Unusual surge of mass post-downvoting

I really don't like to open a forum topic in regards to issues such as this, but it feels like this is something that probably should be discussed.

Just recently, (via appending .json after the post page URL) there has been a huge spike of numerous posts being mass downvoted (which may or may not have all been coming from the same person), which has become very noticeable with fairly innocent posts such as post #4886336, post #4885632 and post #4886399, which would have very unlikely to have been downvoted in the first place. I do not know what the downvoter's intentions for mass downvoting almost every new post on the site are, but their voting could be misinterpreted as a malicious intent otherwise.

Is it best to start thinking about reworking the post vote system?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

as long as they aren't targeting anyone or any copyright, there isnt really a problem

its just one downvote, so i just go through my posts and upvote them all

score is basically just favcount for weebs with money anyways, downvotes are pretty rare

thelieutenant said:

as long as they aren't targeting anyone or any copyright, there isnt really a problem

its just one downvote, so i just go through my posts and upvote them all

score is basically just favcount for weebs with money anyways, downvotes are pretty rare

Personally, I too couldn't care less about post votes or score (honestly two pointless stats if you ask me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

Guess the mass downvoter is just being "weird" then.

Anyone can downvote whatever they want, and that includes all of the site if they so wish. At the end of the day a single downvote makes no difference.
As long as someone is not targeting a specific user or making sockpuppets to vote more than once on the same posts, they can downvote any content they want.

In the future voting will probably be expanded to member-level users, so a single user's action will matter even less.

nonamethanks said:

In the future voting will probably be expanded to member-level users, so a single user's action will matter even less.

Yeah, that could never backfire.

Unbreakable said:

Yeah, that could never backfire.

If it comes to that it won't be too hard to generate a staff-only downvote report for shared IPs.

thelieutenant said:

score is basically just favcount for weebs with money anyways

Exactly. Score is a completely meaningless metric; Danbooru doesn't display statistics about uploaders' accumulated post scores, and this site doesn't work like Reddit where score impacts post visibility. Sorting posts by order:score isn't even particularly useful for finding high-quality artwork, since porn and popular copyrights always receive disproportionately more favorites. If the score feature were simply dropped altogether, not much would change.

When I'm browsing and come across images I love or hate, I'll still instinctively vote for the brief dopamine hit, but I'm fully aware that it isn't doing anything.

I've noticed this occurring as well, and whoever this individual is is doing the downvote within minutes of an upload. Since others have noticed, it doesn't look like it's targetting any one user, so it looks like it can be ignored. It is disheartening, though, that even landscape uploads are being hit.

InfiniteZenith said:

I've noticed this occurring as well, and whoever this individual is is doing the downvote within minutes of an upload. Since others have noticed, it doesn't look like it's targetting any one user, so it looks like it can be ignored. It is disheartening, though, that even landscape uploads are being hit.

It's mostly been immediate downvotes from what I've seen but there's a few copyrights in my uploads I've noticed getting hit even a few hours later, those being MuvLuv, Apex Legends, Nijisanji EN, and Gundam (or most mecha posts in general at that). But as mentioned above, it ultimately doesn't really do anything, so it's not really a big deal.

I also noticed that in my recent uploads as well. Such as post #4887609, post #4888368 & post #4888356, which still has, as of this writing, a score of -1.

HeeroWingZero said:

those being MuvLuv, Apex Legends, Nijisanji EN, and Gundam (or most mecha posts in general at that).

Agree on that, my Gundam uploads also got downvoted as soon as I uploaded them.

InfiniteZenith said:
It is disheartening, though, that even landscape uploads are being hit.

I admit that while this is happening, I initially thought that maybe I'm, unintentionally, doing something wrong on the site, that's why my uploads receives a downvote. Until I check the forums about this situation.

My two cents is that the score should be hidden from the UI for first couple of hours or day as a partial way to alleviate this. Why? Because seeing a post with a negative score causes an automatic cognitive bias against that post, leading some to not vote on or favorite that post at all, whereas they otherwise would if the score was 0 or higher. Since users can blacklist such posts, some would never see them at all.

BrokenEagle98 said:

My two cents is that the score should be hidden from the UI for first couple of hours or day as a partial way to alleviate this. Why? Because seeing a post with a negative score causes an automatic cognitive bias against that post, leading some to not vote on or favorite that post at all, whereas they otherwise would if the score was 0 or higher. Since users can blacklist such posts, some would never see them at all.

I think that's a good idea. Maybe even hide the score for the first three days, so approvers can't get influenced by score?

Supposedly, the suspected user (I will not say who they are, for the sake of protecting their privacy) is mass downvoting new posts for a harmless and non-malicious purpose: using downvotes as a "manual blacklist" for individual posts.

Though, I guess they did not think twice about how downvotes are generally associated with a negative connotation (why they cannot simply use upvote:user -fav:user is anyone's guess :/ ), therefore people might think the user is downvoting for a different reason.

I wonder is this the same person who has been downvoting my "male focus" uploads?

Inujerr said:

Supposedly, the suspected user (I will not say who they are, for the sake of protecting their privacy) is mass downvoting new posts for a harmless and non-malicious purpose: using downvotes as a "manual blacklist" for individual posts.

Though, I guess they did not think twice about how downvotes are generally associated with a negative connotation (why they cannot simply use upvote:user -fav:user is anyone's guess :/ ), therefore people might think the user is downvoting for a different reason.

Has anybody contacted this user then? And if they won't stop, maybe take away their voting rights and remove all the votes, if possible.

90sAnimeFan said:

Has anybody contacted this user then? And if they won't stop, maybe take away their voting rights and remove all the votes, if possible.

That won't happen:

nonamethanks said:

Anyone can downvote whatever they want, and that includes all of the site if they so wish. At the end of the day a single downvote makes no difference.
As long as someone is not targeting a specific user or making sockpuppets to vote more than once on the same posts, they can downvote any content they want.

It does seem like an abuse/misuse of the voting system to me. And a lot of my male focus posts get barely one or two upvotes anyway, so you can imagine one user can easily put them to negative like this. But I suppose that's okay then?

If that's how the rules work, just have someone upvote everything.

My uploads are usually fairly niche, so them getting downvoted is a bit of a downer, and makes it hard for me to understand which of them are genuine downvotes.

JoesT said:

If that's how the rules work, just have someone upvote everything.

based

The atmosphere is pretty toxic.
It's stirring up dissatisfaction
It's disencouraging to go out your way to find stuff only to see it's getting downvoted immediately.

It's just an awful practice.
Even worse than sniping as it also hits people not involved with the sniping drama.
Technically allowed, but said persons should start asking themselves what they want to actually achieve with downvotes.

nonamethanks said:

If it comes to that it won't be too hard to generate a staff-only downvote report for shared IPs. Admins can also delete votes.

It basically makes scores = favs, giving scores no actual value. You can just discard scores altogether then.
We had this in the past and it was immediately abolished.