Serial downvoting and downvoting etiquette in general...

Question

I just logged-in and noticed that every single of my contributions (questions and answers) to date had been downvoted: obviously by the same user, most likely without even a reading (there are 10 downvotes over a timespan of a 1-2 minutes: way too short to read everything).

While I would certainly understand my entries being downvoted (like anyone else, I make mistakes), this seems more like some strange power-trip/personal-vendetta by some brave anonymous user who clearly doesn't understand the way SE is supposed to work. When downvoting an accepted answer, a comment, if anything, would seem like the most basic courtesy to both me and other users who might read this answer later.

I really could not care less about the loss to my "reputation points", but I feel this type of childish behaviour, if unchecked, could be very detrimental to both the quality and the atmosphere of the site...

It seems like most other meta sites have had similar discussions before, so I figured this might be the occasion to have our own here:

1. Should we add a FAQ item strongly recommending posting an explanatory comment (with corrections if applicable) when downvoting a consequent entry?

2. Do jp.SE admins have any tools to manually check on this? and if so, would they mind sending a notice to the incriminated user enjoining him not to engage in that sort of behaviour? (it is my understanding that SE has a system in place to reverse serial-downvoting automatically every couple hours, but it would still be helpful to address the root cause).

Any other thought on that?

Answer 1

As YOU said, the system has some mechanism which detects unusual patterns in voting and cancels the suspicious votes. The process is automatic and runs once a day.

However, some people are childish, and ultimately we cannot change that fact. We have to live with childish behaviors of some people, and that’s life. Hopefully that’s only a tiny, tiny part of life.

I am not strongly against recommending explanations for down-voting in FAQ, but note that when you down-vote a post, the system already shows a message which recommends an explanation in comments. Therefore, I doubt that adding something to FAQ is effective.

Answer 2

SE Engine has vote fraud prevention algorithm, it will reset the votes overnight. Please check it tommorow.

Answer 3

This is somewhat off-topic, but the closest thing I could find to a relevant question:

I've noticed some people are freaking out over downvotes on meta. Downvotes (and upvotes even) are different on these SE Meta sites (note that MSO is the exception, not the rule). Voting here does not affect your reputation in any way, your reputation is purely dictated by the amount you have on the main site. This is because votes on meta are supposed to indicate agreement (with an upvote) or disagreement (with a downvote).

So, feel free to vote up or down to your heart's content without worry that you'll permanently corrupt someone's reputation by saying "I don't agree with this suggestion." You won't even lose 1 rep for voting down on an answer.

The Meta FAQ was recently updated to explain this as well.