I'm surprised that you would consciously not post comments to keep your average score up. The goal here is not the score; the goal is civil and interesting discussion. Comment scores are a means to achieve that goal.
Anytime there is a proxy metric, quirky incentives will crop up. (Such as lines-of-code as a metric of productivity; time spent in office as metric of work commitment; comment average score as metric of contribution to civil and interesting discussion.) My hope would be that when possible, people would realize that the metric used is not the real goal, and make conscious choices which get us closer to the real goal, but are irrational if we only value the metric itself.
I will also point out that your username was not lost on me.
Avg is very important, i had an account a few years ago that was a few years old. I made one to many "bad" comments without thinking, and I got shadow banned.
I suspect that your average score had nothing to do with the action taken against you. Rather, it was the accumulation of a certain number of "bad" comments. I also suspect that there was a human-in-the-loop.
Anytime there is a proxy metric, quirky incentives will crop up. (Such as lines-of-code as a metric of productivity; time spent in office as metric of work commitment; comment average score as metric of contribution to civil and interesting discussion.) My hope would be that when possible, people would realize that the metric used is not the real goal, and make conscious choices which get us closer to the real goal, but are irrational if we only value the metric itself.
I will also point out that your username was not lost on me.