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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Self-serving meta: Whoever keeps block-downvoting me, is there some way to negotiate peace? - Less Wrong
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Sometimes there is a good reason for this effect (not sure how often it applies): when you first notice a user and look through the last couple of pages of their comments, it might turn out that you don't like most of what you see, and so a significant portion of the last dozen comments get downvoted. Such voting is not noise, it reflects the judgment of the content. The reason for high correlation in judgment is not indiscriminate action, but merely that it is the same person that is doing the evaluation of a batch of your work. (It is easy to imagine how this pattern would turn to abuse, but it's not automatically abuse. There is also selection effect.)
What's happening to ialdabaoth is more extreme: about 98%* of their comments are being downvoted, that's happening repeatedly, and it even happens to comments that the rest of LW unanimously likes. To me that looks like indiscriminate & abusive downvoting, even allowing for the correlation in an individual's judgements.
* Skimming the last year-ish of ialdabaoth's user overview, I count 196 downvoted posts & comments out of 200. The most recent exception is a comment they redacted before anyone voted on it; the other three exceptions are these.
Also, I can personally attest that each of the "universally liked" examples you gave were downvoted during a large downvoting block.
I have a pretty good idea of what's happening, and a reasonable amount of evidence of who's doing it; right now, I just want to work out some kind of truce.
If you think you know who's doing it and your only purpose is to persuade this person to stop doing it, why didn't you just write him or her a private message? Given your state of knowledge and your stated goals, a public Discussion post seems unwarranted.
I've attempted that, to no avail. This is the terminus of an escalating sequence of requests.
Making a scene sends them the message that what they are doing hurts you, thus their strategy is working. This will incentive them to continue.
If it continues, I'd like to see a search done for the culprit, have them publicly exposed, and their account permanently locked or destroyed. There's no place for that kind of personal grudge in the future I wish to live in.
That sounds awfully like the kind of witch-hunt that I would have hoped rational groups were above.
Witch hunts are characterized by lack of evidence; that should not be the case here. The admin in charge of the system should be able to pull up the relevant data, do ten minutes of analysis, and say definitively yes or no whether there's abusive downvoting going on.
If there is, I'd like to see action taken, because karma is one of our better quality indicators on the site.
You're right; I guess it's not the witch-hunt side so much as the ad-hoc mob rule that bothers me. I express controversial views on LW, both through my posts and through my moderation; I think the fact that one can do so is one of the most valuable things about the site. The idea that one could be severely punished for an action that didn't violate any specific rule, but was merely something many in the community disagreed with, would be very chilling.
(shrug) One person's "ad-hoc mob rule" is another's "collective self-moderation".
For my own part, I endorse the collectively self-moderating aspect of LW, of which downvotes are an important aspect. Yes, it makes the community vulnerable to various forms of self-abuse. Eliminating it also makes the community vulnerable to various forms of self-abuse, which are not clearly superior, to say the least.
For my own part: I endorse people downvoting what they want to see less of on the site.
If Sam wants to see less of George posting on the site, it follows that I endorse Sam block-downvoting every one of George's comments. I'm a little squeamish about that, and I would prefer that Sam had different preferences, but if it comes down to that I stand by the endorsement.
If I post something that many in the community disagree with, and those community members want to see less stuff they disagree with, I endorse those community members downvoting me. That I didn't violate any specific rule is, to my mind, entirely irrelevant; I would prefer that our goal not be to encourage rule-compliance.
I do recognize that many people here use different downvoting metrics than that... e.g., downvote-what-I-disagree-with, downvote-what-I-oppose-socially, downvote-what-I-consider-overly-upvoted, downvote-things-that-evoke-negative-emotional-responses, various others. I don't endorse those metrics, and I'd prefer they didn't do that, but I acknowledge that interpreting karma behavior correctly requires recognizing that these people exist and do what they do.
Even leaving all of that aside, I also recognize that many people here have different preferences than I do regarding what kinds of things get said here, and consequently things get downvoted that I upvote, and things get upvoted that I downvote. This is as it should be, given things as they are.