Comment on [meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment?

Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:26:19 GMT

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I'm sure you're imaginative enough to come up with such circumstances yourself. But since you asked, Sherlock, enjoy a hypothetical villain's soliloquy:

'Well kept gardens die by pacifism' can be applied here (though it cuts both ways). This community's unique characteristic is its high signal-to-noise ratio. Consider if someone consistently flooded the board with perceived-no-value-ergo-noise comments. Given the low frequency of comments on this board overall, such a dribble would easily dominate/drown out the daily comment feed. Consistent downvotes to tell that commenter to, in effect, "go away", could be one response, especially given the near-trivial effort, the use of provided mechanisms and the lack of clear guidelines against (as evident by the frequent discussions on the issue, which did not focus on the technical aspect alone). Note that outright telling someone "this is the wrong place for you, go away" has also occurred. Is this subjective? Of course it is, what else would it be? Note that this was just one example. I could provide many more (as, I hope, could you), depending on time constraints and how finely we partition the categories.

That being said, I see more circumstances under which it is not warranted.

Discuss