

I lost all my points (karma). - blored

When I woke up this morning my 19 points had turned to zero points.  I suspect that someone was down-modding me.  Firstly, I didn't even know there was a way to down-mod people, secondly, is there any way to get these points back and/or stop that person from down-modding me in the future.  
======
pg
You're right. Someone went on a downmodding spree.

I restored your karma. Now I'm going to have to write some software to prevent
this kind of abuse. Great. As if I didn't have enough to do...

~~~
mattjaynes
~Flashback to 2002~

"Hey Paul, I keep getting all these junk email messages and they're filling up
my inbox!"

"You're right. Someone went on an emailing spree. Now I'm going to have to
write some software to prevent this kind of abuse. Great. As if I didn't have
enough to do..."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html>

~~~
palish
~Flashback to 1995~

"Hey Paul, my programs keep crashing and never get updated!"

"You're right. Someone went on a desktop software spree. Now I'm going to have
to write some software to prevent this kind of abuse. Great. As if I didn't
have enough to do..."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/first.html>

~~~
dfranke
~Flashback to 1993~

"Hey Paul, this C++ code takes ten thousand lines to get anything done and
keeps doing a fandango on core!"

"You're right. Someone went on a blub spree. Now I'm going to have to show
people how to avoid subjecting themselves to this kind of abuse. Great. As if
I didn't have enough to do..."

<http://paulgraham.com/onlisp.html>

------
blored
Thanks for restoring my karma everyone.

~~~
pq
No problem.

~~~
ivankirigin
Ohh, pq ... will you _ever_ have positive karma? :-P

------
Caligula
Downmodded as irrelevant to startup news.

~~~
palish
Downmodded for being mean, and you only joined two weeks ago. Who are you to
say?

 _Edit:_ I apologize for not sensing teh humorz. It was not so blatant.

~~~
Caligula
Upmodded for not sensing blatant sarcasm.

~~~
tuukkah
There's this new tech that could be useful in helping you two communicate ;-)

------
menloparkbum
If you can't downvote away people's karma, how do you make people who suck go
away?

~~~
pg
Often it's behaviors that suck, not people.

If you dislike something someone has said, the best way to deal with that is
to reply explaining why. That's more work than just downmodding them, but it
can pay off in the long term if you can turn someone into a useful contributor
to the site instead of just making them leave.

~~~
menloparkbum
I applaud your ability to maintain an optimistic viewpoint about humans even
though all evidence points the opposite direction. What you're suggesting is
completely unprecedented on the internet. What always happens is that an open
forum is eventually overwhelmed by trolls and morons, and all the smart people
give up. There has never been a case where a troll or a moron turned into a
useful contributor because of thoughtful response from a good member of a
forum. Just review the history of Digg, Slashdot, Reddit and almost any other
open forum, all the way back to ancient USENET times...

Wasn't this forum created partially because reddit was overwhelmed by the
hordes and all the interesting startup information was lost in the noise?

~~~
palish
You'll very much enjoy reading
<http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html>

But no, it was created primarily as a test for Arc. The fact that it's so
beneficial and awesome is a wonderful side effect.

~~~
menloparkbum
Max Goldberg, the creator of YTMND, has this to say:

"I'm straying off topic, but the point is, the users are what make YTMND.
Crappy users make the site crappy, and rather than trying to delete crappy
content, it would be far easier to just keep users who create crappy content
off YTMND. The hard part is figuring out who to let in and who will add value
to the community and the site as a whole. "

