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IlyaShpitser comments on A few remarks about mass-downvoting - Less Wrong
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I have two questions:
(a) Has there been a common feature of victims of mass downvoting (perhaps political views?), and
(b) Why do people care about karma so much? I don't think there is a lot of signal there.
(a) There is some evidence that engaging in discussions on gender and taking a view nearer the "feminist" than the "reactionary" end of the spectrum sometimes results in getting hit by mass-downvoting. I'm not sure whether other (leftish?) political opinions provoke it.
(b) I don't know how much is "so much", and hence in particular whether it's true that people care about karma "so much". But the karma system is part of how LW is built; it's meant to be somewhat motivating for writers and somewhat informative for readers. Indiscriminate downvoting (or for that matter indiscriminate upvoting, though oddly one rarely hears of people complaining that this has happened to them) of a particular user's comments is liable to distort both.
It's more informative for writers than readers, IMO.
Some of my most upvoted posts were ones where I was venting and expected to be dinged on. I often get downvoted for tone, so when a rant gets a large and consistently positive vote, I find that an interesting tell. I don't think I've hit on an interpretation yet, but those are my posts that I should be interpreting. I notice that I am confused, etc.
Enough to write a top level post about it.
I care about mass-downvoting because I think it is damaging to the LW community. If that counts as "caring about karma so much" then I suppose that indeed I do, but I don't really see why it should be surprising.
Because people are not rational, and, in particular do not like negative feedback.
In this community it might be more accurate to say that people do not like useless negative feedback. I'm perfectly happy to get useful negative feedback, and I think most who participate here would agree.
[ETA: A heavily downvoted post is useful information; it says people don't like what you posted, and this is something you can analyze, ignore, or change appropriately. Mass-downvoting is discouraging without providing anything useful; it says someone doesn't like what you posted because you're you, and that's kind of hard to change.
My personal opinion is that mass-downvoting is basically trolling and that complaining about it is counterproductive for the same reason that responding to trolls is counterproductive.]