Main site karma requirement for posting broken?

To quote Quirinus Quirrell

Delusions that are truly widely held and not merely believed to be widely held are far too dangerous to attack. There are sociopolitical Eldritch Abominations that it would serve LW well to stay well clear of and perhaps even pretend they don't exist for the time being.

The next time you feel that way, make yourself another identity, and use it to say the things you wouldn't otherwise. It really is quite liberating. It's very rare for a delusion to really be too strong to attack, especially here; it is only that you fear backlash.

20 karma so you can post. Empty history so you can keep it in long-term storage without risking losing karma, so that if you need to post on short notice, you don't have to wait for something else to be upvoted. Fresh account in case anonymity is required.

This all grew out of a couple extended discussions I had with Eliezer, Will and Divia.

Sam Bhagwat to Eliezer, William, Divia

Eliezer, Will, Divia,

I wrote a couple of posts based on our discussions. I tried to post them; however, I lack 20 karma points. Do any of you have the power to just magically give me those points? If not, I quickly posted seven relatively banal comments. If you all upvote all of them, that will give me 21 karma.

http://lesswrong.com/user/calcsam/

Thanks, Sam

Eliezer Yudkowsky to William, me, Divia

Actually, I just upvoted the two posts, since I can see the drafts. 10 points each = problem solved, I hope.

Huh - I reloaded, and now it matches up. I was looking at the post scores on the sidebar (it was showing the post scores blanked out on the user page, which it does for posts that are too new), and the sidebar has a bit of delay between updates that could easily explain it. On the other hand, that leaves the original question unexplained. Hmm.

and I've looked so this is evidence of absence

Only to the extent that you'd expect to find a connection if you looked, and I expect connections between accounts can be hidden pretty reliably to withstand a causal examination if that's seen as a goal. So very weak evidence (however the coin actually happens to land).

The first explanation I posited, before the karma for his most recent post became visible, seems to be incorrect, but I don't think calcsam is a new user.

Correct.

On a community site, I think you have to assume almost all people aren't malicious.

We also need to optimize the extent to which this is the case. My point was about vulnerability to small groups of outsiders, for which the state of the community is not particularly relevant.

What's the expected damage? A bad post?

Moderately bad posts that appear to be warmly supported by the community. This sends incorrect signals about the community to members of the community.

On a community site, I think you have to assume almost all people aren't malicious. And I think that's been shown to be the case here - some cluelessness or insanity, but the only malice from spammers and the very occasional troll.

Spammers do not qualify for the label 'malicious'. They simply have other goals that happen to be served in a way that is detrimental to lesswrong. Malice means actually assigning utility to decreases in utility of the other not mere indifference.

but we might want to change it.

The more ways we have to encourage lurkers to register, the better. I think having a way to upvote any post will make people feel more engaged with the site, and encourage them to post comments and discussions as well. The benefits probably outweigh the harms.

Readers can be expected (whether or not it's so) to be more receptive to upvoted posts made by a user who has significant positive Karma.

(The account probably had 20 Karma at some point.)

I suppose we have at least one other LDS member then, but I haven't been able to find who I was thinking of with a quick search.