Tenoke comments on Negative karma is a bad design - Less Wrong

-9 Post author: sanxiyn 13 December 2012 11:27AM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 14 December 2012 01:09:57AM 5 points [-]

And note how this "fix" would mask a troll, making his karma indistinguishable from a complete newbie.

Total karma scores still don't display below zero, although monthly karma scores do. If you want to know whether a person's karma score is zero or negative, and if so, how negative, you have to look at the scores on their comments. The current system is designed to make negative karma a burden that keeps people from posting beyond a brief reversal in conduct, without publicly displaying just how much the person in question has been downvoted.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 14 December 2012 06:50:31PM *  1 point [-]

Odd. Why should the community be in the dark about a negative karma score?

That's one thing about requirements: what the requirement is let's you build it, why the requirement is let's you maintain it.

Comment author: Emile 14 December 2012 08:48:01PM *  2 points [-]

As far as I know it's to discourage people from aiming for negative karma, and taking pride in how much they've been downvoted - as proof of their trolling or brave thinking out of the box or willingness to "tell truth to power" or whatever. I think that happened a few times.

(it's a bit like how sometimes punishing a misbehaving child can actually be "rewarding him with attention", and result in more frequent misbehaving)

Comment author: buybuydandavis 15 December 2012 04:38:27PM 2 points [-]

Interesting. Everything is a tradeoff. When people aren't alerted to a troll, there's a cost, and when they are, there's another cost.

Is there any mechanism for booting a troll?

Comment author: wedrifid 16 December 2012 03:53:41AM *  2 points [-]

Is there any mechanism for booting a troll?

Essentially, no. If I recall Alicorn has to delete individual comments rather than ban users... more by oversight than design. As far as I'm aware Eliezer hasn't got a "boot troll" feature available to him either. Matt would... via an SQL UPDATE if nothing else.

Comment author: Emile 15 December 2012 05:35:17PM 2 points [-]

Admins have the power to delete posts and comments, and probably users (though I can't think of a time it happened); I wouldn't be surprised if that was used mostly to fight spammers, not trolls.

Comment author: Desrtopa 14 December 2012 07:43:12PM 1 point [-]

I don't know why negative karma scores aren't displayed. I vaguely recall the matter being discussed back when the system was implemented, but I don't remember the reasoning behind it, if I was ever privy to it in the first place.