I'm sorry but I already took a look at your past comments yesterday when you asked for some files. You wrote:
I've clearly annoyed someone (and it's quite clear whom) enough that all my posts quickly pick up enough of a negative score to be below the threshold. It's a very effective censoring mechanism...
Well, no. There is some bias, I noticed that too. Things that are upvoted get upvoted even more and things that are downvoted get downvoted even more. It's also a matter of who replied to certain comments in what way. Further there are some fringe groups here who downvote certain kind of comments. But overall it still works and you never get voted down if your comment is really good. Saying something like what you said above in the face of writings like this makes one, I fear, sound ridiculous. Such thoughts are normal but are, in this case, biased and should be overcome.
One might unknowingly overestimate ones smarts. Those people here are very likely above our rationality standards and are very likely much smarter and certainly more educated. I for my part do not care getting corrected, I take it as positive feedback. That's why I'm still arguing against the core here, although I don't really believe what I'm saying. First of all I like to be sure, see if they can actually respond adequately to my poor outpourings and secondly I want to make them get used to some critique as I believe there will be much more in future. But I don't really believe those people here and the SIAI are confused, I actually believe they are very likely right.
Take this comment of yours. It got -4 points and I don't think it is really unjustified, although I wouldn't downvote it but rather try to explain what's wrong. You state that your answer is the same as that of EY. If it was, it would be needless agreement. But I don't think it is. It is also difficult to understand what you are saying at all. Further you promote your own blog and ask people to go there and comment when we're already on a blog to talk about those issues.
Most of the issues discussed here are really deep. What you and me know about them compared to what others here understand is what the average third world person knows about philosophy compared to Daniel Dennet and Douglas Hofstadter combined. So we won't even notice when we're making a fool of ourselves!
Did you delete some negative-scoring comments? Deleting a comment does not make its influence on your score go away. If you have never deleted a negatively voted comment then I don't know why you don't have positive karma.
In the past, I have deleted negative scoring comments (long story but notice some of the odd scoring on some of my older posts). I have not deleted any at all recently.
It was my understanding, however, that karma never dropped below zero. Is what you're saying that you build up a buffer where it will never go above zero either until all of your past negativity is paid off (which I would call going below zero but not being displayed as below zero -- but that just semantics obviously)?
Your karma score is the sum of the karma scores of all of your comments, including deleted comments. However, if it is zero or negative, it will display like zero. So if your karma score is -2, it'll say "0" in your green circle, and if you get upvoted once, it will still say "0", but if you then get upvoted twice more, it'll say "1".
So I should have taken the advice to come back as a new account after being gang-tackled (to use a polite term).
I'm confused. Why is it okay to change your name and lose all your negative karma, when people clearly objected to your contributions?
That does seem like the best way to reset your karma. It does feel like a total negative karma should reset to zero after enough time passes.
Upvoted in the interest of saving you the trouble of making a new account. You're now at 0 total karma.
So I should have taken the advice to come back as a new account after being gang-tackled (to use a polite term).
Someone take a look at my score and my history and explain my zero karma.
My understanding was that karma never dropped below zero.
Apparently, it never *displays* below zero but if it is deep-sixed, it might be a long, long time coming back.