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Today someone downvoted my answers serially:

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The hostile downvoting activity took place within a short span of time. How should I act?

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The downvotes should be revoked within 24 hours by an automated process; if you still see them after 24 hours, post a comment here so I can ask a dev to look into it.

Beyond that, there's generally not much action needed on your part. If it does happen again in the future, you can always post on meta or flag one of your posts so we can look into it, but we only issue warnings/suspensions in cases of particularly egregious behavior, since even the calmest of people can get angry at times and not think straight.

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  • @ClarkKent: Yup; I was serially downvoted two weeks ago. In the two weeks before, I had accumulated 10 downvotes total. In the two weeks since, I've had 30 – usually 1 or 2 a day, but sometimes 3 or 4. Odd how only 1 of the 30 downvoted answers ever received more than 1 downvote; 6 were accepted, while 4 received more than 10 upvotes! No comments have been left with a reason for any downvote. It's indeed possible that several different users have all had legitimate reasons to downvote each individual answer, but it seems more likely that I have a "fan." Oh well; grin and bear it, I guess. :)
    – J.R.
    May 9, 2012 at 9:57
  • 2
    If you have 12000 reputation, and lose 12 points a day, why not grin and bear it?
    – GEdgar
    May 9, 2012 at 13:19
  • I don't get that first sentence. How can an "automated process" reliably distinguish invalid downvotes from valid ones? I didn't personally contribute to any of OP's downvotes, but having just looked at them I'm not convinced there's any reason why the downvote against OP's "Forgot Password" answer shouldn't stand. I suspect I get serially downvoted myself sometimes - but as @GEdgar suggests, in the grand scheme of things they're really just (very slightly) irritating fleabites.
    – FumbleFingers
    May 9, 2012 at 15:16
  • @waiwai933: The downvotes are still there. It seems like the system could not detect them. Could you please look into it?
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    May 9, 2012 at 19:25
  • @FumbleFingers It can't determine which votes are invalid, but since the process has access to a lot of data, including which user cast the downvote, which we can't see, it can detect suspicious trends and reverse those.
    – waiwai933
    May 9, 2012 at 19:57
  • @MehperC.Palavuzlar I've asked one of the SE employees to look into it, and I'll let you know what I hear.
    – waiwai933
    May 9, 2012 at 20:05
  • @waiwai933: OK, thanks.
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    May 9, 2012 at 20:05
  • @MehperC.Palavuzlar Ok, so I have good news and bad news: The bad news is that the votes won't be revoked at this time, because there is an appearance of possible validity (unfortunately, I can't give too much details, but there appeared to be some reason to the downvotes); the good news is that we're still looking into this particular user, so there's the chance that the votes may be revoked in the future. As GEdgar says, though, it's not that much in the grand scheme of things.
    – waiwai933
    May 10, 2012 at 2:05
  • @waiwai933: There appeared to be some reason to the downvotes. Sorry but I don't get this. Some user is mad at me because of something (this something is a conundrum for me), and it is a valid reason to downvote?? Could you please shed some light?
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    May 12, 2012 at 14:03
  • It happened to me a while back; I notice it and the next day it was corrected. I didn't have to do anything except wonder what was going on, and since I won't ever find out I've stopped even doing that. As the saying goes, shit happens.
    – John Lawler
    May 18, 2012 at 19:00
  • @waiwai933: Someone is systematically nibbling my rep. This is disturbing. I'm a member of various SE sites but it never happened to me before. Could you please check and inform me? This is the latest rep summary of mine: i.imgur.com/78ddg.png
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    May 30, 2012 at 19:25
  • The downvoting-mania continues: i.imgur.com/QlUgK.png
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    Jun 1, 2012 at 8:33
  • @MehperC.Palavuzlar Sorry for the late reply; I've been busy lately. Anyway, we have been seeing some very suspicious activity on several accounts lately. I'm escalating this to the SE team again and seeing if they can do anything manually (since I can't cancel votes).
    – waiwai933
    Jun 4, 2012 at 6:12
  • @waiwai933: OK, thanks. It is really strange that everday I'm getting downvotes on my several answers...
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    Jun 4, 2012 at 9:50
  • @Mari-LouA Unfortunately, I cannot comment on how we detect vote fraud, or what is considered vote fraud.
    – waiwai933
    Oct 2, 2013 at 5:57

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