mwengler comments on [moderator action] Eugine_Nier is now banned for mass downvote harassment - Less Wrong Discussion
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I seem to be the lone dissenter here, but I am unhappy about the ban. Not that it is unjustified, it definitely is. However, it does not address the main issue (until jackk fiddles with karma): preventing Eugine from mass downvoting. So this is mainly retribution, rather than remediation, which seems anti-rational to me, if emotionally satisfying, as one of the victims.
Imagine for a moment that Eugine did not engage in mass downvoting. He would be a valuable regular on this site. I recall dozens of insightful comments he made (and dozens of poor ones, of course, but who am I to point fingers), and I only stopped engaging him in the comments after his mass-downvoting habits were brought to light for the first time. So, I would rather see him exposed and dekarmified, but allowed to participate.
TL;DR: banning is a wrong decision, should have been exposed and stripped of the ability of downvote instead. Optionally, all his votes ever could have been reversed, unless it's hard.
EDIT: apparently not the lone dissenter, just the first to speak up.
I am also a lone dissenter who is unhappy about the ban.
Why not just ban him from further karma voting? Why ban him from posting? His posts and comments were good enough to get him plenty of karma which was required for him to even mass downvote other people in the first place.
As the topic seems to imply: they don't actually seem to have a way to keep him from using his karma.
They are quite capable of removing all his karma, or even setting it very negative, which would remove his ability to downvote. To the extent there are technical problems, they could give him a temporary ban while these are worked out.
Perma-ban is a deliberate choice by the moderator(s), not something they were forced into.
By the way, what are the consequences of low karma? Not being able to downvote, not being able to post articles... anything else?
Below some negative karma threshold, there is a forced delay between comments (after posting a comment you have to wait a few minutes before you can post again).