-2

When you say something one person disagrees with, they scroll through your entire list of questions and blindly downvote you. I tend to want to just ignore it but how does the site recommend handling this childish behavior?

Took 10 points away in 10 minutes

I just found an interesting comment in a similar question (asking about serial blind downvoting vice targeted downvoting/thuggery)

If a user is targeting you in particular and downvoting a lot of your posts, the automatic script will catch him; don't you worry.

Can someone please explain this script for the benefit of honest users as well? Can I accidentally get nabbed by the script and what are the consequences?

8
  • 7
    FWIW whilst this has the hinting’s of serial downvoting you have posted a lot recently and there is a long enough gap between downvotes that posts could reasonably have been read. So this isn’t necessarily serial targeted downvoting someone might just be going through posts and voting as they see fit regardless of the user who posted them. (Unless of course there’s more to this than you’re stating here and in that case you might want to flag to bring it up with the mods depending on the circumstance.)
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 4:58
  • And of course, something I forgot earlier, it's also worth noting that these votes might not even be by the same user. Usually wait 1-2 days and if the votes haven't been reversed and it looks like targeted serial downvoting flag for mod attention and ask them to investigate (and say when it happened of course!)
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 13:38
  • 2
    @TheLethalCarrot My experience with serial downvotes literally had them all happen within 1 minute on 5 different questions. If this was targeted, at least the person approached it rationally.
    – JMac
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 20:27
  • 1
    That was my concern. I know who it is and they are pretty high up on the totem pole. Spaced the votes 2 minutes apart. They didn't agree with an exchange in comments then suddenly this barrage of downvotes, even on my very popular answers (because they probably already downvoted the less-than-stellar ones). It's a vote against the author not the post.
    – Vogon Poet
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 20:30
  • 1
    @VogonPoet if that is indeed the case, and you must have only suspicions unless they outright stated as such, you should really flag for moderator attention about the issue.
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 20:35
  • I assume Mods can know who cast the serial votes and make the connection?
    – Vogon Poet
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 20:38
  • @Vogon Poet, I don't believe the local "SciFiSE" mods can. I had to bring it up with the Stack Exchange mods, previously.
    – Gnemlock
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 6:38
  • 1
    @VogonPoet Who cast a vote is privileged information and only SE staff themselves can see it on investigation. Mods have more tools to investigate serial voting but who voted is still anonymous to them.
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 9:47

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
9

This Q&A here explains a bit about the serial voting reversal script and links to the more detailed post on meta.SE:

Is this serial voting?

A script runs every day and looks for patterns of multiple votes that are inappropriate. The details of what qualifies as inappropriate are secret, but the script catches both serial up- and down-voting. The script will reverse downvotes that target you (as in this case) as well as targeted upvotes (e.g. if someone reads and likes one of your answers and then goes through your profile and upvotes too many of your posts). The only consequence is that the votes are reversed when the script runs.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .