Voting activity is generally private (even admins don’t know who voted on what), but if we have reason to believe that someone is violating norms around voting (e.g. by mass-downvoting many of a different user’s comments and posts), we reserve the right to check what account is doing this.
That’s why I said:
Voting is anonymous, so unless you “mass” vote it will remain undetected.
The examples I gave—downvoting based on opinion not content, downvoting based on ideology, upvoting your ingroup, upvoting because they’re you friends—are all things that can be done while staying anonymous.
But in any case, I encourage you to prove me wrong. I encourage you to reach out to the admins, and then report back here when nothing useful happens, as you seem to be predicting.
You think I haven’t done that? I even send a comment to Ben West publicly and people downvoted me for it:
The examples I gave—downvoting based on opinion not content, downvoting based on ideology, upvoting your ingroup, upvoting because they’re you friends—are all things that can be done while staying anonymous.
Your initial complaint was mass-downvoting, which is explicitly called out in the FAQ (based on your own quote!) as something the admins are willing to de-anonymize for, no?
You think I haven’t done that?
If you had done it, I would expect your initial comment to contain something along the lines of: “I reached out privately to the admins, through standard channels, to complain about mass-downvoting. Despite the forum guidelines, they didn’t do anything. Their stated reason was X.”
Not necessarily because you want to, but just because that’s how the system is set up.
I used a personal example, but the complaint was about people being incentivized to downvote (past and future) stuff by the outgroup while upvoting the ingroup, whether or not it’s “mass” voting:
it incentivizes detractors to go back and downvote your other stuff as well. [...]
So if you want the forum to remain dominated by your ingroup, better upvote your ingroup’s posts/comments
which I then expanded on with examples like:
If someone is spreading opinions you disagree with, then the karma system makes strong-downvoting them an excellent way to hinder their ability to do so. If your friend makes mediocre posts but he also upvotes all your mediocre posts, then upvoting them is a great way to ensure your posts get more exposure.
They literally say so:
That’s why I said:
The examples I gave—downvoting based on opinion not content, downvoting based on ideology, upvoting your ingroup, upvoting because they’re you friends—are all things that can be done while staying anonymous.
You think I haven’t done that? I even send a comment to Ben West publicly and people downvoted me for it:
Your initial complaint was mass-downvoting, which is explicitly called out in the FAQ (based on your own quote!) as something the admins are willing to de-anonymize for, no?
If you had done it, I would expect your initial comment to contain something along the lines of: “I reached out privately to the admins, through standard channels, to complain about mass-downvoting. Despite the forum guidelines, they didn’t do anything. Their stated reason was X.”
My complaint was the incentive structure:
I used a personal example, but the complaint was about people being incentivized to downvote (past and future) stuff by the outgroup while upvoting the ingroup, whether or not it’s “mass” voting:
which I then expanded on with examples like:
I had done it, see: my screenshotted comment.