The answer to tactical downvoting problem?

Question

As we know, the tactical downvoting (I'm talking especially about SO, as I don't know about other sites) is more and more becoming a serious problem, as I see, the community can't stop this behavior without some sacrificing.

As a suggestion, I think it makes sense to prevent an answerer from downvoting any answer on the same question, this -sure- has a harm, but IMO, it's less harmful than the tactical downvoting issue, and to make the things a bit more easier, we can prevent an answerer from downvoting a question without posting a comment to that answer before.

And vice versa, if a user downvoted an answer, he shouldn't be able to post another one unless he posted a comment first, to prevent working-around that system, so a user can't downvote other answers before posting his own to avoid posting comments.

EDIT, more clarification: I don't say wrong answers shouldn't be downvoted, BUT if you want to downvote an answer and post your own, you'll have to post a comment, so we make sure you're not just downvoting right answers tactically.

Answer 1

Tactical downvoting is something Jeff and the team has been aware of for a while, there has even been a blog post about it.

One of the recent changes Jeff made to avoid this is the timed voting, which means you can't reverse a vote after a certain period of time. There is also scripts in place to reverse serial downvotes which occur from time to time.

The best way to stop this is to flag instances of possible tactical downvoting to be investigated by the team, and if a user is guilty the relevant action will be taken. I have to admit on SU I have very rarely seen this occur, and I am not so sure if it is such a big problem on SO. I am not saying it does not exist, but I highly doubt it occurs on every question. There is possibly a small percentage of the total user base that does do this to get an advantage.

Apart from this, there is really very little that can be done to stop this, and anything more to stop it will eventually make the system to cumbersome to use. So forcing someone to leave a comment, which has been declined before, is not a solution, since this removes the anonymous nature of the voting process altogether. I don't always leave a comment for a downvote. If the answer is wrong, I don't need to make the person answering feel worse by pointing it out in a comment.

Answer 2

If I see an answer to a question that is just plain wrong, I should be able to both downvote it and post my own answer. This is such a fundamental part of SO that it's too heavy-handed to prevent it just to avoid a relatively minor problem.

Answer 3

I just ran some stats looking at people who downvote on competing answers:

1. I looked at the ratio between downvoting the competition and total answers, so this gave me the top 500 who tend to downvote the competition

2. Of this list only about 20 had a ratio higher than half, meaning only 20 people total on stackoverflow will downvote the competition on more than 50% of the questions they answer.

3. Looking through the list of people who do this some patterns emerge:

   1. These people tend to answer crowded questions.
   2. These people in general seemed like experts in their fields
   3. These people seem to be participating in difficult tags (such as c++ or perl) which tend to attract a lot of wrong answers.

Overall looking at these people it appears the downvotes are helping float up good info. Which is why we allow downvoting in the first place.

As it stands I can not see any pattern of abuse in Stack Overflow and do not believe any changes need to be made to address competitive downvotes.

There are a large number of reasons I think this is not a problem

1. Its self-correcting, meaning if somebody is misbehaving the community will correct it anyway.

2. It is fully audited - so problem users are automatically picked up and we can ban accounts if needed (or reverse votes)

3. Vote lock in really helps out as people can not hide their tracks.

Answer 4

It's pretty obvious that there's a "bandwagon effect", wherein people vote up answers that already have upvotes and ignore answers that already have downvotes, so it makes sense that dishonest people would manipulate this effect by using "tactical downvoting" to push themselves to the top of the list.

But if "tactical downvoting" is really a serious problem (and it doesn't sound like it is), locking-in votes is not a solution. In fact, it's a problem of its own.

There are many topics where common understanding is subtly wrong. (You know, the sorts of questions that people ask on sites like this.) The first answers will often be flawed by this common misunderstanding, and the first upvotes that pour in will also be wrong. Only after some discussion in the comments or after a more enlightened answer is posted do voters realize just how wrong that other answer is. But their votes are locked-in and can't be changed. The subtly-wrong answer now has lots of upvotes it doesn't deserve, continuing the cycle of misunderstanding as it misleads thousands of subsequent viewers.

Locking votes doesn't do anything to prevent people from downvoting competing answers anyway. They can still do that just fine. It does prevent them from undoing the damage after they "win", however, which just makes it even more harmful to the victims.

It does make permanent the small rep penalty you get for downvoting others, but that's not enough to stop anyone. Pushing yourself to the top of the bandwagon will get you a lot more rep than you lose. If that's really the rationale, it would be better to allow people to undo their downvotes, but don't give them their rep back when they do. Same effect on the voter, without the harmful side effects.

A real solution would be to remove the bandwagon effect altogether. Two proposals:

1. For a period of time after a question is asked, display the answers in random order and hide the number of votes they've received. Downvoting competing answers will accomplish nothing, since no one can see the current score and be influenced by it. Votes will be more accurate and objective, too, since people will actually have to read through answers and judge them on their merits, instead of just skimming through the ones that were posted first and ignoring the ones at the bottom.
2. On each page view, choose at random one of the answers that haven't received many votes, and highlight it by placing it near the top of the list (maybe directly under the top-voted answer with a box around it to set it apart?) This way, in the long run, all answers will get equal exposure and hopefully more votes, to more accurately order the answers by helpfulness and counteract the "first post effect".

Answer 5

Personally, I don't believe tactical downvoting has much effect at all. It feels immediate, spiteful and effective, so people get upset. But IMHO it's an ineffectual strategy. This is because most users vote to move an answer towards its perceived value, not because they agree/disagree with what is said. If an answer is 'worth 4 points' to most users, it will converge on that value over time.

Long term, answers that are downvoted without basis will be upvoted, netting reputation points for free. Aggressive downvoting actually helps that user in the long run!

I've discussed this line of reasoning in more detail before.

Some say tactical downvoting works because answers at the top of the stack are much more likely to be upvoted. I'd like to see some evidence of this. I've never noticed it myself. Most questions only have a small number of answers, and they're usually short. Are people really as lazy as this assumes?

Answer 6

Every time you become more concerned about votes than providing good answers, God closes a question.

Answer 7

Can't say I've noticed the problem, but perhaps it's not as prevalent in the threads I use. However, someone can only downvote your answer once - does a 2 becoming a 1 really make that much difference? If someone is in the habit of downvoting tactically, it would likely be apparent from their profile. And wrong answers should be downvotable irrespective of any other answers.

Answer 8

It would be better if people who downvote would also be required to leave a comment. Sometimes, answers get downvoted because of misconceptions, which cannot be cleared if people just downvote without comment.

And then you could flag offensive downvotes much easier too...