Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012

David_Gerard

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

I have seen people mention two algorithms to decide whether to upvote or downvote a comment: 1) upvote/downvote it if you'd like to see more/fewer comments like that, and 2) assign it a karma score you think it deserves, look at its current karma, and upvote/downvote it if the former is above/below the latter. I've recently thought about a compromise: 3) assign it a karma score you think it deserves, multiply its current karma by a, and upvote/downvote it if the former is above/below the latter. Note that 3) reduces to 1) as a approaches 0 and to 2) as a approaches 1. (I'm using a = 0.5.)

Does this have any obvious drawback that neither 1) nor 2) has?

I do something a little like your (2), except that I don't downvote comments that I think deserve a positive score, and vice versa.

0Shmi14y

I wager that most people don't use an algorithm beyond "I feel like upvoting/downvoting this comment", they just click and then explain/rationalize their actions.