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I made a meta post describing a peculiar sequence of voting events on some of my questions.

I log on today to see that three more of my questions have been downvoted and no comment was left. 1 2 3

I wouldn't call these my best questions, but they have no other downvotes and have at least three upvotes.

When something like this happens two days in a row and the last time I got a downvote before that was over 90 days ago it is fishy at best.

Do I have any recourse? Is this not serious enough to be looked into? I realize that people may vote however they choose and perhaps someone is looking through all my posts just because they want to see and evaluate them. But these aren't even my worst ones and there are no comments to suggest improvement.

Three more questions have been downvoted: 1 2 3

There is no longer any doubt in my mind. Someone is downvoting my posts without good reason. Just like the day before, all three downvotes are being done within a minute of each other. They seem to be focusing on my questions and are doing about three per day. I wonder if I offended them in some way.

When does this actually become an issue or will I have to endure every post being downvoted if this person so wishes?

NEWEST UPDATE

I see that three of the downvotes were reversed a few hours ago. Was that auto-triggered or did a Mod or SE employee decide it was necessary? Either way, thanks.

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  • It has happened to me and several others before. There's really practically nothing we can do about it.
    – El'endia Starman Mod
    Commented Nov 27, 2013 at 19:56
  • The alternative explanation to the serial downvoting is that those questions are just not good enough. Remember, what constitutes a "good question" can be a subjective process. As long as the downvoter thinks there may not be a good response, the item has the potential to be downvoted.
    – Double U
    Commented Nov 27, 2013 at 20:39
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    Yeah I have experienced this to a degree myself. People down vote an answer because it is contrary to their beliefs, no matter how well written it is or what evidence you have given. Even if someone answers with something I don't want or believe, if it is well written and researched I will still upvote it or just leave it alone. Downvote is for answers that are opinion based, not researched, or are not on topic, etc..
    – Jeremy
    Commented Nov 27, 2013 at 23:43
  • @El'endia What about the fact that one of the questions linked on the other meta post has not been edited in over 60 days yet an unupvote was allowed. I thought your vote gets locked in.
    – user3961
    Commented Nov 28, 2013 at 0:21
  • @fredsbend re: your other meta question, did you not see the updated answer?
    – Ward - Trying Codidact
    Commented Nov 28, 2013 at 6:38
  • Ohhh. I missed that in the explanation. The post has been edited, just a while ago, but the unupvote must be from a person who upvoted before the last edit. I guess that makes sense. Ha! They were only tag edits! Some people. Thanks for the help.
    – user3961
    Commented Nov 28, 2013 at 6:47
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    I have had someone do the opposite to me, someone voted every one of my posts up and some of the ones I first posted when I first came to the site were quite bad.
    – BYE
    Commented Nov 28, 2013 at 21:29
  • @CecilBeckum I'm not sure that would bother me as much ;)
    – user3961
    Commented Nov 28, 2013 at 23:00
  • @ fredsbend perhaps you are right, but there are two things which bother me about it in that it gave me two badges which I do not deserve, and it causes me to wonder if just voting everything up is fair since gives the same status to bad questions as good questions, and since I am still learning how to ask questions it is useless for that. I take all votes to heart and try to learn from them whether they be up or down. The number of reps I gain or lose is immaterial to me I want to learn or pass on any knowledge I may have to help in God's work.
    – BYE
    Commented Nov 29, 2013 at 16:31

1 Answer 1

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There is an automated process that will take care of most cases of extreme serial downvoting. This appears to be the case in the instance that prompted this (I have no more info here than you do).

If someone goes through and downvotes or upvotes a bunch of your posts, chances are they will get reversed by the script. This is normal behavior to prevent the very case you see here. Generally this is nothing to worry about, it's the system working.

We have very little (potentially no) information on who has done this and it would be very imprudent to share. In extreme cases we can and do contact the community team if something happens that the script doesn't catch and they will evaluate the situation.

One thing I should point out though, the system is designed to discourage you from going to a user's profile and upvoting several of their answers in a row. That's worth keeping in mind for all of us. If you do that, there is a good chance those votes will be reversed.

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  • You wrote: the system is designed to discourage you from going to a user's profile and upvoting several of their answers in a row - how?
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Commented Dec 2, 2013 at 11:04
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    @Wikis SE keeps the details close to the vest, but a bunch of consecutive votes on a user will get invalidated (and the number is lower than you might think).
    – wax eagle Mod
    Commented Dec 2, 2013 at 16:30

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