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Not that I mind that now and again people downvote a question or answer they don't like, but this looks very strongly like some kind of retaliation or personal attack.

Look at the activity here:

enter image description here

There top two downvotes happened a minute apart from each other, and the last three are also a minute apart from each other. And maybe it took even less time since the time display only goes down to minutes.

Clearly they are not actually reading the posts, they are just navigating through and downvoting as they go.

I don't know if I'm the only person this is happening to, so I don't know (or care) if it's personal or not. Whatever it is, though, it's unsuitable for the site, and I'd like to bring it to moderator attention.

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  • 5
    The system should catch that automatically, see meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/511/…
    – Troyen
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 3:22
  • @Troyen: Ah, okay. I guess I should wait a bit then and see if this gets automatically caught. Thanks for the link to the other question.
    – Questioner
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 3:53
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    Maybe someone just likes to keep a personal list of his legitimate planned future downvotes, and decide to do it all in a single day. =D (I'm running out of ideas to perceive this kind of behaviour in an acceptable way)
    – Flaw Mod
    Commented Jul 6, 2012 at 1:44
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    @Flaw: Maybe they'll also come by and write all their well prepared downvote explanations in a single day as well. ;)
    – Questioner
    Commented Jul 6, 2012 at 2:46
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    Sometimes users take an interest in another user's point of view and go through their prior questions and answers and vote on them. If the two users have quite opposite points of view it could result in a small run of downvotes in posts. Another reason for votes coming close to get in time is that people, especially with slow computers or slow internet connections, often get into the habit of using multiple tabs at once, switching to one while another is loading. This will show in small bursts as compared to one ongoing burst. But you're right, it could be malicious too, just not necessarily.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 9:15

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Even with the timestamps so close together, it's hard to tell if these are truly malicious votes. Let's keep an eye on it and see if the behaviour persists.

If you notice a prolonged pattern of downvotes, we can take a closer look. For now, I've identified the suspected account and annotated it for future reference.

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  • Thank you for taking a look at the situation. Although I think it's unlikely such rapid downvoting represents legitimate assessments, I'm willing to believe it's more of a situation of casual carelessness and not maliciousness.
    – Questioner
    Commented Jul 6, 2012 at 2:45

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