Check for revenge voting directed against question closers

Question

I'm a high-rep user on Stack Overflow. I shouldn't care overmuch about downvotes directed my way. In general, I don't, except: I've asked only two questions; against hundreds of answers. A single user can downvote all my questions without triggering (as far as we know) the vote fraud algorithms. Questions are featured much more prominently than answers in a user's profile, amplifying the apparent effect of those downvotes.

I bring this up because I've noticed a pattern. Periodically, batches of my posts (including my questions, which are quite old at this point) will get downvoted at the same moment. This has happened maybe three or four times. I tend to vote-to-close about a dozen or so questions a day, and posters will sometimes make clear their displeasure at these closures. I suspect, but can't prove, that these users are going around voting down all those folks that voted to close their questions. If they limit themselves to one or two votes per closer, no algorithms (again, theoretically) will get triggered.

I feel a bit like a whiner bringing this up, but:

• I'm proud of my contributions to SO, and don't hesitate to point people to them, including from my resume. I don't want graffiti on my house, and I don't want garbage in my profile.
• I wonder what will happen when I have another question to ask - will the accumulated downvotes prevent me from asking?

I've written to the team before about this, and Jeff was kind enough to roll back a previous batch of downvotes on my questions. That's not a good way to deal with this, though. As it stands, I'm reluctant to vote to close bad questions.

I propose extending the vote fraud detection script to include this scenario. Roll back downvotes if the voter is voting down more than N posts by users who recently (successfully) voted to close one of their questions. Bonus points if the downvoted posts in question are quite old (and thus no longer visible).

Again, I can't say that this is a real problem, but I suspect it is.

EDIT: The question downvotes I received yesterday, and several others besides, appear to have been scrubbed from my questions.

Answer 1

Are you sure the revenge voting doesn't already account for this?

Your edit indicates that the votes were indeed scrubbed and a simple implementation of the revenge voting detection would simply check for rapid successive vote activity directed at a users' posts (questions or answers), why it would only check one type or the other wouldn't make much sense since the penalty for being downvoted on both is the same (for the poster, not always for the voter now).

Answer 2

Looking at your stats. You have 21k rep and a total 4 downvotes on your two questions. Looking back to May 12th I see a total of 3 down votes and 600 positive rep due to other activities.

This problem seems very small and not worth making changes for additional revenge vote detection. I recommend against such changes.

Answer 3

I think this is valid. I'm in the same situation - 3 questions vs 345 answers. My questions get DVs occasionally when I vote to close (which I do a lot), or I post a comment to another high rep user who answers an easy question instead of voting to close (like this).

This exchange this morning got me a downvote on each of my questions pretty much immediately.

Edit:

Kon appears to have deleted his answer, but the gist was I told him I DV'd his answer since he was answering a softball question for easy rep instead of voting to close and reduce the noise.

Answer 4

I disagree with @jzd. He's picking on numbers and not addressing the real issue. I think that the Stack Overflow community is beautiful, and it's a shame that there are people that act this way. Members of the community, such as Michael Petrotta, are working hard helping other people with their problems/questions, so when people use their power to downvote as a revenge - it makes a community contributor leave with a "bad taste" and that's not the way it should be!

This is something that should be considered. I would implement one of the three:

1. A fraud system like Michael suggested
2. Exposing the names of the downvoters next to each question/answer
3. Hiding the names of the members who flagged a question for closing.

Answer 5

In Slashdot the way this is prevented is you cannot go to a user's profile view his posts and down mod them. Instead, if you want to mod comments, you're given a limited number of comments which are randomly drawn from all comments and are in threads you did not participate in.

A first step to a fix is limiting the number of down mods a person is given in a time period.

The second step is stopping users from down answers which compete with their own by preventing them from voting in threads they are a participant in. Perhaps this is already done here?

Yes, this has the draw back of not permitting the most knowledgeable people- those who know enough to answer the question in the first place - to also perform the useful function of evaluating other posts. But this is only a slight drawback however, for the following reasons.

1. they have already contributed maximally by posting their answer to the question

2. crowdsourcing the up/down vote is a great application of the knowledge of crowds and the single vote of the participant who is excluded from voting will not be really missed.

3. If someone is moved by an issue so strongly they want to down mod other participants' comments, the system forces them into a choice–down mod your enemy or supply your own answer. This is a good thing since strongly motivated people are more likely to want to argue their side rather than just down mod, although they will do both if given the chance.

The third step is to remove the ability to down mod more than a few times the same user's answers across all questions within a certain time frame. Also, you cannot up mod the same user's answers across questions, although the number of permitted up mods should be greater than the number of permitted down mods.

This prevents people gaming the system either way, by acting out against an enemy or by creating alliances between users.

For example, you can down mod userX's answer to a question say ONCE a week. You can up mod userX's answers say three times a week. We don't want to discourage appreciation and positive ranking too strongly, only when the number of positive votes permitted could lead to a quid pro quo arrangement between users.

Of course the actual number of times and time frame both need to be experimented with to get them right.

So suppose you see userX's answers all the time because you innocently share the same interests. This is just exactly the type of situation in which gaming the system is most likely to take place; you may either come to like userX or come to loathe userX.

Either way, we don't want alliances and we don't want revenge taking to be easy options. If you are in a forum with the same userX over and over the best way to participate is contribute an answer. If you like userX's answers then you have plenty of up mods to offer, but not an unlimited amount such as could be used to bribe someone.

Similarly, you don't have enough down mods in your quiver to hurt someone you don't like.