Nonetheless, it would be a courtesy to send some written message if there is a common reason for the downvotes—at least for established user. If you’ve talked about more than one topic—like monkeymind didn’t—it’s hard to know from downvotes of old posts what someone wants less of.
I think any message of this sort is likely to lead to some unpleasantness. “Hey, I just downvoted a whole bunch of your old posts, but it’s ok because I actually did think that all of those posts were bad.” Downvote things that deserve to get downvoted, but don’t make a scene out of it that’s just going to poison the discussion.
I do this regularly. Finding comments worthy of downvotes is a (necessary) chore, but user histories are low-hanging fruit.
Nonetheless, it would be a courtesy to send some written message if there is a common reason for the downvotes—at least for established user. If you’ve talked about more than one topic—like monkeymind didn’t—it’s hard to know from downvotes of old posts what someone wants less of.
I think any message of this sort is likely to lead to some unpleasantness. “Hey, I just downvoted a whole bunch of your old posts, but it’s ok because I actually did think that all of those posts were bad.” Downvote things that deserve to get downvoted, but don’t make a scene out of it that’s just going to poison the discussion.