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SoullessAutomaton comments on Wanting to Want - Less Wrong
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The phrase you're looking for is probably "socially acceptable" or "social norm". The phrase "politically correct" is primarily used as a connotationally-loaded derogatory for social norms the speaker disagrees with, and to signal, in a beliefs-as-attire manner, group membership with certain political positions. If you want to criticize social norms, which I agree is a rewarding and enjoyable hobby, you would do better to name the specific norms you take issue with, rather than using a catch-all term for norms you dislike.
For instance: Which claims of exclusion are not acceptable to raise that you think ought to be? Why? What norms would you prefer?
Okay. Which specific normative demands are you rejecting?
So you accept inclusiveness as valuable, but disagree with explanations given by individuals who felt excluded for why they felt that way, and feel that others are neglecting the spirit of mutual understanding across a cultural barrier? I'm not sure I follow.
Then I confess I am at a loss as to what your point in all this was, as you seem to have stated is a rejection of something that other people said without any real explanation as to what you're rejecting, or why.
I don't normally remark on such things, but I'm a bit discouraged to note the following:
Karma is easy-come, easy-go, but I'm thinking that someone is not exactly participating in good faith here.
By way of confirmation, this has indeed happened to both myself and at least one other commenter previously (I'll leave it to them whether they want to reveal themselves). I had been waiting to see whether it would happen again to be sure, but we now seem to have pretty good evidence of bad faith.
As SoullessAutomaton notes, the karma itself is not much of an issue, but it's nonetheless rather disappointing to see this sort of behavior. It's not immediately clear whether there's much to be done about it other than public shaming, but as a possible means of preventing this happening again, I don't suppose there's any way to revoke the downvoting privileges of those who seem to be abusing the system?
I was the other commenter, and confirm the observation.
This is unfortunate, perhaps there should be a top level post to discuss the wise way to respond.
For the record, I've been known to downvote large numbers of posts at once (since I'm only here looking at comments for short periods of time, and downvote a lot of posts) but I read them first. Not so much lately, due to the extremely limited number of downvotes available.
While I do not profess to understand the motivation for it, your apparent conviction that a substantial percentage of comments ought to be voted down is of an entirely different character than a mass downvoting aimed at a specific person, targetting what seems to be all of their comments from the past three weeks or so. The latter kind of behavior I would expect on sites like Digg; I tend to expect better of people here.
Let's consider a less convenient possible world. I come across several stupid comments, realize that the author has a lot of karma, and then start reading their old comments. Careful reading, including the context when necessary, leads me to believe half of their old comments are bad or overrated, and deserving of a downvote. I would argue that making those downvotes is justified, but I'd like to think I have better things to do than read and vote on comments on dead threads.
Edit: this comment may be confusing, please read my follow up to orthonormal.
Don't use "least convenient possible world" to mean "a different hypothesis to explain what you're seeing". We don't want the usage to get confused.
EDIT: Also, it's unlikely for this effect to result in every one of SA's last 80 comments being downvoted once.
I'm sorry I was unclear. I didn't mean to suggest that this was an alternative explanation for this event. In fact, as you point out, the hypothetical I described contradicts SA's testimony in an important way (the proportion of the comments downvoted).
The reason I brought up the hypothetical was to promote discussion about scenarios that are more difficult to evaluate than what actually appears to have occurred.
I've previously asked Tricycle for the ability to monitor this sort of thing. I will ask them again.
For the record, this sort of systematic downvoting is not only not in good faith, but grounds for removal of the ability to downvote.