You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

daenerys comments on Open Thread, October 20 - 26, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: Adele_L 21 October 2013 03:11AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (211)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 October 2013 10:32:51PM 20 points [-]

Someone has been regularly downvoting every thing I've posted in the past couple months (not just a single karmassasination). I really don't care about the karma (so please DO NOT upvote any of my previous posts in order to "fix" it), but I do worry that if someone is doing it to me, they are possibly doing it to other/new people and driving them off, so I wanted to point out publicly that this behaviour is NOT OKAY.

Anyways, if you have a problem with me, feel free to tell me about it here: http://www.admonymous.com/daenerys . Crocker's Rules and all.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 24 October 2013 01:14:33AM 8 points [-]

I've been getting an early downvote on my posts, too. I can afford it, but it does seem malicious.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 24 October 2013 09:48:19AM 3 points [-]

Do I understand it correctly that the behavior you describe is "downvote every new comment from user X when it appears" (as opposed to "go to user X's history and downvote a lot of their old comments at the same time")?

Because when hearing about karma assassinations, I always automatically assumed the latter form; only the words "early downvote" in Nancy's comment made me realize the former form is also possible.

A possible technical fix could be to not display the user comment's karma until at least three votes were made or at least one day has passed.

Also, off-topic: Crocker's Rules seem to be popular in out culture; maybe it would be nice to integrate them into LW user interface. For example user could add their "anonymous feedback URL" in preferences, and a new icon "Reply Anonymously" would then be displayed below all user's comments and articles.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 24 October 2013 10:16:27AM 6 points [-]

Not only that, but I've been getting the downvotes on my posts, not my comments. I wouldn't call this karma assassination-- maybe karma harassment.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 October 2013 03:06:38PM 2 points [-]

Crocker's Rules

Crocker's Rules aren't about anonymity.

Theoretically it might be useful for people to be able to set a visible flag "Talk to me under Crocker's Rules" -- but I suspect that it will immediately degenerate into a status sign.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 24 October 2013 05:11:52PM *  2 points [-]

If I declare Crocker's Rules and you write something rude in a reply to me, other LW readers still see it. So even if I am perfectly okay with it (and I shouldn't have declared CR otherwise), you might lose some status in the eyes of the observers who don't properly evaluate the context of your reply.

If you send me a private message, we get rid of the observers. Unless I play dirty and later show the private message to someone else. Anonymous feedback would prevent me from doing so.

But yes, for 99% of cases, sending private message would be enough, anonymization is not needed. And we already have that option here.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 October 2013 05:22:58PM 2 points [-]

Crocker's Rules, as I understand them, are about efficient conveyance of meaning without the extra baggage of social niceties. The are not about the ability to express unpopular views without social consequences which is where private messages or anonymity shine.

If you are concerned about observers misinterpreting the context you can always add a little [This post is under Crocker's Rules] tag somewhere.

Comment author: lmm 24 October 2013 05:13:29PM 1 point [-]

Crocker's rules are not directly about anonymity no, but if you want to maximise your chances of receiving honest feedback an anonymous contact method is valuable.