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Possible Duplicate:
If you just witnessed tactical downvoting, is it a reportable offense?
Some time ago I posted an answer, I got +1, seconds later I got -1.
Someone gave a similar answer, and when I deleted my answer, this person got +1. So it seems like this is the person who down-voted me.
Should I flag this behavior? Or although it is not very ethical is there nothing I can do about it?
Yes, Tactical down-voting is a problem, but It's very hard to know whether that's what's happening.
But even if you could identify that the down-voting is tactical, there are even some of the opinion that you have the right to down-vote for whatever reason you please.
every times someone down-votes, they get -1, so you can rest assured that any failed attempts at tactical down voting will hurt the guy.
Looks like there was a comment on your answer explaining the reasoning behind the downvote.
While people downvote for many reasons, including revenge and other types of malice, it sounds to me like in this case you're overthinking it a bit. I'm not saying you should be happy about getting a downvote, but this case didn't look malicious to me.
Don't take it personally. Take the criticism and either improve your answer to address it, or move on and post more answers. :)
The biggest problem here is you're assuming that it's the person who posted another answer that downvoted you. You don't know that. Unless you're sitting there stalking their profile watching all their reputation changes, there's absolutely no possible way to know a person downvoted you. Assuming that will only cause problems for you, as it causes false accusations. It's perfectly possible someone thought your answer was wrong.
Tactical downvoting may exist, but there are just as many people out there who will upvote your answer even if it's competing with theirs. There's even a badge for doing so.
Another thing to consider: don't delete your post just because you got one downvote, especially if you still have a zero or positive score. You get 10 reputation for an upvote, and only lose 2 for a downvote - so you're still sitting at a net gain of 8 reputation. If there are legitimate reasons for your post being wrong or unuseful, someone will comment on your answer. At that point, you can either edit it to make it correct or delete it to remove inaccurate content. If it's correct and useful, others will upvote the answer and that downvote will be meaningless. Don't let a single downvote intimidate you.
As for flagging, you should never do this. A moderator cannot do anything at all to reverse downvotes, and technically the behavior is allowed, so long as they're not mass downvoting (or upvoting) all of your posts at once.
Seems like the user has explained his down-vote, though he didn't have to. People are going to down-vote for a wide variety of reasons - maybe they don't like your hair, or maybe they think you down-voted them first, or, maybe, they don't think your answer is very good (and they may be right or they may be wrong).
There is not much you can do about this. Unless you have evidence of repeated abuse from a particular user (in which case e-mail [email protected] and they will investigate - though they may not reveal any details of their findings).
Aside from that case, you need to decide if you're going to let occasional down-votes - justified or not - bother you. If you are going to let them bother you, then maybe this isn't the community for you. I have a variety of answers with a couple of down-votes but no explanation (here's one example - +94, -2?). I used to let this bug me but it's just like bad drivers hogging the left lane - no matter where you go, people like this are going to be there.
