False positives in complex code designed to detect behaviour are not bugs. I'm not saying I've been singled out and that some editor has said - Ooh, that RiderOfGiraffes, we need to remove voting privileges. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that as a result of the system they have, I've lost my voting privileges, and I think it's a false positive.
And I'm asking - what have I done to trigger the mechanism?
I doubt I'll get an answer, no one else ever seems to have, and given that the site seems largely to work pretty well, I'm not going to campaign actively for it to be run differently.
But I'm not the only one, and I'm disappointed that despite trying to stay within the guidelines, despite submitting stuff I think the community will find interesting, and despite thinking carefully about how I vote and why I vote, somehow I've fallen foul of the system.
Sufficiently disappointed that I don't think I'll take so much care in the future.
There's a really interesting subtext about web-apps here. So much so that I think it deserves more follow-up.
Yes, you are correct: you will not take so much care in the future.
People are wonderful pattern recognizers. Show them a system where you vote up and things go up and you vote down and things go down? They grok it. Where you punish people by down-voting them and reward them by up=voting? Makes sense.
But start mucking around so sometimes when you vote up the article goes down? Or sometimes you can vote and sometimes you can't? Or you can't vote now, but you can vote in 12 hours? Or you can vote for this guy, but not this other?
Eventually they just say "Screw it. It's effectively either random or designed especially to piss me off. Therefore I will not take it seriously"
Oddly enough, the more attached people are to the gaming/karma aspects of the site, the more this will annoy them. Also the more annoyed they are, the more likely they are to start gaming the system -- since in their minds the system isn't giving them a "fair shake" to begin with.
Lots of interesting insights into human behavior with complex systems here. Of course I'm just speculating, but it's important stuff for anybody running a public site.
And I'm asking - what have I done to trigger the mechanism?
I doubt I'll get an answer, no one else ever seems to have, and given that the site seems largely to work pretty well, I'm not going to campaign actively for it to be run differently.
But I'm not the only one, and I'm disappointed that despite trying to stay within the guidelines, despite submitting stuff I think the community will find interesting, and despite thinking carefully about how I vote and why I vote, somehow I've fallen foul of the system.
Sufficiently disappointed that I don't think I'll take so much care in the future.