Your comment suggests an interesting way of rewarding people who further the conversation. Give the user their upmod points of the entire thread that responds.
1 - This makes the witty comeback a lesser strategy for obtaining karma.
2 - People who are aware of this will stop responding to trolls. Even if they publish a well-reasoned response to a troll, they will be giving them karma points. Since this is not a common feature of internet forums, this might be worth spelling out above an active comment form.
3 - The best strategy for karma is to advance the discussion somehow. Even if your point ends up exposing the point of view of people on the other side.
Give the user their upmod points of the entire thread that responds.
That sounds like a surefire way to encourage provocation (a.k.a trolling). If you make a deliberately provocative and clueless statement and n people take the time to exhaustively tell you why you're wrong (for which they get karma), I don't think you deserve any of the karma given to the comments you provoked.
Only give people the upmod points of responders if the original comment has positive karma. Or let's say your original comment has karma +4; you get karma of responders up to +4 per response, but not more than that.
The more complicated the system, the easier it is to game.
Presumably at some point that ceases to be true for a sufficiently complicated and good system, but my guess is that we're up into AI-complete territory there.
Problem with this system is that it further skews the rewards to early commenters, especially those that play devil's advocate. People who post early already have an advantage since there is less competition for upvotes, and newer comments appear below slightly upvoted comments by default, ensuring better visibility for early upvoted comments. Adding you suggested karma rule would make this even worse.
I downmodded only that one because it gave an incorrect and unnecessarily aggressive version of what Kent Beck wrote. Joel is 'a bright, experienced guy' in Beck's words, became 'Joel is an idiot' in yours.
I upmodded some of the answers you were given because they were informative and calmed the conversation down. That is the opposite of detracting.
Frankly I do not see the point of downvoting or bragging about it, and your explanation does not make it right either.
Each of your comments detracted from the conversation,
You single handedly decided what detracts from the conversation, and I am sure you are not HN spokesman.
It's like "an eye for an eye", but in this case you are hurting someone because you disagree with their opinion or the way they expressed it (and yes, I understand sometimes some users can be disrespectful).
But even when someone is clearly not following the HN guidelines, they should simply be reminded of it, then ignored forever.
The "free hand" in HN will auto-regulate them. That is the same free hand that does not upvote spam links.
Downvoting comments "should not be" just as downvoting stories "is not". Silence is by far the best way to respond to ignorance.
This thread was specifically made for conversation about how those 3 comments were voted, I dont think that counts as "bragging"
While they didnt add "in my opinion" I think its more than obviously implied that it was his opinion that he was stating, and was not attempting to speak on behalf of anyone else.
and the original poster stated that comments detract from the conversation should be downmodded, I agree that all 3 were somewhat insulting and added no value to the conversation, while I may be a relatively new user, they all seemed out of spirit (in my opinion)
Except the entire point of allowing users to downvote comments is to promote civility. If someone is not being civil, then they should be downvoted. This is a clearer and less distracting means of telling someone what's not appreciated.
At least, this is my understanding of how pg intends the system to be used.
Yes, my understanding of the site culture is precisely that downvoting is to show that a comment doesn't contribute to the discussion, rather than to show factual disagreement with the comment. This thread here is a discussion about a submission that suggests not everyone is interpreting downvoting in the same way, and that is a legitimate issue to explore here, as long as we are all in metadiscussion mode.
Comments
Each of your comments detracted from the conversation, so I downmodded them all, if that makes you feel better.
Each of your comments detracted from the conversation
Clever, but not true. The sarcastic ones did, I agree. But the second one started a thread of sum karma ~100. That's the opposite of detracting ;)
Your comment suggests an interesting way of rewarding people who further the conversation. Give the user their upmod points of the entire thread that responds.
1 - This makes the witty comeback a lesser strategy for obtaining karma.
2 - People who are aware of this will stop responding to trolls. Even if they publish a well-reasoned response to a troll, they will be giving them karma points. Since this is not a common feature of internet forums, this might be worth spelling out above an active comment form.
3 - The best strategy for karma is to advance the discussion somehow. Even if your point ends up exposing the point of view of people on the other side.
Give the user their upmod points of the entire thread that responds.
That sounds like a surefire way to encourage provocation (a.k.a trolling). If you make a deliberately provocative and clueless statement and n people take the time to exhaustively tell you why you're wrong (for which they get karma), I don't think you deserve any of the karma given to the comments you provoked.
Only give people the upmod points of responders if the original comment has positive karma. Or let's say your original comment has karma +4; you get karma of responders up to +4 per response, but not more than that.
The more complicated the system, the easier it is to game.
Presumably at some point that ceases to be true for a sufficiently complicated and good system, but my guess is that we're up into AI-complete territory there.
Thanks for the extra five karma, sucker!
Problem with this system is that it further skews the rewards to early commenters, especially those that play devil's advocate. People who post early already have an advantage since there is less competition for upvotes, and newer comments appear below slightly upvoted comments by default, ensuring better visibility for early upvoted comments. Adding you suggested karma rule would make this even worse.
The behavior we reward will be the behavior we have to live with. Simple as that.
I downmodded only that one because it gave an incorrect and unnecessarily aggressive version of what Kent Beck wrote. Joel is 'a bright, experienced guy' in Beck's words, became 'Joel is an idiot' in yours.
I upmodded some of the answers you were given because they were informative and calmed the conversation down. That is the opposite of detracting.
so I downmodded them all
Frankly I do not see the point of downvoting or bragging about it, and your explanation does not make it right either.
Each of your comments detracted from the conversation,
You single handedly decided what detracts from the conversation, and I am sure you are not HN spokesman.
It's like "an eye for an eye", but in this case you are hurting someone because you disagree with their opinion or the way they expressed it (and yes, I understand sometimes some users can be disrespectful).
But even when someone is clearly not following the HN guidelines, they should simply be reminded of it, then ignored forever.
The "free hand" in HN will auto-regulate them. That is the same free hand that does not upvote spam links.
Downvoting comments "should not be" just as downvoting stories "is not". Silence is by far the best way to respond to ignorance.
This thread was specifically made for conversation about how those 3 comments were voted, I dont think that counts as "bragging"
While they didnt add "in my opinion" I think its more than obviously implied that it was his opinion that he was stating, and was not attempting to speak on behalf of anyone else.
and the original poster stated that comments detract from the conversation should be downmodded, I agree that all 3 were somewhat insulting and added no value to the conversation, while I may be a relatively new user, they all seemed out of spirit (in my opinion)
Except the entire point of allowing users to downvote comments is to promote civility. If someone is not being civil, then they should be downvoted. This is a clearer and less distracting means of telling someone what's not appreciated.
At least, this is my understanding of how pg intends the system to be used.
Yes, my understanding of the site culture is precisely that downvoting is to show that a comment doesn't contribute to the discussion, rather than to show factual disagreement with the comment. This thread here is a discussion about a submission that suggests not everyone is interpreting downvoting in the same way, and that is a legitimate issue to explore here, as long as we are all in metadiscussion mode.
I invited explicit discussion the matter a while ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=361390
Are you using an anecdote to refute statistics?