Is there a way to properly report suspected vote cheating by users using multiple accounts?

I mean I understand it is a lower priority thing, but the fact that I can literally comment on an image and be down voted, then comment about the down voting and get down voted again about it strikes me as not people disliking the comments per se but harboring some kind of personal vendetta against me. It also strikes me as odd that as soon as I started pointing out that someone might be vote cheating there are reports on my relatively benign comments insinuating that I am roleplaying in comments.

Didn't know any other way to bring this up so hopefully the forum can shed some light on this.

Pasiphaë said:
Is there a way to properly report suspected vote cheating by users using multiple accounts?

I mean I understand it is a lower priority thing, but the fact that I can literally comment on an image and be down voted, then comment about the down voting and get down voted again about it strikes me as not people disliking the comments per se but harboring some kind of personal vendetta against me. It also strikes me as odd that as soon as I started pointing out that someone might be vote cheating there are reports on my relatively benign comments insinuating that I am roleplaying in comments.

Didn't know any other way to bring this up so hopefully the forum can shed some light on this.

I hate to say this, but I already asked an admin about comment votes, and they evidently can't track who votes you down/up. Honestly, they have the ability to check post votes, it's odd that such a potential problem also can't be tracked.

There's technically a way, but you'd need devs to check into it

Siral_Exan said:
I hate to say this, but I already asked an admin about comment votes, and they evidently can't track who votes you down/up. Honestly, they have the ability to check post votes, it's odd that such a potential problem also can't be tracked.

Its not so much that I care who is doing it. I can piece that together myself. Mods however can see patterns in voting and identify the IPs of accounts that are rapidly and in quick succession up/down voting the same image or comment. I mean it certainly isn't as important as keeping the site free of things like defamatory or harassing attacks, but in my eyes the vote cheating is just another way of trolling a community.

Pasiphaë said:
Its not so much that I care who is doing it. I can piece that together myself. Mods however can see patterns in voting and identify the IPs of accounts that are rapidly and in quick succession up/down voting the same image or comment. I mean it certainly isn't as important as keeping the site free of things like defamatory or harassing attacks, but in my eyes the vote cheating is just another way of trolling a community.

I'm glad I'm not that only one who notices such things on here. I've noticed patterns in the data (even as a regular member) and can sometimes even figure out who is down voting/up voting my comments as well as the comments of others based on the consistent behaviors of people I have interacted with in the past.

Sometimes I even notice some people hold a grudge on me when I accidentally down vote because I am on my 4" phone and my finger give the wrong vote option, even if I leave a comment or PM aplogizing for my genuine mistake. And I don't think that's fair at all, but whatever I guess.

Also, I have the same kind of problem on image uploads too: Every time I upload an image here that someone has requested of me to make I immediately get two (2) downvotes on my image no matter what time of day it is I upload it. It's almost like some kind of conspiracy against me or something, and that sucks.

I hope this all gets resolved soon.

We can't see comment vote IPs, only post vote IPs. In order to see logs for comment voting a dev has to look into it.

Ratte said:
We can't see comment vote IPs, only post vote IPs. In order to see logs for comment voting a dev has to look into it.

Who *not a literal name* are devs? Are they the coders, something like second-party site maintainers, or what?

Siral_Exan said:
Who *not a literal name* are devs? Are they the coders, something like second-party site maintainers, or what?

Parasprite and Kiranoot. To a lesser extent, Xchel.

They code for the site.

Ratte said:
Parasprite and Kiranoot. To a lesser extent, Xchel.

They code for the site.

Way much less than I want to admit. Like "Parasprite and Kira (and past devs) deserve all credit" level

Pasiphaë said:
Is there a way to properly report suspected vote cheating by users using multiple accounts?

I mean I understand it is a lower priority thing, but the fact that I can literally comment on an image and be down voted, then comment about the down voting and get down voted again about it

Unclear. Do you mean that:

1. You make a comment A
2. Comment A is downvoted (to -1)
3. You make a comment B about the downvoting
4. Comment A is downvoted again (to -2)
?

Also what's the time frame? All this happens inside 30 seconds, a minute, 5 minutes?

there are reports on my relatively benign comments insinuating that I am roleplaying in comments.

Your comments are annoying sometimes but just outside the realm of RP IMO.

Every time I upload an image here that someone has requested of me to make I immediately get two (2) downvotes on my image no matter what time of day it is I upload it.

This is more suggestive than OP's case IMO; AFAIK it would be fairly simple to make a bot do this, although the amount of polling of recent posts needed might give the bot away. Rotating through different proxies and using a different account for each IP (this is easily possible even if you're not a bot) might effectively obfuscate post-vote IPs.

You're alleging a conspiracy or vendetta. But what of these facts:

1. Some people won't like your comments.
2. Some of the same people or others never like comments that are indignant about getting downvoted (myself along with plenty of others have been downvoted for complaining about downvotes).
3. You have left many comments, which means more visibility, more upvotes, downvotes, and reports.
4. Some of those comments look like RPing.

See how quickly "vote cheating" becomes "genuine dislike". Is it against the rules to downvote two or even twenty of your comments? Vote cheating is implicitly covered by the "Abuse of Site Tools" category in the rules. It doesn't specify the amount of votes needed to be considered "disruptive, spamming, or defamatory". And as long as comment votes can't be sorted out, it won't matter. I'd watch out for a pattern of serial downvoting on your uploaded posts instead (and you mentioned that you get 2 downvotes on your uploads "immediately").

Likewise a "personal vendetta" becomes "genuine concern" over what appears to be against the rules. Users report benign comments for rulebreaking all the time, and they always will.

^ +1
Whether any amount of vote cheating at all is involved in OP's situation is completely unclear at the moment (and IMO, OP's thought process aught to reflect that : assume the most mundane explanation rather than a more complicated, paranoia inducing one)

It's also rather easy for someone with a sufficiently large hateboner to monitor your posts or comments. I've occasionally been tempted to go on a downvoting spree when someone says something exceptionally idiotic.

Lance_Armstrong said:
You're alleging a conspiracy or vendetta. But what of these facts:

1. Some people won't like your comments.
2. Some of the same people or others never like comments that are indignant about getting downvoted (myself along with plenty of others have been downvoted for complaining about downvotes).
3. You have left many comments, which means more visibility, more upvotes, downvotes, and reports.
4. Some of those comments look like RPing.

See how quickly "vote cheating" becomes "genuine dislike". Is it against the rules to downvote two or even twenty of your comments? Vote cheating is implicitly covered by the "Abuse of Site Tools" category in the rules. It doesn't specify the amount of votes needed to be considered "disruptive, spamming, or defamatory". And as long as comment votes can't be sorted out, it won't matter. I'd watch out for a pattern of serial downvoting on your uploaded posts instead (and you mentioned that you get 2 downvotes on your uploads "immediately").

Likewise a "personal vendetta" becomes "genuine concern" over what appears to be against the rules. Users report benign comments for rulebreaking all the time, and they always will.

Okay...but when you see an obvious pattern emerge in multiple posts each containing snide or snarky remarks from the same few users one can't help but think there is more to it than multiple people within minutes of each other "not liking" a comment and down voting it.

Personally I could care less now that i see the communities take on this. I was simply curious if there was a better channel that i might draw attention to this through. I can see that my first take that it isn't a priority or concern is basically the general consensus.

As for my "roleplaying comments", I have posted NUMEROUS comments using the <Character Name>: "<Insert Quote>" formula and never had anyone take issue with it, until I started complaining about possible vote cheating. So that strikes me as very very odd. And out of respect of the decision that a comment of that type can be construed as offensive and that someone was offended by it (and not merely backseat moderating, which I think to be more the case than anything with that particular complaint) I went back a month and hid most of the comments I made using that formula (I may have missed a few with up votes as I was basically only looking for unvoted or down voted instances of what I had typed) and I hope that is good enough because I certainly don't feel like pawing through 6 months worth of my comments over something that trivial.

As far as I am concerned vote cheating, which happens as you can plainly see by those who have been caught doing it in the record section, is just a form of trolling that gets a pass because its harder to pin down. And that's fine, no system is perfect.

This will be my last post on the issue, so feel free to belittle my concerns and call me paranoid all you want.

Pasiphaë said:
This will be my last post on the issue, so feel free to belittle my concerns and call me paranoid all you want.

This is known as 'missing the point'. You had a choice between two interpretations and took one that is objectively more paranoid. That's equal to choosing to become more paranoid (perform more paranoid behaviours).

This remains true whether or not vote cheating is occurring here; it's a simple question of whether your evidence is good enough to reasonably justify your conclusion, and what happens to you as a result of choosing one conclusion or the other.

This is not an attempt to get you to produce evidence. I agree that it's not worth it. It's just saying that if you do those behaviours, it will fuck you up.

Usually if you create good comment, it's either getting upvotes, staying neutral or if someone downvotes it, someone else sees it's a good comments, thinks why on earth it's downvoted and balanses it to neutral with upvote.

If someone is really making their way to downvote just your comments, that simply means you are annoying them so much that they are going their way to make you feel negative. Thinking why they are getting annoyed might help to solve the issue, not commenting that you are getting downvoted or making threads that there's some secret organization againts you.

The voting system can also be a bit toxic thing to some users. You shouldn't make comments in hope they are getting upvoted tons or get really negative about 1-2 downvotes in couple comments.

Bad jokes.
Some creepy comments.
Hostility when someone tells you you're paranoid.

Memes. Unfunny memes.

There aren't even enough downvotes consistently to validate this thread, it's just people telling OP they're not fucking funny when they quote memes.

I also would like to chime in that I couldn't find shit. The uploads themselves have, if any, at most 1-2 downloads and that is very inconsistently. The users in the comments also show absolutely no sign of sharing IPs or anything.

It's highly likely that it's really just multiple people, and with the amount of users we have it's kind of to be expected that there will be more than one person who will dislike any given user.

I don't get whats the big deal about votes.

NotMeNotYou said:
I also would like to chime in that I couldn't find shit. The uploads themselves have, if any, at most 1-2 downloads and that is very inconsistently. The users in the comments also show absolutely no sign of sharing IPs or anything.

It's highly likely that it's really just multiple people, and with the amount of users we have it's kind of to be expected that there will be more than one person who will dislike any given user.

Aren't ups/downs intended for comments, instead of owners of comments?

DelurC said:
I don't get whats the big deal about votes.

Aren't ups/downs intended for comments, instead of owners of comments?

Can't really control that, but some users are always posting the same sort of content in their comments, so it's kind of a mix in those cases, too.