceptable to vote according to what I want the total to be, as opposed to what I think about the post, because it gives me more voting power than I would otherwise have. What do you do in this situation?

I have previous thought that maybe karma should be hidden until after you vote.

But then there's the problem where part of the point of karma is to tell you whether something is worth reading. If karma was hidden until after voting, users would still have their total karma to motivate them, and we could still hide sufficiently negative comments.

Maybe we should hide comment karma before voting, but not article karma?

2MixedNuts14y

You should vote without knowledge of total karma, otherwise it biases comments' karma scores towards 0 (except at extremes, where it creates bandwagon effects). Power doesn't enter into it, though.

16wedrifid14y

You get to modify the karma rating by one in either direction. Do so in whatever manner seems most desirable to you. You have too much voting power if you create a sock puppet and vote twice.