Disciplinary - Cast_from_Eden

Summary:

Downvoted...everything?

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Cast_from_Eden

Eskobar 19 Apr 2015 16:08

Wrote an SCP that was downvoted and deleted a couple of weeks ago. Someone noticed yesterday that this user has, apparently, downvoted…everything. As in, user is believed to have recorded a downvote on every single published SCP, with the exception of 20 SCPs in the 1500s range. I've asked Anqxyr to do a statspull to confirm, but if so, this is…literally the definition of malicious downvoting. We might PM them, since they're relatively old hat, but I can't see how this wouldn't be met with a permaban.

Will update with more information as the situation develops.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

weizhong 19 Apr 2015 16:56

I think we should PM them at first at the very least, so we can get a clue of why the hell this actually happened.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Eskobar 19 Apr 2015 17:01

I'm waiting on anqxyr's data to confirm that the thing we think happened actually happened in the first place, then I'm going to sent a PM.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Eskobar 19 Apr 2015 18:03

<anqxyr> soo, the short version is: yes
<anqxyr> at the moment, he has 2185 downvotes
<Riemann> wow
<anqxyr> also 16 upvotes

Sending PM to get a statement from the user. Barring some kind of mitigating factor, do we have votes for a permaban?

EDIT: PM sent.

Cast_from_Eden,

We have evidence that you have cast 2,185 downvotes on every single article on the mainlist, with a very few exceptions that look random. We additionally have evidence that none of those downvotes were cast before April 7th of this year. We have absolutely no conclusion to draw other than that you have maliciously downvoted the entire SCP series, possibly as a response to your own article being deleted. We know for sure that you didn't read 2185 articles thoroughly and downvote them based on literary merits. Do you have anything to say in your own defense before disciplinary action is carried out?

—Eskobar
Moderator, SCP Foundation wiki

Last edited on 19 Apr 2015 18:10 by Eskobar Show more

Re: Cast_from_Eden

djkaktus 19 Apr 2015 18:08

Not voting, but supporting permaban.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

snorlison 19 Apr 2015 18:11

Voting permaban on grounds of thousands of counts of malicious downvoting.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Eskobar 19 Apr 2015 18:17

Response:

i dont suppose you'd be willing to tell me which 20 i missed? in the interests of even-ness

Answer:

No.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Eskobar 19 Apr 2015 18:19

His follow-up:

well, just for the record, i have read all of them. before now. also i was mostly bored and i didnt think anyone would notice. so yea no mitiagting factors really. not a response to my article being deleted since i have had 3 other articles deleted before now

Re: Cast_from_Eden

LurkD 19 Apr 2015 18:25

What a dick. Perma.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

(account deleted) 19 Apr 2015 18:17

Barring them having a mind-blowingly great explanation, perma.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

DrClef 19 Apr 2015 18:17

And done. And nothing of value was lost.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Doctor Cimmerian 19 Apr 2015 18:42

Just for documentation's sake, I sent them this back when I thought it was just me:

+ show block

Doctor Cimmerian
To: Cast_from_Eden
Ahoy hoy!
19 Apr 2015, 06:30

I was just noticing that you downvoted all 12 of my SCP objects overnight. You're not in any way obligated to explain why, but I am curious as to how I can improve them, if you have a moment.

and got this in reply:

+ show block

Cast_from_Eden
To: Doctor Cimmerian
Re: Ahoy hoy!
19 Apr 2015, 13:17

nothing personal—- ive got an 05 thread if u wanna see what happed

Edit: And it's a 30 SCP gap but I don't suppose I'll be saying which ones here.

Last edited on 19 Apr 2015 18:43 by Doctor Cimmerian Show more

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Doctor Cimmerian 19 Apr 2015 22:47

At Kaktus's request I'm letting y'all know that I was contacted yet again by this person. Nothing important but if y'all want logs of it, poke me for them.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

DrClef 19 Apr 2015 19:39

Had a user ask if they could self upboat in order to counteract cast from eden's malicious downvote.

Considering taking the Reddit approach of allowing everyone to self upvote from now on, honestly. Would solve a bunch of problems and our userbase is now large enough that it won't really make a diff.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Riemann 19 Apr 2015 19:43

Unless there's widespread agreement on this, I think this would warrant its own thread.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Rejekyll 19 Apr 2015 19:56

I think the solution could be to create a staff-controlled account to upvote all the SCPs this user downvoted.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

ProcyonLotor 19 Apr 2015 19:57

Agreeing with this proposal.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Decibelles 19 Apr 2015 20:14

I oppose this proposal, on the grounds that honestly, this person downvoted every mainlister but like, 40 out of nearly 2600. There's essentially little gain considering the total site average has gone down by a single vote. Are we going to use the account to downvote the articles they upvoted too? In that case, it wouldn't be fair for those users who happened to have upvotes before this person did their malicious downvoting. I also oppose having the users upvoting their own articles, since authors who aren't around anymore can't get that benefit, especially any prolific authors from before.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Rejekyll 19 Apr 2015 20:26

It wouldn't downvote the articles the user upvoted. I'd also be fine with doing nothing, because one vote isn't a huge amount, but I really do not think we should allow self upvoting because of this incident.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

LurkD 19 Apr 2015 20:15

Benefits with this solution (Reject's Proposal):

1. Staff could counteract all the affected skips (like articles with inactive users).
2. Would set precedent for future downvote tsunamis.
3. Would establish a future record of the counteraction in each skip with an identifiable staff account name (e.g. Eden_Counter_Vote).
4. Would prevent future confusion on self-upvoting.
5. Could be done in a rather timely manner by staff, about a week or so, rather than reminding all users to take this action.

Last edited on 19 Apr 2015 20:16 by LurkD Show more

Re: Cast_from_Eden

thedeadlymoose 19 Apr 2015 21:37

I support allowing people to self-upvote (with their own account only) on the grounds that this mostly just ends up as a reason to yell at clueless newbies for something that's ridiculously trivial given how little difference a single vote makes.

We can easily enough exclude a self-upvote when determining deletion — we're supposed to check for "account deleted" votes when it's an older article anyway, and with a new article it makes pretty much no difference.

I don't think this counts as a solution to this issue, though.

---

I'm fine with making an staff-controlled upvote account. Note, to get any long-term benefit from this, we'll need multiple accounts. Which I'm fine with, if people are willing to do the work.

I'm also fine doing absolutely nothing, beyond permabanning this person. It's practically the definition of "drop in a bucket".

Last edited on 19 Apr 2015 21:42 by thedeadlymoose Show more

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Eskobar 19 Apr 2015 22:00

Pretty much with Moose on this one. I don't think it's an enormous problem, but I can see how people would be offended by the unwarranted downvote, but most of the solutions for that either don't solve it or involve massive amounts of work, but allowing self-upvotes solves the problem of having to yell at newbies for a dumb mistake that really doesn't have any substantial effect on their skill as writers or ability to do anything but remember an artificial restriction that we placed on their voting patterns. So if we want to allow self-upvotes, that's fine with me, and if we don't, that's also fine with me, and if we want to create a staff-controlled anti-malicious-downvote account or accounts, that's also fine with me (although there's zero chance I'm volunteering to stick myself with that level of work, because that sounds arduous as fuck). And if we just want to let shit lie, I'm also fine with that.

I just installed a washing machine by myself and I'm super proud, so I'm feeling conciliatory.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Doctor Cimmerian 19 Apr 2015 22:01

If we're discussing this here, I'd say that a staff controlled upvote solution is something that could be implemented without much fuss (edit: but potentially a ton of work). It would also make the several hours of work this person put in towards being malicious meaningless, which I heartily support. As it stands I don't like that someone can say "Well I'm banned but I had a lasting negative effect on the wiki".

As for self upvotes, I'm more than strongly for that, but I don't think that's the sort of policy that can be implemented without fuss. There's much more contention on that point. Still, I think it's worth exploring where we collectively stand on the issue in a thread of its own.

Last edited on 19 Apr 2015 22:02 by Doctor Cimmerian Show more

Re: Cast_from_Eden

anqxyr 19 Apr 2015 22:09

Since people are arguing the massive amount of work as a reason against staff-controled-vote-accounts, I'd like to say that it won't be. Upvoting everything this guy downvoted would take 5 minutes of work and an hour of waiting for me.

However, at the moment, I'm still undesided if I like this course of action. But if we do decide to do it, it won't be at all hard.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

thedeadlymoose 19 Apr 2015 22:37

Upvoting everything this guy downvoted would take 5 minutes of work and an hour of waiting for me.

You are a dark god.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Decibelles 19 Apr 2015 23:42

If your dark magics permit you to make a staff-controlled-vote-account to combat malicious downvoting with little time, then… I'd still be opposed to the idea, frankly, but less so considering one of my points against it was the amount of time it'd take. I just think my main issue here is how this person's malicious downvoting affected so many mainlisters that negating it would hardly do anything, except for setting precedent if future cases happened.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

RhettSarlin 20 Apr 2015 00:02

Honestly, adding an upvote to every article would never undo this. What this really did is make it so now there is no such thing as an article with 100% upvote ratio (unless one of the ones he upvoted was miraculously one of those). The actual number is fairly insignificant, especially considering it was just one vote.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

DrClef 20 Apr 2015 02:55

At this point, I think we should just move on and remember that CFE's votes count for nothing.

If we ever do leave wikidot, being able to remove votes from banned users would be a good thing to implement.

Re: Cast_from_Eden

Dr Reach 20 Apr 2015 07:41

Odd. I had wondered why a guy how had upvoted two of my skips had downvoted them, 1778 included.

As an autor and a JS, I'd support the Eskobear -Moose and Reject approaches. I mean, there is nothing too evil about self-votes when they are essentially worthless when compared to the average sample of voters per article we are getting.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind Anqxyrian Magic tangled in this unholy mess, but Rhett's point is far more valid; a downvote means little for a successful mainlister, other than the loss of perfect scores.
_{I'd also like to point out tbe underlying irony of a butthurt user having called themselves cast from Eden from the beginning commitng the kind of transgression that will end them banned.}

Last edited on 20 Apr 2015 07:43 by Dr Reach Show more

Re: Cast_from_Eden

djkaktus 20 Apr 2015 07:57

Adding a voice to this conversation, I see no need for any kind of voting response to this. What a response does, in my eyes, is give some kind of legitimacy to this kid and his stupid fucking prank. So everybody loses a vote. Who cares? It's just a vote.

When we get away from wikidot, we'll have a system in place to eliminate this kind of thing. In the meantime, I suggest we simply deal with the imperfect platform in the simplest way: we do nothing.

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