-4

On SF, two of my questions (selected randomly seemingly) were downvoted at the exact same time.
Sounds like some kind of abuse - just out of luck, or does it need to be reported?

5
  • 2
    Can you link to the questions?
    – voretaq7
    Feb 23, 2012 at 16:20
  • 2
    There's a vote abuse algorithm that should detect "abuse", but nobody knows the votes/time ratio required to trigger it.
    – jscott
    Feb 23, 2012 at 16:22
  • 5
    Gotta take the ying with the yang I'm afraid ;)
    – Chopper3
    Feb 23, 2012 at 16:23
  • I wouldn't class it as abuse based on two votes. Its entirely possible for someone to click on a question you've answered, dowvote your question and follow your username to another question you're both interested in and do the same there, because they genuinely and reasonably believe the answers both deserved a downvote. Its also possible for them to do the same and upvote. Neither is abuse of the voting system and you've got to take the rough with the smooth.
    – Rob Moir
    Feb 23, 2012 at 18:36
  • 1
    These two I'm guessing? serverfault.com/questions/183879/… serverfault.com/questions/190840/… Edit: Just noticed John linked to these in his answer below.
    – Bryan
    Feb 23, 2012 at 21:11

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

I'm guessing the two questions are this one and this one. Sorry, they really are quite poor questions.

The first includes this contradictory line:

Or, since it seems only a local user may gain root access, standalone servers are pretty safe?

The second includes this one:

Please describe the procedure - risk free - thanks.

To me both those lines are like fingernails on a blackboard. Although I'm not the one who cast the downvotes, had I see either of those questions during my normal browsing of SF I may well have downvoted them.

3
  • Hmm I must agree the wording makes the sentence unclear (the 1st one meaning was that the hack possible only after log in). But, two old questions downvoted within a minute sounded suspicious to me. It was less for -4 (just lost 100 in a bounty) than to alert SF about a possible random downvoter around.
    – Déjà vu
    Feb 24, 2012 at 2:29
  • @ring0, sometimes when reading someone's post I might look to see what else they've written. Perhaps that's what happened here.
    – John Gardeniers
    Feb 24, 2012 at 3:55
  • Guys, if it seems 'somewhat' unclear but you're not entirely convinced that someone else won't make perfect sense of it then why not just IGNORE the question instead of downvoting. As you can see he got perfectly good answers and the question was actually upvoted???
    – Jacques
    Jul 19, 2013 at 14:52
3

Two downvotes are nothing. Don't take them personally.

If there is real abuse, there is an automated system in place that reverses voting irregularities.

9
  • 5
    ...that's what I'd expect the person who downvoted him to say...hmm...
    – Bart Silverstrim
    Feb 23, 2012 at 16:23
  • I've downvoted a lot, including this meta question, but I'm not the cause of this post. Sorry for the disappointment.
    – MDMarra
    Feb 23, 2012 at 16:26
  • ...well, that kind of surprised me as a response.
    – Bart Silverstrim
    Feb 23, 2012 at 16:34
  • I'm not taking it personnaly, and this is not a big deal. However I respect the work of others, where it's sincere and justified ; and I'm expecting the same. These 2 downvotes are obviously an abuse. It's not the number of points, it's the intention. I have some consideration for the SE sites, where most questions and answers show a high level of competency ; such instinctual and childish behavior should be discouraged. At least, the guy could have downvoted twice in a week, and i wouldn't have noticed...
    – Déjà vu
    Feb 23, 2012 at 16:58
  • 2
    Why is two downvotes abuse? First of all, there are thousands of users. Coincidence happens. Assuming coincidence is ruled out, the user could have read your profile, looked through, found two things worthy of a DV and downvoted. That's hardly abuse.
    – MDMarra
    Feb 23, 2012 at 17:02
  • 1
    In fact, I just looked at your profile and there are multiple things that I'd consider worthy of a downvote and a close vote, but given the circumstances that would be abuse, so I left them be.
    – MDMarra
    Feb 23, 2012 at 17:29
  • Maybe there were also things you could have upvoted?
    – Déjà vu
    Feb 24, 2012 at 2:29
  • Sure, but your question is complaining about being downvoted. I'm simply saying that I can see why that happened and don't disagree, that's all.
    – MDMarra
    Feb 24, 2012 at 2:46
  • #MDMarra I think you're missing the point. From the brief time that I've spent in Meta.SF I've noticed a lot of people with these concerns myself included. And generally speaking, when a lot of people have the same concern one should assume there might actually be a valid reason? StackOverflow doesn't seem to suffer from downvoting?
    – Jacques
    Jul 19, 2013 at 14:56

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .