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Percent_Carbon comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Are you suggesting there's some rule about what a post 'deserves' in terms of votes?
The actual mechanic is that scores or hundreds of individuals read each post. If they like it, they hit upvote. If they don't like it, they hit downvote. Some voters may think "this has enough upvotes already" and not upvote even though they like a post. Some voters may think "this has enough downvotes to collapse and I only get a limited number of downvotes myself so I'll save them for things other people aren't downvoting." But in the end it is mostly a reflect of the number of people that noticed your post and felt something about it.
You don't deserve 12 downvotes for this, that's just what happened.
Also, you can prevent accumulation of negative karma, if you're concerned about that, by retracting.
I wasn't suggesting any rules, I was pointing out that this case seemed less than fair to me. In any case I suppose you're right.
I didn't mean to say you were suggesting particular rules.
If a thing is unfair, then it is not following the rules. It does sound like you believe or believed that there were some rules that should have been followed, but were not.
Your hypothetical rules might have been reasonable. If my vague speculation about roughly what those rule might have been is close, then there isn't a means in place on this board to enforce rules like that.
fairness means only following the rule that reactions should be proportionate to the initial action. I thought you guys were being silly by insisting that I had spoiled something everyone already knew. I thought you were all too quick to judge, and I felt that you became biased against my comments, even ones unrelated to the spoiler. I was not aware that I had broken any rules until I had nothing left to lose. An accused person has the right to know why they are being accused and to defend themselves before receiving a penalty. If this were not the case then the accusing party would wield far too much power to be trustworthy. I think I have made it very clear why I thought this was unfair.
Of course - each person's reaction was to downvote your post once (ignoring for the moment the issue I've mentioned elsewhere of additional penalties for defending yourself - it's not really relevant in this case since that's theoretically a second 'initial action'). So, what you really mean is the collective response should be proportionate to the initial action. The way the voting system works creates a strange set of incentives - downvoting a post that already has a low score - or a person who already has low karma - does not cost any more (in terms of the cost to the downvote cap) than downvoting a post which is just on the visibility threshold.
Yet it's hard to see how this could be otherwise, particularly if both the downvote cap and karma scores need to be statically calculated.
I've been thinking about that, but didn't want to say anything because its really not my site and I probably couldn't design a better one if I tried. But, yeah, I think the downvote system does warrant some reform, and I have no idea how that would work because it would vary from case to case. Maybe there could be some guidelines advising the community on which general infractions deserve a certain number of downvotes. It could be an interesting project, actually...
It was explained that the [well, a] main purpose of downvoting is to cause "bad" comments to be hidden from view, rather than to punish the writer. When I asked in another thread for an explanation of downvoting to very low scores under this model, it was explained that this is done to offset the risk of people voting up the posts after the downvoters are no longer paying attention to the thread.
One way to change the system that might mitigate these factors would be to allow for "soft" downvotes that don't subtract from the karma of the author of the post until the post gets upvoted past a certain threshold. Another would be to limit, reduce, or eliminate the contribution to karma of negative-scored posts (if it is limited to -2, this is equivalent to making all downvotes "soft" under the first proposal)
If the only function is to silence the writer, than the system doesn't make that much sense at all. Beyond the twenty points needed to prove trustworthy, karma only serves as emotional satisfaction. This is clearly intended as incentive be mindful of what you post. There would be no reason for people to accumulate thousands of points. Maybe there could be a system of likes and dislikes, as well as a system of up or downvotes.
Up and down are only to be used in regard to rationality, and they'll be limited. These votes would be on display to show whether or not a person should be trusted. There should probably be limits on how much of these a person can have.
The likes and dislikes should be used when someone says something either clever or amusing, or something like my comment which people might consider unhelpful, but does not reflect on my rationality. This would be displayed above the comments, but the total amount of likes a commenter has stored up will be private.
This way the emotional element will still be present, but will not interfere with a person's ability to add to our understanding of rationality.
Downvotes you can make are limited to some multiple of your karma.
I didn't know that..... How does that make sense?
Yes, this sort of thing was proposed at the site's inception (I was a major proponent), but it failed to get off the ground. Mostly, the objection was that the UI would necessarily be confusing.
The people who frequent this site are expected to read a sequence of posts explaining quantum physics, but a dual "like" system is too complicated?
Irrelevant. Damage was done, and downvotes were used to route around the damage. Try not to take it personally.
i don't take it personally. He questioned my understanding of fairness. I answered him. I wasn't complaining, because I have not really been harmed. And downvotes did not solve the problem, as the "damage" remains. Do try to follow the conversation.
Sorry, but this doesn't appear to be the case. If you do not possess the means to defend a right, you don't actually have it. In this case, no authority greater than your own had declared this right, and you have no expectation for any power to intercede on your behalf.
It's like Nerf Mob Justice in here.