Your point is well taken. It is up to each user to decide whether or not this is a disincentive to commenting in a particular thread.
I use fluctuations in my comment karma average as a reality check on how I am doing recently in making constructive, helpful comments. But I burn average karma sometimes in
a) mentioning duplicate submissions (this kind of comment rarely gets an upvote, although I try to upvote most of Colin Wright's comments of the same kind)
or
b) answering direct follow-up questions someone asks me (which often aren't even upvoted by the person who asked the question).
You can tell I care (at least a little) by the examples I'm providing here, but I try not to worry about it too much. The single best thing to do for average comment karma score (for whatever that's worth) appears to be to make consistently good comments.
Once in a while I post a comment that starts out in negative number territory before those smarter readers come along. :) But I think most of those cases are cases I encountered before the most recent algorithm change.
On 25 June 2012, Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True website recommended a LONG video of a lecture by Sam Harris, a meditation practitioner, from April’s Global Atheist Conference in Melbourne. The video lecture is on the subject of the atheist attitude toward death, and Harris leads his audience through a mindfulness meditation exercise as part of the video.
I watched the whole video, and participated in the mindfulness meditation exercise.
I have to say that after listening to the whole lecture, I have the same misgivings Sam Harris has about being removed from any thoughts or judgments about the external world. There is genuine suffering in the world that it is important to do something about. There is a tension between getting in touch with the present moment and using a meaningful part of each day to solve problems and help our fellow human beings. Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation.
He does NOT say that you should stop testing as soon as you have testing with five users, but rather that you should build usability testing into your development process throughout all of its stages, but especially the early stages.
He does NOT say that you should stop testing as soon as you have testing with five users, but rather that you should build usability testing into your development process throughout all of its stages, but especially the early stages.
I use fluctuations in my comment karma average as a reality check on how I am doing recently in making constructive, helpful comments. But I burn average karma sometimes in
a) mentioning duplicate submissions (this kind of comment rarely gets an upvote, although I try to upvote most of Colin Wright's comments of the same kind)
or
b) answering direct follow-up questions someone asks me (which often aren't even upvoted by the person who asked the question).
You can tell I care (at least a little) by the examples I'm providing here, but I try not to worry about it too much. The single best thing to do for average comment karma score (for whatever that's worth) appears to be to make consistently good comments.