Several people posted recently in a thread on women, mostly espousing feminist views - only to find that someone had declined to respond to their post, but instead browsed their history and downvoted every single comment or article they had ever posted.
I have two questions:
1. Why would you come to a site like this and pollute the karma system? How does it make you smarter? How does it make anyone else on the site smarter?
2. What would be a good technical workaround? In my mind, some system that detects mass-downvoting and flags a user for review would be preferable, but what should happen then? Should the system be more lenient to higher-karma posters? Who should perform the review process? What should be done with those whom the reviewer ascertains are abusing the karma system? I would prefer some kind of lesson that is more corrective than retributive - it seems to me that people who would perform this behavior are exactly the sort of people who need some of the lessons that this site provides. Any ideas?
If I may make a suggestion, please pick a different user to perform that task on, rather than me. I would prefer to not have my karma distorted by primate pack-alliance instincts, for or against, and another user already performed corrective action against the original punitive action. Of course, if anyone comes across one of my posts and considers it worth upvoting, please do so - I just want to avoid systematic upvotes for exactly the same reason that I want to avoid systematic downvotes.
Oh, I was under the impression that you, too, had been systematically down-voted. My mistake. I will refrain from doing so.
Edit: My reading comprehension skills must be on vacation tonight.