[pash]

I meant to downvote your comment but accidentally upvoted it.

You wrote that you have nothing meaningful to say and quoted the abstract, contributing nothing to the conversation. Next time, instead of using your accumulated karma to monopolize the top spot while saying nothing, just say nothing.

[zaroth]

> instead of using your accumulated karma to monopolize the top spot

You only get to the top spot in a comment section by getting that specific comment upvoted there.

... at least, that's certainly how I would expect it to work! If the site gives preference to comments based on preexisting karma, at least after any upvotes have been cast, then that would be highly disappointing.

[makomk]

The site gives preference to comments based on preexisting karma, especially shortly after they're posted.

[ericd]

I found it helpful. I don't really want to even bother with paywalled sites, much nicer to just read the abstract here.

[pash]

The abstract is not paywalled. I understand that my comment may seem rude, but tokenadult's basically useless comment was in the first spot for a good half hour, above a better comment thread, until I posted and several readers downvoted it.

In my opinion, tokenadult abuses his high karma average somewhat too often. Here's how it works: if you have a high comment average, your comment sorts higher than others with a similar number of up-votes. So if you post early enough, before anybody has written anything very interesting, your comment will stick to the top. If it's even vaguely useful to the casual reader—you post an article abstract copied and pasted from the the submission, say—you can then hold down the top comment spot, garner a lot of up-votes, pad your average, and stifle a more meaningful discussion. Maybe you come along later and edit in some actual information.

I find it obnoxious, and I wish tokenadult would stop doing it. (And I really only commented because I accidentally upvoted him, prolonging his comment's contentless primacy.)