The simplest solution would be
1) to show the names of downvoters and
2) to have moderators who are willing to kick people out for abusive downvoting
1) could be dispensed with if users could ask moderators to look for abusive downvoting and publicize the name, but that would be more work for moderators.
Well, I don’t think that’d have most of the social effects that make me think open votes are a bad idea. It does have some odd features, though—not everyone votes (or indeed contributes) at the same rate, so a prolific contributor with perfectly normal voting habits might end up being flagged over a less prolific retributive downvoter. Not that looking at downvote ratios would be much better—those would be fairly easy to mask. Either option would be a disincentive to downvoting in general, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Still, this doesn’t strike me as an obviously bad idea. I’d probably prefer something more narrowly targeted at retributive behavior, but if that’s not in the cards this might be a good option.
A variation on NancyLebovitz’s idea: instead of listing individual users with the most downvotes in the past month, list the pairs of users A & B with the highest number of downvotes given by A to B in the past month. With the latter, merely prolific users should rank visibly below the blanket downvoters.
The simplest solution would be 1) to show the names of downvoters and 2) to have moderators who are willing to kick people out for abusive downvoting
1) could be dispensed with if users could ask moderators to look for abusive downvoting and publicize the name, but that would be more work for moderators.
Having a “gave most downvotes in the past month” list (with the numbers of downvotes, of course) would be awesome.
Well, I don’t think that’d have most of the social effects that make me think open votes are a bad idea. It does have some odd features, though—not everyone votes (or indeed contributes) at the same rate, so a prolific contributor with perfectly normal voting habits might end up being flagged over a less prolific retributive downvoter. Not that looking at downvote ratios would be much better—those would be fairly easy to mask. Either option would be a disincentive to downvoting in general, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Still, this doesn’t strike me as an obviously bad idea. I’d probably prefer something more narrowly targeted at retributive behavior, but if that’s not in the cards this might be a good option.
A variation on NancyLebovitz’s idea: instead of listing individual users with the most downvotes in the past month, list the pairs of users A & B with the highest number of downvotes given by A to B in the past month. With the latter, merely prolific users should rank visibly below the blanket downvoters.