I post here a lot and my posts get downvoted and upvoted a lot. I don't see any "gaming mechanics", whatever that is. If you have a reason to believe that stuff is happening, please share that with the rest of us.

Also, you overstate this "compatibility". For humans, loss hurts more than gain feels good. Voting with negative as well as positive reinforcement is simply more effective at changing comment styles.

I think you might be confused as to what I meant by gaming mechanics. I'm not positing a vast network of deliberate bots or bad actors or anything.

I'm talking about gaming in the abstract psychological and problem theory sense.

Yes I'm very confused but since you can't explain I won't worry about it.

Well I did, in the previous comment.

Feel free to research & teach yourself basic game theory if you like but it’s too much to fit into a HN comment either way.