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I asked Is there a data stackexchenge query for close vote versus down votes? on meta stack overflow.

I was hoping to get some statistics on people who had a question closed down-voting the question closer with-in some time period in an anonymous format. Just to see if it would be worth-while for 'vote fraud' scripting to detect this. I was told this information was not publicly available and someone at the stack exchange team would have to do the query.

Especially obvious is if all five people have down votes in a short period of time. This doesn't appear to be reversed (at least in a 48hr period). The particular question answer down-voted might not deserve it. I am fine with someone wanting to punish me for my opinion.

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  • I close voted only a couple of questions on Stack Overflow but I hardly get any downvotes...
    – rene
    Feb 19, 2015 at 20:39
  • This can happen, yes. The solution? Ignore the votes.
    – yo'
    Feb 19, 2015 at 20:44
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    @yo' Right, individually, I will do that. I just wonder if it is systemic. If it is happening a lot, then it means that worth while answers do not float to the top. Also, a solution can be to stop close voting; it gives me nothing if I am vote hungry. Unfortunately I use less frequent tags to answer and the vote count is not usually high. In some ways the UI will encourage it. Other solutions are not to list 'close voters' in the reason. It depends on if the issue is frequent or not.
    – artless noise
    Feb 19, 2015 at 20:45
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    I think it can happen, yes. There are other things that attract positive or negative votes. I agree that this one belongs to the category that should be dealt with if it happens a lot. We would really use some statistic on this. I don't know which close vote or yours you speak about. I went through the last ones, and vast majority of the OPs are below the 125 rep whence unable to downvote. This is the case quite often: most closed questions are from new users who can't downvote the five of you a revenge.
    – yo'
    Feb 19, 2015 at 20:53
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    @Won't Sorry, I dont' like to provide an example as I feel it is asymmetric to be talking about someone else actions here. For instance, most commmonly used tool chain. The answer downvoted, I wondered why some one would down vote it? Then I also got a comment. Then I looked and all five close voters had also recently received a down vote on answers.
    – artless noise
    Feb 19, 2015 at 20:58
  • Because it's completely off topic.
    – Bart
    Feb 19, 2015 at 21:03
  • Anyways, if you have a suspicion and you want to deal with it, you should flag the OP's questions for moderator attention, and in the flag explanation, link to the posts by you and close-voting fellows you believe were down-voted in revenge. The moderators can overview it.
    – yo'
    Feb 19, 2015 at 21:05
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    I cast about 40-50 thousands close votes across SE network and can recall less than a handful cases when votes down seemed related to these. I guess this doesn't happen frequently (although the particular case you refer to seems to be for real)
    – gnat
    Feb 19, 2015 at 21:14
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    as far as I know, everyone was always listed. Closing is public activity and is subject for public exposure and scrutiny, this seems to be by design (knowing myself, I would say this design decision is quite reasonable, I wouldn't want folks like me do closing anonymously:)
    – gnat
    Feb 19, 2015 at 21:23
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    not enough I'm afraid. Thing is, anonymous voting up/down is sort of a holy cow... one of the corner stones in Stack Exchange model. As a result, to compromise it (and reverting revenge votes is a compromise), one needs really very strong reasons. Handful cases out of few tens thousands hardly qualify as such
    – gnat
    Feb 19, 2015 at 21:47
  • @gnat To be clear, I was not asking to make them generically public. Only asking if someone could make a query on aggregate data to confirm that this is not that frequent. Ie, I don't want the data for an individual up/down votes. Only cases of closees downvoting closers within some time frame over a whole site. I guess there is some private data on which such a query can be made, otherwise the UI wouldn't know that I already voted on something.
    – artless noise
    Feb 19, 2015 at 22:15
  • aggregated stats I see, that could be interesting. To be meaningful though, these better be limited only to askers having privilege to vote down (125+ rep). It is also worth keeping in mind that askers aren't notified about closure, that is they may find out and decide on revenge much later after it actually happened
    – gnat
    Feb 20, 2015 at 8:06
  • That is true. However, when you ask a question, you usually return to look at it without notification. I guess if you ask a question, you want an answer? I am pretty sure most askers would look at a question within a week.
    – artless noise
    Feb 20, 2015 at 15:41

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