I have a <proposal> that LW should have, and actively enforce, strong community norms against would-be intimidatory mass-downvoting that isn't (even in principle) justified by the demerits of the comments being downvoted.

'Intimidation' is a world like 'manipulation' in as much as it refers to influence provoking behaviours which is somewhat fuzzy and depends rather a lot on desired connotations. 'Intimidation' inherent in the purpose of the karma system. Users are granted the (trivial) power to use against comments so that users are intimidated out of posting things that aren't wanted.

There are instances of intimidation that are undesirable and others that work as intended. We both acknowledge that some downvotes that cause intimidation need preventing. We disagree on some cases. I'd also perhaps focus on the 'punitive' and 'systematic' aspects more so than 'intimidatory'.

and -- though I failed, at least initially, to make this clear -- I don't think it credible that that alone explains what I've been characterizing as would-be intimidatory downvoting of JoshuaZ's comments.

Conditional on JoshuaZ having recently experienced karma-assassination it seems unlikely that this comment would be an exception. Yet there are other obvious influences and confounding factors (topic-based downvoting for instance) that are also at play (as my testimony indicates). That is enough for me to force a clarification. I am happy with the specification you provided in the parent. Best of luck with your efforts!

Though, as it happens, I dislike many instances of this sort of topic-based downvoting and think it would be a bad thing if there were a concerted effort to prevent LW discussions of sexism, feminism, etc., in connection with HPMOR.

I thought similarly once. Observations of many such conversations changed my mind. Fortunately Reddit exists. There are plenty of other places to take the mind killing where it would be far more relevant and suitable.