Non-Disc Record - ArchDukeFerdinand

Summary:

Malicious downvoting. Also, as of now, no more self-upvotes to counter.

ArchDukeFerdinand

ProcyonLotor 02 Apr 2014 03:30

User ArchDukeFerdinand downvoted 14 of 18 pieces written by Kalinin immediately following a negative critique that Kalinin left on a draft here. None of those votes were present before that post.
Discussion in Staff Chat decided that this was malicious downvoting. However, the user deleted his account before any course of action could be decided by admins.
Kalinin was given permission by Mann to upvote the articles that were affected.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

Eskobar 02 Apr 2014 12:16

Should he maybe make comments on the affected articles to reflect that? I know there's been at least one case where an author was given permission to self-upvote and then lost upvotes much, much later because a user saw the self-upvote (again, from years earlier) and downvoted in response to that.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

Wogglebug 02 Apr 2014 12:24

Is it within the realm of possibility for us to create an account explicitly to counteract this sort of thing, in order to avoid situations like the one you describe? While noting it does help, someone might not see the comment, and it would be better if it were more immediately obvious what we're going on.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

(account deleted) 02 Apr 2014 15:06

Kalinin commented on (I think) all of his articles that he had staff permission.

Also, I dislike the idea of a downvote-countering account. Malicious downvoting isn't a significant enough problem to justify it, and the simpler solution is to have people do what Kalinin did. If someone downvotes because they missed the post saying that the self-upvotes were done with staff blessing, they can be redirected to it.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

Aelanna 02 Apr 2014 16:43

Wait a minute, why was this necessary? We already don't count deleted accounts in anything that matters, so why are we allowing self-upvotes to counter a deleted account's downvotes?

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

thedeadlymoose 02 Apr 2014 17:32

I believe because we've allowed it since time immemorial and it doesn't harm anything as far as I know.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

Aelanna 02 Apr 2014 18:18

It makes me have to do additional coercion of data when I'm doing my job, though. :I

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

thedeadlymoose 02 Apr 2014 23:04

…Didn't realize this.

Alright, fair enough. Consider my support for self-upvoting-with-permission withdrawn.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

Communism will win 02 Apr 2014 17:50

Cuts down on the chances of confusion if it comes down to deletion/rewrite time.

Granted, nothing of Kalinin's is approaching that range, but we might as well set a good precedent.

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if your reading this your gay

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

TroyL 02 Apr 2014 22:22

I disagree. Clicking the link at the bottom to take a look at the votes is simple. Deleted accounts, in our estimation, count for nothing. There doesn't seem to be a reason to have this precedent anymore, unless the user was banned and still has an account on wikidot, as was the case with Bright and Lizzy.

What happens the next time that someone goes through and maliciously downvotes Kalinin's articles? That user is very active in the help forums, and one more douche would be able to pull that off with ease. I think a precedent that has been in place "since time immemorial" might need to be revisited, since frankly, the site has changed significantly since then. We aren't all clamoring for upvotes like children leaping on a recently smashed pinata anymore.

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"WELL FOUNDATION. YOU MADE IT SO EASY. SO VERY VERY EASY." - dimensionpotato

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

thedeadlymoose 02 Apr 2014 23:05

Also good points.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

Communism will win 02 Apr 2014 23:32

Yeah, that's fair enough.

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if your reading this your gay

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

DrEverettMann 03 Apr 2014 03:33

Eh, true. I was going by our long-time tradition, but tradition sometimes has to change. No more self-upvotes to counter malicious downvoting.

Re: ArchDukeFerdinand

Zyn 09 May 2014 23:06

…no one edited the Guide to Newbies to reflect this, and it recently came up in chat. So I made the edit. If anyone's got issues with it, feel free to revert.