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I normally won't care but as this site has a strong community feel I wanted to bring it to the attention of people. Overnight (I'm in Australia) I had 11 of my answers downvoted. It is uncommon for my answers to be downvoted, but whatever, I strongly suspect that I have been targeted by one person.

I have my suspicions who this person is but I obviously can't be certain. I suspect it was in response to a comment that I made on one of his answers that was baseless and incorrect. I was entirely civil about it.

How do I have someone review what's happened to me and can any recourse be taken? Can the downvotes be cancelled? I know it sounds petty but I am trying to cultivate a reputation here.

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  • How do you have 2697 reputation with 1 answer and 1 question, neither of which are strikingly popular? Just trying to understand. Commented Mar 21, 2013 at 19:03
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    1 question, 74 answers. You're looking at my Meta profile. Commented Mar 21, 2013 at 21:08
  • Oh, duh. Silly me. Commented Mar 22, 2013 at 0:50
  • ...you sure it wasn't just a B-Tree of your answers? Commented Mar 26, 2013 at 20:23

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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There's an automated process that runs daily and checks and reverses serial votes (either up or down). It will most probably reverse the downvotes the next time it runs, 9 downvotes in a very short time is certainly an abnormal pattern. In the highly unlikely case that the votes haven't been reversed in 24h, give me a shout in chat so I can ask a SE employee to take a closer look and manually invalidate the votes.

Assuming the votes are indeed abusive (confirmed either by the script or by a SE employee), the next step is to contact and/or suspend the culprit, our tolerance for juvenile behaviours like this is extremely low.

More info on the serial voting script can be found in this M.SO post.

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  • Hi Yannis, thanks for the info. Is there anyway of finding out who did it and whether I can confirm my suspicions? I would guess not but it's always nice to know who the children are. Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 22:46
  • If the automated process picks it up as abuse will the contact be automated? Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 22:48
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    @Sam No. We (the mods) will know who the culprit was once the votes are reversed, but we won't share that information in public (voting is anonymous, and publicly shaming a user isn't going to help anyone involved - a suspension is enough). Also, contacting the user once the abuse is confirmed isn't automated, that would take all the fun out of the process ;) Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 22:57
  • Haha! So, should I remind you guys? καλημέρα! Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 22:59
  • @Sam Nah, I've already bookmarked this to check back tomorrow. Καληνύχτα! (It's 1am here, time for bed ;) Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 23:01
  • thanks for your help mate. Good night indeed, if you could give me a generic update when you revisit that would be great. I appreciate it. Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 23:12
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    @Sam The downvotes were reversed, and I just contacted the downvoter. Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 9:30
  • Thanks Yannis. I appreciate it. Can you give me any indication as to why it happened i.e. was it someone I downvoted or was it entirely random? I know you're not likely to tell me who it was, but it'd be nice to know. Things like that is why I tend to keep a very low profile online. Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 9:32
  • @Sam It happened because people do stupid things. I went through both your profiles looking for recent interactions, and I didn't find anything wrong from you (or you would have received a mod message already). I understand that this stinks and why you want to know more, I turned into a silent downvoter after a similar incident (and resumed to explaining my downvotes only after I became a mod), but I can't share any more information. This is one of this things that you should simply forget about and move on. Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 9:40
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    I already figured who it was and watching the suspension message come up was enough for me :) I'd give you some more Greek but sadly I'm a little rusty - I just know what my mates taught me and what I've managed to teach myself - but thank you again for your help. Was quite irked this morning when I woke up. Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 10:05

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