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If downvotes only affected the specific comment, that would make complete sense, but they also affect karma. I guess it's not irrational to punish people who co
by solipsism 11y ago
If downvotes only affected the specific comment, that would make complete sense, but they also affect karma. I guess it's not irrational to punish people who consistently misunderstand things, but is that a purposeful decision or an unfortunate byproduct of the karma system?
- hackuser 11y agoThe idea isn't to punish people, IMHO, but to improve content for others reading the conversation. That comment doesn't contribute to the conversation, and in fact it confuses it, so it gets downvoted to where few will read it. Voting is about the readers, not the commenters. Personally, other than for determining specific capabilities such as downvoting, I think tracking karma per user does little good. Karma per comment - a bit of feedback on your comment - is useful.
- barkingcat 11y agoit does punish people who consistently post opinions based on wrong information, and do not edit themselves, but that's a side effect. If the poster didn't want to be downvoted, they should read and think about the topic before posting. In general, HN is pretty good at not downvoting for dissenting opinions, but the group does downvote heavily for wrong info or posts that are inflammatory based on the wrong facts.