Several people posted recently in a thread on women, mostly espousing feminist views - only to find that someone had declined to respond to their post, but instead browsed their history and downvoted every single comment or article they had ever posted.
I have two questions:
1. Why would you come to a site like this and pollute the karma system? How does it make you smarter? How does it make anyone else on the site smarter?
2. What would be a good technical workaround? In my mind, some system that detects mass-downvoting and flags a user for review would be preferable, but what should happen then? Should the system be more lenient to higher-karma posters? Who should perform the review process? What should be done with those whom the reviewer ascertains are abusing the karma system? I would prefer some kind of lesson that is more corrective than retributive - it seems to me that people who would perform this behavior are exactly the sort of people who need some of the lessons that this site provides. Any ideas?
All protestations to the opposite aside, I very much doubt that karma is generally viewed as "near-meaningless". It is the main avenue of feedback and affirmation in what is often viewed as a rather intimidating environment (by newcomers especially).
As for those spending time with retributive downvoting, how do you know that they do not gain more satisfaction out of that than, say, watching the new BSG webisodes, using their "precious time". From Will_Newsome to Wei_Dai, I've seen even some veterans explain the importance they ascribe to karma. Would you laugh it off if your karma score were reduced to 0 by one guy with a few sockpuppets?
It's the only quantifiable metric in this social game. There even is a "top contributers" meta game on the sidebar. Of course all that makes it en vogue to pretend not to care, similar to wealthy people acting as if money weren't worth talking about.
If you truly don't care, good for you.
On individual comments and posts, the karma system is valuable for telling you if you're being stupid or not, and I appreciate it for that. The total karma score is (how long you've been on LW) (how often you post) (how much people like what you say); it says something like "how much you contribute to this site", which I find much less interesting, and I personally don't care if it's accurate.
I am, in fact, accusing people who downvote all posts by one person as using their time incorrectly; there are so many other things they could be doing that would make them happier and better-off, including nothing at all, that there's not much excuse for going through with it.
If my karma were reduced to zero, I would continue carrying on as I do now, commenting on this and that, and my karma would from then on be a positive number I don't pay attention to. A phlegmatic disposition has its advantages.