Several people posted recently in a thread on women, mostly espousing feminist views - only to find that someone had declined to respond to their post, but instead browsed their history and downvoted every single comment or article they had ever posted.
I have two questions:
1. Why would you come to a site like this and pollute the karma system? How does it make you smarter? How does it make anyone else on the site smarter?
2. What would be a good technical workaround? In my mind, some system that detects mass-downvoting and flags a user for review would be preferable, but what should happen then? Should the system be more lenient to higher-karma posters? Who should perform the review process? What should be done with those whom the reviewer ascertains are abusing the karma system? I would prefer some kind of lesson that is more corrective than retributive - it seems to me that people who would perform this behavior are exactly the sort of people who need some of the lessons that this site provides. Any ideas?
Here, for example.
I will not discuss it further, to avoid who knows who, who does not permit a shadow of a doubt in "settled topics" like Goedel's theorems or Climate change or anything and downvotes accordingly.
If you do challenge the mainstream position in a "settled topic" your post should be longer than one sentence.
I have personally never read the proof of Gödel's theorem. I believe that it works because I trust in the authority of the mathematical community. I don't know to which extend the property of finitness is important for the proof. If you make such a claim in a "settled topics", it's your burden to explain to me why it's important.
If I read that discussion I come away with thinking that JoshuaZ knows what he's talking about. I ... (read more)