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Jan 6 at 20:52 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: he is not alone, there are a few others with a merely insane downvote vs. upvote rate. And on a low-frequency site like this one, this leads to exactly the effect you were complaining about for months. A single individual is currently able to ruin the site's experience especially for new users. I guess other small SE sites would benefit from a required upvote vs downvote rate as well. When I see what you wrote above, your suggestion is just to ban the person from the site - IMHO that would be a much harsher and unfair action (which might be sidestepped, either).
Jan 6 at 20:39 comment added Ewan @DocBrown yeah but look at #2 I'm not saying your rule is awful, If we were trying to tackle a large trend or something it might be good. But for a single dedicated individual,? they will just find a work around and the rule will have unwanted side effects
Jan 6 at 20:26 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: I just have to look at my own number of upvotes vs. number of downvotes (which is roughly 3:1) - and I never picked any old random question to increase the number of upvotes. I am also not under the impression I am holding myself back with downvoting when it comes to questions I don't like. Your rate is even higher, it seems you have stopped downvoting at all. Basilevs is about 2:1, which I think is perfectly ok. But the guy - you know who - with more than 100.000 downvotes vs. less than 5000 upvotes - that is exactly the person who damages the site's impression to new users.
Jan 6 at 20:12 comment added Doc Brown @Basilevs: I am not talking about existing rules, but about some common sense and social experience.
Jan 6 at 17:33 comment added Ewan @DocBrown you are assuming a small ratio of bad content, if we accept that deleted posts were "bad" then the ratio is 50/50 you would have to wait for a good question to downvote a bad one. some days they would all be bad. Of course, you could pick some random old question and upvote answers but then the rule doesnt stop you at all
Jan 6 at 15:11 comment added Basilevs @DocBrown now, that's on you. No such rule exists or implied.
Jan 6 at 14:05 comment added Doc Brown ... btw, for me responsible voting should mean to upvote the good questions and downvote the bad ones. But when certain people can only see 20 times more questions worth to be downvoted than to be upvoted, then they have probably a clear problem with the world around them.
Jan 6 at 13:50 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: No, I my suggestion does not ban anyone from casting as many downvotes they want. They just have to cast more upvotes. And when more members get more upvotes, I am sure the perception of the SE sites will become much better.
Jan 6 at 13:43 comment added Ewan @docbrown I think you underestimate your opponent. Also 50% of questions get closed, so you would be banning all moderators
Jan 6 at 13:40 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: great, thanks! So I guess my suggestion to require members to cast one upvote for each downvote would most probably help. Btw. I am really happy to see where myself is located in that list, especially when changing the order condition to order by Upvotes
Jan 6 at 13:22 comment added Ewan @docbrown select top 5 id as [User Link], Reputation as Rep, UpVotes as [+ Votes], DownVotes [- Votes] from Users order by downvotes desc
Jan 6 at 13:16 comment added Ewan yeah, on phone atm but one of the suggested queries does ratio of downvotes to posts and you can tweak it. top two have itchy trigger fingers
Jan 6 at 12:25 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: is there a query which allows to see the number of downvotes of a specific user? I can only see the number of total votes. Btw, I guess you meant "more (down)votes than undeleted questions"?
Jan 5 at 23:19 comment added Doc Brown @ThomasOwens: the main question which I could find on Meta is from 2010: Should we have a policy about "too much downvoting"?. The majority of answers says "no, it is enough when such votes cost 1 rep". Or, in other words, most of the answers are outdated, because since 2011 downvotes on questions are free. Moreover, it seems several answers have only high-freuency sites like Stackoverflow in mind, where the downvotes of a single person are balanced by the voting of many others.
Jan 5 at 21:47 comment added Ewan @DocBrown jeeze mucking about on data and he has more down votes than there are total questions.
Jan 3 at 15:43 comment added Basilevs Can review queue be enhanced with more "test" questions of this kind?
Jan 3 at 12:19 comment added Thomas Owens Mod @DocBrown I'm pretty sure this has been asked for on Meta Stack Exchange, so I was going to find and point to those and this. I suspect there would have to be looking into actions here, and maybe on other sites to see if there are similar cases.
Jan 3 at 7:56 comment added Doc Brown @ThomasOwens; would it help if I ask a question on Meta.Stackexchange? Or are you going to bring this up in an internal mod session? As we know, casting downvotes without a comment is perfectly allowed, as it was discussed several times there - this is "by design". But on a low-rate site like this one, casting an uncommented downvote against each new question, not aiming against a specific user, can be done by a single community member. When does this start to become abusive?
Jan 1 at 14:15 comment added Basilevs The less votes one has, the more thought would have to be spent on each.
Jan 1 at 14:10 comment added Basilevs @DocBrown or alternatively, introduce annual (not daily) vote limit, that would throttle "too active" users, while leaving those with less activity with more power. Or in general, decrease vote quota to be below our new question rate.
Jan 1 at 13:57 comment added Thomas Owens Mod I can bring this up after the holidays, but the abuse of votes tends to arise when they are targeted at a single person, and there are tools that handle cases where one person gives another person an unusual number of votes in either direction. I do agree that this is a problem.
Jan 1 at 13:19 comment added Ewan "typically" yeah i dunno if that's possible to implement/audit? im of the opinion that this kind of coverall rule is designed for exceptional cases. where it is hard to specifically define the behaviour in a rule. But really it's more the "oh we can't do anything" attitude that bugs me.
Jan 1 at 12:36 comment added Doc Brown ... btw, what do you think of my idea of a rule change to earn the rights of casting downvotes by casting at least a similar (or higher) number of upvotes, maybe within a fixed timeframe?
Jan 1 at 12:31 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: interesting that you forgot to post the link to the CoC where you got this from. The next sentence right behind your cited one is "Curation activities such as voting (upvotes, downvotes, voting to close, etc) are typically not abusive behaviors".
Jan 1 at 12:25 comment added Ewan "We also do not allow causing or contributing to an atmosphere that excludes or marginalizes"
Jan 1 at 12:08 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: "saying that downvoting every question for years with no other interaction is following the rules" - currently, this is literally allowed. That's why certain users (well, mainly one user here) seem to make use of this right on a daily basis. If we don't like this rule, it should be changed.
Jan 1 at 12:03 comment added Ewan @DocBrown at some point you have to change the rules if you want a functioning society, besides are we really saying that downvoting every question for years with no other interaction is following the rules?
Jan 1 at 12:02 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: maybe we need different voting rules. Like for each downvote one wants to cast to a question, the voter first must have upvoted five other questions.
Jan 1 at 12:01 comment added Ewan its often the first vote a question gets. super bad impression
Jan 1 at 12:00 comment added Doc Brown @Ewan: don't forget - in the Star Trek movie where you got this cite from, even Spock finally agreed to "the needs of the one may outweigh the needs of the many". When people act i an unpopular manner, but still follow literally and strictly all the rules, we must not ban them, even when we don't like it. This is a basic principle in any constitutional organization.
Jan 1 at 11:58 comment added Basilevs @Ewan, no same logic does not apply as long as the total score is positive. As you said yourself, vote more.
Jan 1 at 11:53 comment added Ewan @Basilevs sure, but that same logic applies to the people who get downvoted. Also pretty sure it must be a bot at this stage
Jan 1 at 11:38 comment added Basilevs @Ewan Many do not want to interact with a site, which bans them for no obvious reason. "They won't come for me" works only in a short term.
Jan 1 at 11:28 comment added Ewan The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one
Jan 1 at 11:21 comment added Basilevs @Ewan you won't make site better by banning people not breaking any rules
Jan 1 at 11:20 comment added Ewan @Basilevs same reason you ban anyone, to make the overall site better
Jan 1 at 11:12 comment added Basilevs @Ewan Why would a user be banned for expressing a legitimate opinion in a lawful manner?
Dec 31, 2025 at 20:19 comment added Basilevs @DocBrown I've made a point to review queues daily to compensate.
Dec 29, 2025 at 22:15 comment added Ewan I think there's a bigger problem here. Your "good well received" question has +5 -1, the next best is +3 -1. None of us even upvote the questions we answer, someone downvotes every question and close votes are handed out like candy. I know its xmas, but the site is dead.
Dec 29, 2025 at 13:38 history answered Thomas OwensMod CC BY-SA 4.0