Still getting downvotes - what are you guys doing about it?
It's still happening: -
Can someone actually do anything about this?
This has happened on stack exchange before but this is ridiculously more far fetched than what has ever happened there. Do you really want to be tarred with the same brush?
If this were a criminal offence committed upon me there would be no qualms in me being told who the nasty offender is so, why am I not being told. You guys really need need to rethink this protection scheme because clearly, it isn't working.
2 answers
I am sorry for the aggravation. Clearly we're going to need to bump up the priority of voting-fraud mitigation.
We've taken action against the user (yes, as you suspected, one user) and the votes will be invalidated. That's just playing whack-a-mole, though. There are a few things we can adjust in community settings; I'll list them so the community can discuss them and decide what to do.
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[Implemented] This community is in "new" mode, which means everybody starts with Participate Everywhere. The goal was to help bootstrap the community, so that everybody wouldn't be limited to just a few posts and votes a day while building content. Y'all have been doing a great job of building this community for more than a year now; should we remove the "new" setting? At the base Participate, you have limited posting rights and, more germane to this issue, can vote only on answers to your own questions. People would then have to earn Participate Everywhere, which is based on well-received posts.
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The daily vote limits for both Participate and Participate Everywhere are configurable. We can lower one or both of those vote limits. Tell us how many votes per day make sense to y'all for your current level of activity and we can change those.
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The thresholds for granting abilities are configurable. We can make it easier or harder to earn Participate Everywhere or any of the other abilities. (Only relevant if you also do #1.)
These are the things we can do today. I'm also going to discuss vote-fraud detection with the team to see what we can implement and when. Again, I am sorry for the frustration this causes.
Can someone actually do anything about this?
Yes. The previous case you mentioned had already been dealt with; this case has also just been dealt with. The votes in question have been invalidated and the users suspended, and details have been logged in our anti-abuse systems to help prevent further abuse.
No system is 100% effective, and while we do have comprehensive anti-abuse systems in place there are always ways to circumvent them. Our systems are run by a team of volunteers and we have human checks in place to make sure we're getting it right, but this relies on volunteer time so takes a few hours or days sometimes. It's not the end of the world, and comparing it to a criminal offence and real-world legal systems is hardly proportionate.
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