Someone seems to have downvoted all of my comments. And, surmising by what I said to him, it seems to have been private messaging.
(If there is some way to check this and) this is true, this is an abuse of the karma system. I do not have many comments, so it is not so much a big deal, but I liked my comments, except the one I retracted (note it is the only one which did not get any downvotes just now), and I don’t like unfairness.
This person has been rightly accused of trolling and causing needless drama and insufficiently epistemic prudence, and he definitely runs a whole lot of accounts, so I recommend the banhammer.
Didn’t use it. In fact I lost access to it (I was rather pissed off with this whole enterprise and changed password to something I don’t remember). I didn’t downvote this guy, my guess is one of 14 people that upvoted my retort to his post did, possibly after my retort got deleted and his remark did not get deleted.
Still can’t downvote. The maximum number of downvotes you can give is 4 times your karma, which is zero with zero karma. So you have to keep gaining karma in order to keep downvoting, and a karmassassination would take a while to save up for.
I should point out that there is no comparable limit on upvoting, AFAIK, so it may be possible to make 10 accounts, post 1 comment on each, get +9 on each (by having the other 9 accounts upvote the 10th account’s 1 comment), and now you have 10 9 4 = 360 total downvotes available (10 accounts with +9 karma and 4 downvotes for each karma point).
True. And that is per comment, so if each puppet makes ten comments before you start the circle jerk you can make ten times as many downvotes as that, assuming that you click quickly enough. But then there are also people who downvote comments that they think have too good scores, so unless your comments actually are good you will have to make and multi-upvote more and more comments to keep constant karma.
On an unrelated note, I wish to thank you all for all the upvotes. All of you except you-know-who. grumble grumble downvoting my Star Trek fan art, thought I wouldn’t find your new community grumble grumble
This would imply a bug or exploit if you’re right about the perpetrator: users get a pool of downvotes equal to 4x their karma (upvotes aren’t capped), and private_messaging’s karma is deeply negative. Given that I’ve heard downvoted users complaining about this behavior before, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s at least partly working.
private_messaging does have positive 30-day karma, so it may be indicative of a (presumably unintended?) lower bound on karma for this feature’s purposes. Alternately you might be dealing with a sockpuppet with better public behavior. Anything more specific depends on technical details I’m not privy to; might be worth asking someone who knows.
Someone seems to have downvoted all of my comments. And, surmising by what I said to him, it seems to have been private messaging.
(If there is some way to check this and) this is true, this is an abuse of the karma system. I do not have many comments, so it is not so much a big deal, but I liked my comments, except the one I retracted (note it is the only one which did not get any downvotes just now), and I don’t like unfairness.
This person has been rightly accused of trolling and causing needless drama and insufficiently epistemic prudence, and he definitely runs a whole lot of accounts, so I recommend the banhammer.
That reads like “A WITCH! A WITCH! BURN HIM!”
Someone with a negative score can’t downvote.
dmytry/private_messaging’s main account currently has 873 karma.
Didn’t use it. In fact I lost access to it (I was rather pissed off with this whole enterprise and changed password to something I don’t remember). I didn’t downvote this guy, my guess is one of 14 people that upvoted my retort to his post did, possibly after my retort got deleted and his remark did not get deleted.
What about the dedicated silent downvote-sockpuppets at zero karma?
Still can’t downvote. The maximum number of downvotes you can give is 4 times your karma, which is zero with zero karma. So you have to keep gaining karma in order to keep downvoting, and a karmassassination would take a while to save up for.
I should point out that there is no comparable limit on upvoting, AFAIK, so it may be possible to make 10 accounts, post 1 comment on each, get +9 on each (by having the other 9 accounts upvote the 10th account’s 1 comment), and now you have 10 9 4 = 360 total downvotes available (10 accounts with +9 karma and 4 downvotes for each karma point).
True. And that is per comment, so if each puppet makes ten comments before you start the circle jerk you can make ten times as many downvotes as that, assuming that you click quickly enough. But then there are also people who downvote comments that they think have too good scores, so unless your comments actually are good you will have to make and multi-upvote more and more comments to keep constant karma.
Or you delete the comments upon completion of your shenanigans …
So much criminal energy. I should’ve become an investment banker.
On an unrelated note, I wish to thank you all for all the upvotes. All of you except you-know-who. grumble grumble downvoting my Star Trek fan art, thought I wouldn’t find your new community grumble grumble
This would imply a bug or exploit if you’re right about the perpetrator: users get a pool of downvotes equal to 4x their karma (upvotes aren’t capped), and private_messaging’s karma is deeply negative. Given that I’ve heard downvoted users complaining about this behavior before, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s at least partly working.
private_messaging does have positive 30-day karma, so it may be indicative of a (presumably unintended?) lower bound on karma for this feature’s purposes. Alternately you might be dealing with a sockpuppet with better public behavior. Anything more specific depends on technical details I’m not privy to; might be worth asking someone who knows.