I think the most informative signal here is not the exact karma that comment ended up with but rather that the author ended up deleting it despite believing that what he was saying was potentially important and not receiving any reasons to think he was wrong. A culture where people feel compelled to silence themselves is worse than one where some comments are wrongly downvoted without much consequence to the author.
I think the most important data points here are any comments that were left, and the net karma of the comment. People have in fact been known to overreact, or react in idiosyncratic ways, in forum discussions; I haven’t seen the thread in question, but if the responses were friendly and the comment got ~0 net karma, then that would be a large update for me.
I definitely took “that got downvoted a lot” to mean that the comment got a lot of net downvotes, not just that people offset its upvotes to keep it around a neutral 0. I think it’s pretty bad to describe vote patterns that misleadingly, if it was hovering around 0.
I think the most informative signal here is not the exact karma that comment ended up with but rather that the author ended up deleting it despite believing that what he was saying was potentially important and not receiving any reasons to think he was wrong. A culture where people feel compelled to silence themselves is worse than one where some comments are wrongly downvoted without much consequence to the author.
I think the most important data points here are any comments that were left, and the net karma of the comment. People have in fact been known to overreact, or react in idiosyncratic ways, in forum discussions; I haven’t seen the thread in question, but if the responses were friendly and the comment got ~0 net karma, then that would be a large update for me.
I definitely took “that got downvoted a lot” to mean that the comment got a lot of net downvotes, not just that people offset its upvotes to keep it around a neutral 0. I think it’s pretty bad to describe vote patterns that misleadingly, if it was hovering around 0.
Good point. :S