It's called "Apophenia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
Sometimes however there really is a pattern.
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I would get a large number of downvotes every single day, and they were being systematically applied to all my posts. In addition, one of the mods checked into it and verified that I was in fact being systematically downvoted, he just wouldn't give me the person's name or do anything about it. It wasn't paranoia, I know a systematic attack when I see it.
I'm not an XP whore and don't care -that- much about XP, but it's the principle of the thing - people shouldn't be allowed to abuse the site or the users on it. | [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |
The fact that each Monk only has a limited supply of votes and that each of your nodes can only be downvoted once by each Monk will limit the damage that can be done. It would take a concerted attack by a cabal of evil Monks to do some real damage.
CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James
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Minor quibble:
"real damage" Eh?
I think that "real damage" is a term better used to describe actions like killing someone's dog; slashing their tires; or torching their house (to borrow some eventualities mentioned elsewhere in this thread) or something that "damages" the individual's reputation in a way that has economic consequences.
OTOH, perhaps "real damage" could also be used appropriately to describe the wasted hours expended in replying to notes in this thread. It's Sunday morning, local time; so far today, I've seen (I think) no more than half a dozen new nodes (nodes! not just questions) related to Perl... and several dozen additions to this thread.
And here's one more. Where's your self-control, ww?
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For any given person, chances are that most of your posts have relatively low ratings. I know that's true of my posts, even for a lot of posts where I posted useful solutions, since apparently being first is far more important than being correct and useful when it comes to points. I can live with that, and even the occasional downvote, but statistically, it's pretty easy for one or two people with an axe to grind to take you down a large percentage of your rating. Systematic attacks need to either be stopped by the mods, or you should be able to see who's doing it so you can retaliate. Preferably the former, but the latter is acceptable as an alternative.
EDIT: Ok, I see that there's an update post here:
http://www.perlmonks.com/?node_id=651535
Don't know why the primary thread wasn't updated instead, but oh well. Apparently since I was here last, the system has been updated so you can't downvote ancient posts, and a single downvote won't count. So that at least somewhat reduces the problem with downvotes.
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