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It feels good to express spite through downvotes - but the algorithm behind SE would stop posts from users who receive a lot of downvotes.

Express constructive criticism and spite through comments rather than downvotes.

If a poster needs to be censored by limiting posting privileges, let human moderators do it rather than the system.

Heavily downvoting a question that has received answers is particularly vicious, since the "offender" can't even delete the question anymore since it has already received answers.

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    You don't learn do you? Lashing out and accusing users of being spiteful did you no favours last time.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Aug 20 at 10:44
  • you misspelt "favor". @Mari-Lou A
    – S K
    Commented Aug 20 at 10:48
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    It's the American English spelling: "favor", British English is "favour". Funnily enough you use the BrEng past participle "spelt" while in the US the past participle is usually regular and is usually spelled, well... like that.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Aug 20 at 10:51
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    What exactly is the question here?
    – jsw29
    Commented Aug 20 at 15:17
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    I’m voting to close this question because it is based on a rant. There is no supporting evidence that any of downvotes cast were unmotivated or in spite. Lastly, the accusation that a downvote is synonymous with censorship has not been proven.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Aug 28 at 7:05

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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It seems to me you're misunderstanding the purpose of voting.

Voting out of spite is targeting the user rather than the content. Many such votes are detected and reversed automatically; others may be determined by more manual processes. Voting for the person rather than their post is against the rules (whether it's upvoting or downvoting).

However, a series of poorly-received posts — particularly on main sites — will absolutely trigger the process which will culminate in limiting a person's ability to post more. This isn't censorship per se: it's actually protecting the site from poor quality content, irrelevant content and material which is not a good fit for the site.

Voting on Meta sites is different and is intended to signal agreement or disagreement with a post rather than be a judgement on its quality. For this reason thresholds and limits differ on Meta and Main, although [I guess] it's still possible to post many poorly-received posts and eventually be restricted on Meta sites. That process happens a lot more slowly on Meta sites.

NB: Deleting a downvoted question does not remove it from the algorithm which determines whether a person should be limited in their ability to post. The only way of countering this is to improve a downvoted post: editing allows downvotes to be cancelled or reversed.

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  • This is just boilerplate. If the lorgnette-looking-through crowd doesn't like a poster, he/she will be silenced. Once a post is ANSWERED AND THEN HEAVILY DOWNVOTED, it looks like it will affect the poster permanently. "Poorly received" is just a euphemism for "spite-downvoted". @andrewleach
    – S K
    Commented Aug 20 at 9:16
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    It's not boilerplate. Every answer I write is crafted individually. Heavy downvoting can affect a user permanently, but the way to avoid that is to write material which doesn't get downvoted. If it does, the only remedy is to improve it: this applies to deleted posts as well. Oh-- and while "poorly-received" might be a catch-all, it certainly doesn't include "spite-downvoted" because downvoting the person and not the post is against the rules and those votes should be invalidated.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Commented Aug 20 at 13:17
  • you are refusing to see the reality happening before your eyes. I see no need to "improve" posts subjected to spite downvotes. Enough humanity still thrives here and some upvotes (some may even be sympathy upvotes) have restored my posting privileges. To paraphrase Austin Powers, If I act as a mongoose to a snake (or is it a snake to the mongoose) to SOME posters, I can't modify my behavior to make them less unhappy with me. @andrewleach
    – S K
    Commented Aug 20 at 13:30

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