Have you made a lot of downvotes? From the About page:
You can only down vote up to four times your current karma (thus if you never comment, you cannot downvote).
I seem to have run into my karma limit, downvoting. I really don't like the way this system works. I upvote more than I downvote so I don't think I'm being exceedingly negative. If I want to apply a fairly reasonable level of quality control the system quickly stops me from doing so, leaving me to either stop that quality control, or not apply the same level of discernment to my own comment posting, in order to gain more karma. It seems a rather perverse incentive.
I'm a little curious as to how much of my downvote allowance I have used. I have certainly issued a lot (either way). I just love it if I hit the limit one day. I'd feel I'd served the cause of quality with honour and done Red Symons proud!
Ditto. It feels like I downvote significantly more than I usefully comment, but I have no way of checking the balance.
Yes
It seems that most posts voted down to -1 will get voted back up by people considering -1 unfair - even though, IIRC, the point of the karma system was to register your individual opinion, not to push towards any particular finite value.
On the other hand, most of the incentive effect from votes on a post probably comes from the very first votes.
It seems that most posts voted down to -1 will get voted back up by people considering -1 unfair - even though, IIRC, the point of the karma system was to register your individual opinion, not to push towards any particular finite value.
I know my own voting behaviour is influenced somewhat by the current karma of the comment and I'm ok with others using the same policy*. An advantage is that it has a somewhat stabilizing influence. It means that a only slightly bad comment on a topic that everyone is interest doesn't spiral downwards while an absolutely terrible comment in a topic that nobody is following closely just gets a couple of downvotes.
*Come to think of it I'm ok with people doing whatever the heck they please - since I expect them to do so regardless of any norm anyway and just change the justification they give to themselves. It saves on disappointment.
but I have no way of checking the balance.
Not exactly true. I could check it by spending 10 minutes writing a script then leaving it to run over night...
Would overnight be enough? How many bytes would it need to retrieve? (I'm considering the practicality of using a script/program to cancel an account's votes and recast them from another account; upvotes (also subscriptions) initially and downvotes once enough karma is earned.)
Would overnight be enough?
Probably, and note that I'm talking here about the wedrifid account. At last count wedrifid had more comments than any other and also likely exposure and votes on more comments than most.
How many bytes would it need to retrieve?
Less than a gigabyte is my estimate. If your account has only been around for a year or two you can likely save time/downloads there too.
(I'm considering the practicality of using a script/program to cancel an account's votes and recast them from another account; upvotes (also subscriptions) initially and downvotes once enough karma is earned.)
Interesting thought. That certainly seems possible. If you do create it for your own use may I perhaps suggest that you never release it to others? While automatically cancelling votes and casting them from a different account is perfectly fine a single line of code commented out makes this same script into a troll-sockpuppet nightmare.
Probably, and note that I'm talking here about the wedrifid account. At last count wedrifid had more comments than any other and also likely exposure and votes on more comments than most.
Isn't that irrelevant, since a vote-counting script would have to check every comment on the site regardless?
Isn't that irrelevant, since a vote-counting script would have to check every comment on the site regardless?
I was allowing for an imperfect optimisation of your 'move account' script where you don't bother checking posts from years before you arrived. Most of the votes can be expected to be on more recent content so returns would be diminishing the further back you go. Obviously this doesn't work well with all possible usage patterns so mileage may vary.
If you did that, though, you would no longer have a supply of downvotes to use; is that not so?
I can count how many downvotes I have used on top-level submissions by scraping http://lesswrong.com/user/rhollerith_dot_com/disliked/, but how would I count the downvotes I have used on comments?
(It seems that every time I reply to you it is to pick at something you wrote. I hope you do not think I'm hostile to you. I'm just curious.)
lesswrong.com/comments/; lesswrong.com/r/discussion/comments/
Every. comment. ever.
(I have not investigated what happens to deleted comment votes, a slight complication. )
It also means that downvoting doesn't just signal that a comment is bad/too highly ranked, which is what I've been using it to do; it also reduces a commenter's ability to help filter and rank comments by quality, even though that's often easier than making a high-quality comment and even though my reasons for downvoting don't always reflect strongly on my general opinion of a user.
Edit: I'll assume losing karma doesn't cancel any downvotes I've already cast, although it makes me slightly worried.
Edit 7/10: In naive terms, every time I downvote a bad post I might be effectively upvoting four other equally bad posts.
If I want to apply a fairly reasonable level of quality control the system quickly stops me from doing so, leaving me to either stop that quality control...
After reading this I actually thought about leaving LW.
It now says I need 11 more karma, and it said 15 before my most recent upvote, so there's apparently still a bug.
Have you made a lot of downvotes? From the About page:
You can only down vote up to four times your current karma (thus if you never comment, you cannot downvote).
I'm on a different computer and the message now says "You need 1 more point", so maybe that's what it said before and I misread, and Pavitra was misremembering it as being one-fourth instead of four times. (Edit: by which I mean thanks and sorry for the mispost.)
Downvote buttons seem to have just stopped working for me, saying I need at least 1 karma. I'm posting in case it leads someone to fix the problem.