Does karma affect what you write?
jerf: I look more at replies. My goal over the past few years is to learn how to post a controversial argument without getting a ton of replies arguing with something that was not in my message. You can't avoid getting arguments about what was in the message, of course, but it's just wearing when you get tons of flames about something you didn't actually say.I have found that on a good site, that argument will also tend to be voted up, even if it's against the local dominant opinion, but that's just a side-effect.I left Slashdot when I could no longer do that, and I felt it was because I'd plumbed the depths of idiocy rather than failing to write my arguments correctly. (You can never reach perfection, of course, but assuming I didn't become radically worse at it over the course of a year, the fact that it become virtually impossible implicates the community.)Write well, ignore karma. If you're getting consistently downvoted after that, consider that you may not be a match for the community. (And I do mean "consider"; it's not proof, but it's worth considering.)And yes, karma encourages groupthink, though it doesn't create it. A strong community can overcome that, but the pull is inexorable and continuous. Compared to other karma-based communities I've been in, this is still a ways away from group-think dominance, though.