I see your points, but...
Thank you for listening to them.
At some point,
Exactly. "At some point." We were a good ways away from the hypothetical you described. Social response should be commensurate with the social problem.
The example given is some guy who lost like 40 points? Let's say that was the scale of the issue for a dozen people. This is a trivial problem for any individual, save for their propensity to curl up in a fetal position when someone on the internet expresses through those 40 points that he thinks their posts aren't up to snuff.
I think I've lost more karma responding to this nonsense, and spent much time responding as well, because I find the response a little out of proportion, a little unfair, and worst of all, an empowering of the "you hurt my feelings, shut up" principle.
The social problem he was responding to was a perceived worsening of the signal to noise ratio, and a sizable chunk of the list seemed to share that opinion, and share that karma feedback was an appropriate response for the desired end state of shutting some people up, though I think that individual karma bombing has limited support.
I believe the solution I had suggested was for the moderators to contact the karma bomber and tell him "hey, you're causing a problem, can you knock it off?"
That might have ended it without further escalation, and we could have all go on our merry way.
I don't know the details of the discussion between Kaj and Eugine. Maybe that was it.
Solution if he won't knock it off?
I'm torn. Which is the bigger problem - people taking action to protect their tender ears from the "noise" of posts they don't like, or people taking action to protect their tender feelings from being hurt when someone expresses disapproval? Both are quite disruptive and tiresome, IMO.
First, there should be pretty easy technical countermeasures that would limit the power of any karma bombing campaign. Limiting all votes to your karma limit would be a nice start, particularly compelling to the signal to noise enthusiasts.
Second, often these "I've been karma bombed" threads provoke a karma telethon, where the target gets karma back and "validation" from interested parties. User affirmed, gets karma back, and widespread condemnation of karma bombing educates users on the problem of karma bombing and the general disapproval of it. Probably a necessary price to pay periodically.
Third, if the list wants to make an explicit policy against karma bombing, fine, let them do it, but applying it retroactively is bad form, IMO. The policy could be made after a thread inviting opinions on the policy, where people could discuss the general issue of policy somewhat divorced from their interest in a particular instance. This is a price I'd hope we could have avoided.
Fourth - I think there is widespread disapproval of karma bombing, even from the signal to noise purifiers. If the behavior continues in the face of explicit policy, then you can kick him off while mitigating any backlash and mollifying people with more concern for due process.
You make some valid points. And possibly I'd have done things differently, were I a moderator. Possibly.
But this kind of phrasing isn't helpful:
people taking action to protect their tender ears from the "noise" of posts they don't like, or people taking action to protect their tender feelings from being hurt when someone expresses disapproval?
Either the overall Karma system does its job (by using feelings, or reputation, or whatever), or it doesn't. It doesn't, no one would care. Clearly, they do care, so it is doing some of its job. Yay!
Eu...
As previously discussed, on June 6th I received a message from jackk, a Trike Admin. He reported that the user Jiro had asked Trike to carry out an investigation to the retributive downvoting that Jiro had been subjected to. The investigation revealed that the user Eugine_Nier had downvoted over half of Jiro's comments, amounting to hundreds of downvotes.
I asked the community's guidance on dealing with the issue, and while the matter was being discussed, I also reviewed previous discussions about mass downvoting and looked for other people who mentioned being the victims of it. I asked Jack to compile reports on several other users who mentioned having been mass-downvoted, and it turned out that Eugine was also overwhelmingly the biggest downvoter of users David_Gerard, daenarys, falenas108, ialdabaoth, shminux, and Tenoke. As this discussion was going on, it turned out that user Ander had also been targeted by Eugine.
I sent two messages to Eugine, requesting an explanation. I received a response today. Eugine admitted his guilt, expressing the opinion that LW's karma system was failing to carry out its purpose of keeping out weak material and that he was engaged in a "weeding" of users who he did not think displayed sufficient rationality.
Needless to say, it is not the place of individual users to unilaterally decide that someone else should be "weeded" out of the community. The Less Wrong content deletion policy contains this clause:
Although the wording does not explicitly mention downvoting, harassment by downvoting is still harassment. Several users have indicated that they have experienced considerable emotional anguish from the harassment, and have in some cases been discouraged from using Less Wrong at all. This is not a desirable state of affairs, to say the least.
I was originally given my moderator powers on a rather ad-hoc basis, with someone awarding mod privileges to the ten users with the highest karma at the time. The original purpose for that appointment was just to delete spam. Nonetheless, since retributive downvoting has been a clear problem for the community, I asked the community for guidance on dealing with the issue. The rough consensus of the responses seemed to authorize me to deal with the problem as I deemed appropriate.
The fact that Eugine remained quiet about his guilt until directly confronted with the evidence, despite several public discussions of the issue, is indicative of him realizing that he was breaking prevailing social norms. Eugine's actions have worsened the atmosphere of this site, and that atmosphere will remain troubled for as long as he is allowed to remain here.
Therefore, I now announce that Eugine_Nier is permanently banned from posting on LessWrong. This decision is final and will not be changed in response to possible follow-up objections.
Unfortunately, it looks like while a ban prevents posting, it does not actually block a user from casting votes. I have asked jackk to look into the matter and find a way to actually stop the downvoting. Jack indicated earlier on that it would be technically straightforward to apply a negative karma modifier to Eugine's account, and wiping out Eugine's karma balance would prevent him from casting future downvotes. Whatever the easiest solution is, it will be applied as soon as possible.
EDIT 24 July 2014: Banned users are now prohibited from voting.