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For people who are trying to close this: Its Serial negative group voting..
I am aware of automatic detection script but looks like it fails in such scenarios.

Many times I was a victim of serial downvoting. But SO is pretty awesome to detect and revert it

enter image description here

But looks like now a days downvoter have become more awesome,I am facing short number of sudden negative votes. And looks like same person with multiple profiles is doing this
enter image description here

I am not saying I am too genius to receive downvotes but
1. The questions are almost 2 year old and never received any downvote before.
2. All of a sudden in 3 mins how can 3 or more random people downvoted on my old questions? (Looks a very low probability case)

I am not afraid of downvotes but just hate when someone gives it without any reason.
Do SO take any action against such things?

Looks like even the downvoter is reading this post. Few more rewards after taking this up

enter image description here

Year old questions and all of a sudden downvotes.

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15
  • Looks like three different users have downvoted your answers in from the same computer. ( resource : voting pattern )
    – Raynold
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:21
  • @Raynold: Ya minimum 3 or maximum 6 different accounts.But I guess only one evil mind behind it.
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:24
  • No, it cant be 6 different account. The voting time says that part.
    – Raynold
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:25
  • 2
    "Many times I was a victim of serial nonvoting." Huh? How does SO revert that - by giving you votes?
    – slugster
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:25
  • 2
    @slugster: By reverting I mean undoing negative votes. Check first image in my post.
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:26
  • @Karna, dowvoter is only downvoting your questions, not your answer
    – Raynold
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:30
  • @Raynold: Still it hurts a lot..
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:37
  • 1
    @Karna, i know, what i am saying is, if anyone downvotes your answer then he/she looses -1 from their reputation, that's why these users are downvoting your question only. I assume these users have very less reputations like > 125 and < 200. ( its only my assumption ).
    – Raynold
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:39
  • @Karna: I thing slugster was referring to the term 'nonvoting'. :-) I know you ment down votes, really. A 'nonvote' is the absence of a vote, reverting the absence of a vote suggests you were given a vote. :-P
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:44
  • @MartijnPieters: Oops my bad. it was a tyop :) Updated my post.
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:45
  • @Raynold: Ya smart old fashioned villain..
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:47
  • 1
    Sounds somebody is not happy with you... I flagged one of the questions with a link to this discussion. Hopefully it will be solved soon.
    – Toon Krijthe
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:50
  • @ToonKrijthe: Thanks for flagging. Hope I will get my hard way earned reputation back.
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 13:57
  • I think I am experiencing something similar, but a little too early to tell. Had a few of my questions suddenly down-voted in a short space of time, included a lot of old questions that haven't had any attention in some time.
    – Rudi Kershaw
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 9:32
  • @Rudi Kershaw Some stupid users who like to take a random profile, and visit all of their questions and answers to see what they could downvote. Because downvoting is so fun.
    – Quidam
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:12

2 Answers 2

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22

I saw a flag someone had raised on this, and tracked the source. You were indeed being targeted by a user and his two sock puppet accounts. I destroyed these sock puppets, which looks to have eliminated all of the targeted downvotes here.

Given that these sock puppets were being used to vote for their own posts, and this is not the first time they've done this, I gave them a lengthy vacation from the site.

If you see suspicious behavior like this in the future, please flag us about it and we'll take a look into it.

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  • 1
    @Brad: Thanks for keeping SO awesome :)
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 4:53
22

That does indeed look very suspicious and may evade the serial-voting script.

If, after 24 hours, the downvotes have not been reverted, flag one of the posts for moderator attention.

Use the "other" option and explain, and a moderator will investigate. If there are sockpuppet accounts involved they have the tools to detect these and clean up.

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  • 1
    Its already been more than 24 hours. Will try flagging..I think others must be suffering from such lame attacks so don't we have anything to detect and prevent it?
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:17
  • 1
    There are automatic scripts that aim to reverse such cases. They sometimes slip under the radar. In that case, call a human exception handler (a moderator).
    – Madara's Ghost
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:35
  • 1
    @Karna: We already detect serial downvoting, but automated detection can only go so far. In the (rare) cases where it fail to detect a specific anomalous pattern, the moderators can step in.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 11:37
  • 2
    @Karna if you flag, consider also referring to this meta question in your flag message; that way it would be easier to moderators to get the background and discuss details of the issue
    – gnat
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 12:00
  • @gnat: Yes already flagged and added link to this post.
    – Ajinkya
    Commented Mar 12, 2013 at 12:01
  • I need to now more about this script. I had 5 downvots by the same user, visiting some of my old answers, made several months ago. It's REALLY unfaire, and hostile. The person can going on downvoting me by visiting every new question or answer I make, so tell me if you punish that kind of behaviour.
    – Quidam
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 6:37
  • @PERCE-NEIGE my answer already tells you what to do: flag and ask the moderators to investigate.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 6:55
  • Thanks for your reply. The moderator doesn't care and told me he has no tool to investigate.
    – Quidam
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:00
  • @PERCE-NEIGE I doubt they told you they don't care. There may not be enough evidence to investigate (we can't see individual votes, only patterns with a minimal threshold). If the voting continues then we'd have more evidence and you should flag again.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:02
  • @PERCE-NEIGE of course, it could also be that the evidence shows the votes where not targeted at you specifically, at which point the votes will not be reverted either.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:06
  • No, he didn't, but I deduced that. Because I've explained how I feel about being downloaded several times in a raw by the same user in a very short time (2 minutes). This user let some remarks on some of the downvotes. I think he tried to ask me to improve my answers, I did. Some of downvotes may have been legit, so there are no problems, but some are very severe. The things I can't stand is that he visited even old replies, to downvote everything. If he come across my replies, and feels they are not good, there is no problem, but the other other is harassment.
    – Quidam
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:07
  • It's an hostile behaviour to visit every replies from an user and downvoting all of them. Even if I know some of my replies could be improved It's not the right way to do it, it's just demoralizing, hostile, and harassing. If people downvotes all replies that are not 100% perfect, nobody will go on.
    – Quidam
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:09
  • Told me that some of the downvotes were severe, but he has no tool to investigate. And he told me that before I ask anything, I was just complaining and not saying the name of the user.
    – Quidam
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:10
  • I'm assuming you are talking about Super User here. I see only 3 votes. The comments are from different users, one of which is automatically placed when reviewing from the review queue. You can't at all conclude that any of those users also did the voting. Three votes is not enough to form a pattern so moderators indeed do not have the tools to investigate further there. The votes where also cast today, which is. It enough for an automated reversal to have taken place. I'm afraid the moderator response was correct here.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 7:18

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