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I've just become a victim of serial downvoting, or at least I believe so. Some posts of mine from years ago had been downvoted out of the blue, and more recent ones as well. Naturally, this decreases my and many other victims' reputations. Furthermore, I'm at risk of being autoblocked, since so many posts were downvoted.

Now, I'm confused. I haven't posted anything that might provoke anyone, as the latest post was fairly well received; in fact, several users have upvoted the post.

Moving on, I believe that the current method of serial downvote prevention is merely insufficient. Just having a single script (that sometimes doesn't work) look for serial downvoters is just not sufficient.

What would you think is a better solution?

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    Here is the thing, many of your answers, can easily be considered as commentary. Many of your questions seem to be asked, and because it doesn’t seem like you are doing adequate research, you end of answering the questions within an hour. Which is fine, but in one example, you were using the wrong plug. Serial voting is the problem, that shouldn’t be right, just indicating that a potential problem. You have called me out for following you in the past.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 9:55
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    Questions like this Well, I wasn't very attentive. is what I am talking about
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 10:02
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    The reason you are getting warnings about being blocked has little to do with recent downvotes on your posts. You have posted 30 answers and at least half of those have been deleted as commentary or link-only. Of the ones that are left at least half of those are in in negative vote counts, seemingly due to them being quite low quality. The ban warning is there to try and encourage you to think about what you are going to post: is it really a good answer? Does it really help the asker? For questions: have I done my homework? Have I provided all the information I can?
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 10:05

2 Answers 2

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Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I've been the victim of serial downvoting three times, and guess what - each time, my rep came back.

If there is a single person that is targeting you, the script will kick in if it meets the threshold, and reverse the votes. For this reason, I don't think it needs to be changed.

I understand that having a newer account, it may seem harder to get reputation, but I promise you, it comes. You will be downvoted here and there. I still get downvoted, even on the site I mod on. Just work to get over that first hump of 200 rep, then you'll be fine - trust me.

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  • Well, 3AM utc is in 1 hour, so I'll comment if it works.
    – potatoman
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 2:00
  • Yeah, I mean, worrying about a few rep points is really irrelevant when you get +5 for a single question upvote and +10 for a single answer upvote. If you're active enough on the site to care about rep, you should have more than 43 rep within a couple of days at most.
    – allquixotic
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 2:09
  • The thing is, I can get banned from posting if this person downvotes me anymore.
    – potatoman
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 2:14
  • If it's one or two people, then no, you won't get banned
    – Canadian Luke
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 2:15
  • Still getting the warning though...
    – potatoman
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 2:38
  • Downvotes still not removed, going to contact SE mods.
    – potatoman
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 3:37
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    @potatoman - If the votes are not the result of a single person, don't expect those downvotes to be reversed, having a ton of contributions deleted for quality reasons, is the reason you are not being warned.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 11:22
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Its worth remembering that the serial downvoting system, and for that matter votes themselves are black boxes even to mods.

And the moment you hit more than one downvote, its not one person. Some users - suprisingly enough, actually do attract deserved downvotes.

If your answers are oneliners or posted to off topic posts, well, they attract downvotes. If your questions seem excessively trivial, they attract downvotes.

Downvotes, closed questions and deleted posts all contribute to post bans so... yeah, if you're worried about getting question or answer banned, re-examining your own posts might be an option too.

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    Quality over quantity is the best advice I can provide
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 9:48

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