I would rather just make spiteful down-voting impossible
That would require presumably automatic distinguishing between "spiteful" and "non-spiteful" :-/
A very simple solution is to follow Reddit and block any kind of voting on old (="archived") content.
my impression is that highly specific rules like that are an invitation to gaming the rules.
LOL. Would you like to apply this generally, e.g. as in "The principle of Rule of Law is a bad idea because it's an invitation to gaming the laws. Much better to have a tyrant...err... benevolent philosopher-king decide matters because it's harder to game him".
"Spiteful" was vague. "Mass down-voting" (I assume it to be spiteful) would be better.
How fast does reddit archive content? Given my druthers, I'd permit upvoting on old content-- we don't seem to have a big problem with it being abused.
I've gotten sufficient evidence from support that voiceofra has been doing retributive downvoting. I've banned them without prior notice because I'm not giving them more chances to downvote.
I'm thinking of something like not letting anyone give more than 5 downvotes/week for content which is more than a month old. The numbers and the time period are tentative-- this isn't my ideal rule. This is probably technically possible. However, my impression is that highly specific rules like that are an invitation to gaming the rules.
I would rather just make spiteful down-voting impossible (or maybe make it expensive) rather than trying to find out who's doing it. Admittedly, putting up barriers to downvoting for past comments doesn't solve the problem of people who down-vote everything, but at least people who downvote current material are easier to notice.
Any thoughts about technical solutions to excessive down-voting of past material?