And the proper way to expose the fallacies in someone's opinions is downvoting all their comments, both those that contain the fallacies, and those that don't?
No, that would communicate a more general evaluation on a person's body of work.
the proper way to express my disagreement would be to upvote all their comments
Perhaps not all their comments, but have you never sought to right some karma wrong with compensatory votes of your own to bring more balance to the Force? I occasionally do.
according to the users' popularity, regardless of the merits of specific comments?
I've never said karma vote according to popularity, Eugine didn't, and your scenario didn't either.
MoreWrong +1.
Why not simplify the whole system and upvote and downvote users directly?
Karma votes can certainly be interpreted that way, or voted that way. That's apparently how Eugine was voting.
People were making each other feel bad by posting comments the other side didn't agree with, politically, pretty often. No one was ever banned for that.
Not yet that I am aware. But you (or I) would certainly be in the running to be the first. I think I'd be in the lead today, but I'm sure you'll take the lead on other days.
I think Eugine is still on the list if his downvotes had been upvotes. The horrific consequence of his downvoting was "people felt bad and so stopped posting". That can happen from any expressed opinion. Likely many of yours. And mine. And I believe some people had expressed that many opinions I believe you and I hold are simply beyond the pale and should not be "tolerated".
"First they came for Eugine, and I thought he was a dick, so I did not speak out..."
Somebody I can't recall ever having heard of thinks I "insulted" them - I'm guessing for my comment on dysfunction, though they weren't specific. Let's not talk about winning or losing anymore, what is functional and dysfunctional, because someone might feel insulted if the shoe fits.
It's hard to have a respectful debate, when one of participants is systematically downvoted regardless of whether they made a smart or stupid comment, whether they made a fallacy or exposed their opponent's fallacy.
No it's not.
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. If you saw that happening, you could have rectified the horror of Karma -1 with your own vote. We're talking about a single karma point here, per post, which needn't have put someone in a tizzy in the first place.
Life isn't so difficult, even when people disagree with you.
I will mass-downvote the new users who seem to be on your side,
Mischaracteriztion. He is reported to have said:
users who he did not think displayed sufficient rationality.
No talk of "sides" here, just rationality.
MoreWrong +1
does mass-downvoting of new users belong to the "cut each other some slack" category?
MoreWrong +1. I've frequently said I'm opposed to mass downvoting.
No one was ever banned for that.
Not yet that I am aware. But you (or I) would certainly be in the running to be the first.
I don't care about the conditional probability P( me gets banned for my opinions | someone gets banned for their opinion ) if the probability P( someone gets banned for their opinion ) is extremely low, which I believe it is. Actually, I don't even believe the conditional probability is so high for me; though it could be a bit higher for you, but anyway...
I believe the probability of either of us getting banned on LW during the ne...
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.