It looks like someone downvoted about 5 of my old comments in the last ~10 hours. (Not recent ones that are still under any kind of discussion, I think. I can’t tell which old ones.)
I mention this just in case others are seeing the same; I suspect Eugine_Nier/Azathoth123 has another account and is up to his old mass-downvoting tricks again. (I actually have a suspicion which account, too, but nowhere near enough evidence to be making accusations.)
Another data point: someone would downvote every comment I made up until April 1st. Not sure if I successfully signalled my ‘rationality’ or if I successfully signalled that I’m not going away.
Same here, in fact I’ve been keeping an eye on that account for a while, and noticed when you expressed your complaints about downvoting in a discussion with him recently. There’s no apparent sign of the sheer downvote rampages of old so far, if we’re right he’s been a little more careful this time around about obvious giveaways (or maybe it’s just the limited karma)… Alas, old habits die hard.
I’m not even sure anyone can do anything about it; LessWrong is among those communities that are vulnerable to such abuses. Without forum rules relating to member conduct, without a large number of active moderators, without a culture of holding new members under close scrutiny until they prove themselves to bring value to the forum, but with a built-in mechanism for anyone to disrupt the forum activity of anyone else...
It’s interesting that you’re confident of which account it is; I didn’t say. I had another PM from another user, naming the same account (and giving reasons for suspicion which were completely different from mine). So: yeah, putting this all together, either it’s him again or there are a whole bunch of similarities sufficient to ring alarm bells independently for multiple different users.
I don’t see any need for anyone to swing the banhammer again unless he starts being large-scale abusive again, in which case no doubt he’ll get re-clobbered. Perhaps by then someone will have figured out how to get his votes undone. (In cases where someone’s been banned for voting abuses, come back, and done the same things again, I would be in favour of simply zeroing out all votes by the revenant account.)
I think Azarthoth is back too, and I think I know which account, but I don’t get the impression that the mass upvote sockpuppets that were suspected to be helping his previous incarnations are active.
I think there should be simple ways to combat this sort of problem anyway, for a start people’s accounts could list the percentage of upvotes you give in the same way it currently lists the percentage of upvotes you receive. Limits could be put on the amount of downvotes you can issue by saying that they cannot exceed your karma (or a multiple thereof).
This problem has been encountered before in places like reddit—how did they deal with it there?
You would infer that they are a very critical person, I suppose.
Actually, would you? This is an interesting inference/rationality question. If someone’s voting history has 900 downvotes and 100 upvotes then yes, it looks reasonable to conclude that this is very critical person with high standards. But if a voting history contains only 1000 downvotes and not upvotes at all?
I would probably decide that this person has some rules (maybe set by herself for herself) which prevent her from upvoting. And in such a case you can’t tell whether she’s highly critical or not.
If someone’s voting history has 900 downvotes and 100 upvotes...
The important thing would be who received those 900 downvotes. I am not sure about the exact formula, but the first approximation is whether the set of 900 comments downvoted by user X would correlate more with “what other people downvoted” or with “who wrote those comments”. That is, how much the user has high standards vs how much is a personal grudge.
To some degree “what other people downvoted” and “who wrote those comments” correlate with each other, because some people are more likely to write good comments, and some people are more likely to write bad comments. The question would be whether the downvoting patterns of user X correlate with “who wrote that” significantly more strongly that the downvoting patterns of an average user.
(Of course, any algorithm, when made public, can be gamed. For example, detection by the algorithm as described above could be avoided by a bot who would (a) upvote every comment that already has karma 3 or more, unless the comment author is in the “target” list; (b) downvote every comment that already has karma −3 or less, and (c) downvote every comment whose author is in the “target” list. The first two parts would make the bot profile seem similar to the average user, if the detection algorithm ignores the order of votes for each comment.)
the first approximation is whether the set of 900 comments downvoted by user X would correlate more with “what other people downvoted” or with “who wrote those comments”. That is, how much the user has high standards vs how much is a personal grudge.
That doesn’t look like a good approach to me. Correlating with “what other people downvoted” doesn’t mean “high standards” to me, it means “follows the hivemind”.
Imagine a forum which is populated by representatives of two tribes, Blue and Green, and moreover 90% of the forum participants are Green and only 10% are Blue. Let’s take Alice who’s Blue—her votes will not be positively correlated with other people’s votes for obvious reasons. You’re thinking about a normative situation where people should vote based on ill-defined “quality” of the post, but from a descriptive point of view people vote affectively, even on LW.
I think what you want is fairly easy to define without correlations. You are looking for a voting pattern that:
Stems from a single account (or a small number of them)
Is targeted at a single account (or a small number of them)
Has a large number of negative votes in a short period of time
Targets old posts, often in a particular sequence that matches the way software displays comments
By all means. At this point I’ll be quite surprised if you don’t suspect the same account as I do! It would be interesting to know your reasons for suspicion, too.
If I remember correctly, NancyLebovitz is the forum moderator; she might have the means and willingness to look into this kind of thing, and take action if needed.
It looks like someone downvoted about 5 of my old comments in the last ~10 hours. (Not recent ones that are still under any kind of discussion, I think. I can’t tell which old ones.)
I mention this just in case others are seeing the same; I suspect Eugine_Nier/Azathoth123 has another account and is up to his old mass-downvoting tricks again. (I actually have a suspicion which account, too, but nowhere near enough evidence to be making accusations.)
Another data point: someone would downvote every comment I made up until April 1st. Not sure if I successfully signalled my ‘rationality’ or if I successfully signalled that I’m not going away.
Same here, in fact I’ve been keeping an eye on that account for a while, and noticed when you expressed your complaints about downvoting in a discussion with him recently. There’s no apparent sign of the sheer downvote rampages of old so far, if we’re right he’s been a little more careful this time around about obvious giveaways (or maybe it’s just the limited karma)… Alas, old habits die hard.
I’m not even sure anyone can do anything about it; LessWrong is among those communities that are vulnerable to such abuses. Without forum rules relating to member conduct, without a large number of active moderators, without a culture of holding new members under close scrutiny until they prove themselves to bring value to the forum, but with a built-in mechanism for anyone to disrupt the forum activity of anyone else...
It’s interesting that you’re confident of which account it is; I didn’t say. I had another PM from another user, naming the same account (and giving reasons for suspicion which were completely different from mine). So: yeah, putting this all together, either it’s him again or there are a whole bunch of similarities sufficient to ring alarm bells independently for multiple different users.
I don’t see any need for anyone to swing the banhammer again unless he starts being large-scale abusive again, in which case no doubt he’ll get re-clobbered. Perhaps by then someone will have figured out how to get his votes undone. (In cases where someone’s been banned for voting abuses, come back, and done the same things again, I would be in favour of simply zeroing out all votes by the revenant account.)
I think Azarthoth is back too, and I think I know which account, but I don’t get the impression that the mass upvote sockpuppets that were suspected to be helping his previous incarnations are active.
I think there should be simple ways to combat this sort of problem anyway, for a start people’s accounts could list the percentage of upvotes you give in the same way it currently lists the percentage of upvotes you receive. Limits could be put on the amount of downvotes you can issue by saying that they cannot exceed your karma (or a multiple thereof).
This problem has been encountered before in places like reddit—how did they deal with it there?
Wouldn’t they just mass-upvote random posts not from that person?
And what exactly would you infer from this metric?
As far as I know solely downvoting the posts you don’t like and never upvoting anything is fully within the rules.
Such limits exist and are in place, I think.
You would infer that they are a very critical person, I suppose.
Actually, would you? This is an interesting inference/rationality question. If someone’s voting history has 900 downvotes and 100 upvotes then yes, it looks reasonable to conclude that this is very critical person with high standards. But if a voting history contains only 1000 downvotes and not upvotes at all?
I would probably decide that this person has some rules (maybe set by herself for herself) which prevent her from upvoting. And in such a case you can’t tell whether she’s highly critical or not.
The important thing would be who received those 900 downvotes. I am not sure about the exact formula, but the first approximation is whether the set of 900 comments downvoted by user X would correlate more with “what other people downvoted” or with “who wrote those comments”. That is, how much the user has high standards vs how much is a personal grudge.
To some degree “what other people downvoted” and “who wrote those comments” correlate with each other, because some people are more likely to write good comments, and some people are more likely to write bad comments. The question would be whether the downvoting patterns of user X correlate with “who wrote that” significantly more strongly that the downvoting patterns of an average user.
(Of course, any algorithm, when made public, can be gamed. For example, detection by the algorithm as described above could be avoided by a bot who would (a) upvote every comment that already has karma 3 or more, unless the comment author is in the “target” list; (b) downvote every comment that already has karma −3 or less, and (c) downvote every comment whose author is in the “target” list. The first two parts would make the bot profile seem similar to the average user, if the detection algorithm ignores the order of votes for each comment.)
That doesn’t look like a good approach to me. Correlating with “what other people downvoted” doesn’t mean “high standards” to me, it means “follows the hivemind”.
Imagine a forum which is populated by representatives of two tribes, Blue and Green, and moreover 90% of the forum participants are Green and only 10% are Blue. Let’s take Alice who’s Blue—her votes will not be positively correlated with other people’s votes for obvious reasons. You’re thinking about a normative situation where people should vote based on ill-defined “quality” of the post, but from a descriptive point of view people vote affectively, even on LW.
I think what you want is fairly easy to define without correlations. You are looking for a voting pattern that:
Stems from a single account (or a small number of them)
Is targeted at a single account (or a small number of them)
Has a large number of negative votes in a short period of time
Targets old posts, often in a particular sequence that matches the way software displays comments
Me too. Should you I PM you to tell which one?
By all means. At this point I’ll be quite surprised if you don’t suspect the same account as I do! It would be interesting to know your reasons for suspicion, too.
PM sent.
If I remember correctly, NancyLebovitz is the forum moderator; she might have the means and willingness to look into this kind of thing, and take action if needed.