As a general rule, if something is a problem, the solution needs to deal with the problem, not with its proxy. The problem is “army of sockpuppet accounts”, not “downvotes” per se, therefore a successful solution must somehow address the sockpuppetting itself.
I don’t want to give Eugine new ideas, but banning the downvotes would probably just make him change strategy. I can imagine two powerful attack strategies that would work if (a) downvotes are banned, or even (b) all votes are banned.
The successful solution must:
identify the sockpuppets; and
remove the sockpuppets or otherwise render them harmless
I think there are two essential approaches to this:
blacklisting = suspected sockpuppets (detected e.g. by their IP address or behavior) are removed and their votes reversed; or
whitelisting = only a set of “trusted users” can vote
These two can come with different flavors and combinations. For example, we could have an invisible whitelist of trusted users, in general treat votes by trusted and untrusted voters equally, but also provide an automatical warning to the moderators if the votes given by trusted vs untrusted voters differ dramatically (for example, if 9 of 10 trusted users upvoted a comment, but 30 of 40 untrusted users downvoted it). This is just an example; it could be made more sophisticated, but that would require more programming resources and computing power.
Perhaps only accounts that have made a discussion post with a few upvotes should be allowed to downvote at all
Eugine would simply upvote posts made by his sockpuppets by his other sockpuppets. In the very best case, this would force him to write one half-decent post per sockpuppet.
limits per week and per user to be downvoted
Limits per sockpuppet = more sockpuppets.
perhaps there should be a per-user limit on downvoting of sufficiently old comments
Maybe downvoting of sufficiently old comments should be limited in general, not just per user. Just like on Reddit you cannot vote on too old stuff. (Question is, how old is “sufficiently old”; on Reddit that means a few months.)
Dealing with bots is hard, banning downvotes is easy. Ideally, with infinite resources, the bots would be eliminated.
In the very best case, this would force him to write one half-decent post per sockpuppet.
that’s actually a huge inconvenience for him—writing a good post, using the puppet to mass downvote, then an hour later the puppet is caught because it is mass downvoting and the votes are reverted.
Limits per sockpuppet = more sockpuppets
presumably there is a cost per puppet. Combining this with my above suggestion would mean more articles for him to write…
As a general rule, if something is a problem, the solution needs to deal with the problem, not with its proxy. The problem is “army of sockpuppet accounts”, not “downvotes” per se, therefore a successful solution must somehow address the sockpuppetting itself.
I don’t want to give Eugine new ideas, but banning the downvotes would probably just make him change strategy. I can imagine two powerful attack strategies that would work if (a) downvotes are banned, or even (b) all votes are banned.
The successful solution must:
identify the sockpuppets; and
remove the sockpuppets or otherwise render them harmless
I think there are two essential approaches to this:
blacklisting = suspected sockpuppets (detected e.g. by their IP address or behavior) are removed and their votes reversed; or
whitelisting = only a set of “trusted users” can vote
These two can come with different flavors and combinations. For example, we could have an invisible whitelist of trusted users, in general treat votes by trusted and untrusted voters equally, but also provide an automatical warning to the moderators if the votes given by trusted vs untrusted voters differ dramatically (for example, if 9 of 10 trusted users upvoted a comment, but 30 of 40 untrusted users downvoted it). This is just an example; it could be made more sophisticated, but that would require more programming resources and computing power.
Eugine would simply upvote posts made by his sockpuppets by his other sockpuppets. In the very best case, this would force him to write one half-decent post per sockpuppet.
Limits per sockpuppet = more sockpuppets.
Maybe downvoting of sufficiently old comments should be limited in general, not just per user. Just like on Reddit you cannot vote on too old stuff. (Question is, how old is “sufficiently old”; on Reddit that means a few months.)
Dealing with bots is hard, banning downvotes is easy. Ideally, with infinite resources, the bots would be eliminated.
that’s actually a huge inconvenience for him—writing a good post, using the puppet to mass downvote, then an hour later the puppet is caught because it is mass downvoting and the votes are reverted.
presumably there is a cost per puppet. Combining this with my above suggestion would mean more articles for him to write…