tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system)

Todd Trimble comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13625)

2011-03-10T05:31:41-08:00

It seems this thread has turned into a series of jokes. Is it serving a purpose any longer? If not, I vote to close.

WillieWong comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13624)

2011-03-10T04:53:11-08:00

@Harry: of course, a cor. is the definition "a politician P is defined to be a principle bundle over a base manifold C, which we call the constituency", and sometimes the letter D is used for the base manifold, short for donors.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13619)

2011-03-09T15:47:49-08:00

@nielkj: Come on, you've gotta make me work for it. It's no fun when it's intentional!

nielkj comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13617)

2011-03-09T14:22:59-08:00

@Harry: Let us consider the push-foreword of your remarks...they are quite inciteful.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13616)

2011-03-09T11:08:56-08:00

@Will: It is my favorite misspelling after "principle bundle", meaning "a principle that varies with a parameter".

Will Jagy comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13615)

2011-03-09T10:49:36-08:00

Daniel, I think Harry is referring to the fact that discrete and discreet are different words, while the words discretion and discreetly derive from the latter choice.

Ryan Budney comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13614)

2011-03-09T10:47:53-08:00

@nielkj: I believe Daniel was replying to Harry's original post, not to you.

nielkj comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13613)

2011-03-09T08:51:44-08:00

@Daniel: you misread my intentions: I was trying to get Harry to take the negative comments less seriously. I wasn't trying to shame him. See some one of my previous comments in this thread.
@Harry: if I in some way insulted you, please accept my apologies.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13612)

2011-03-09T08:07:04-08:00

@Daniel

super-discretely

A topologist suggesting a discrete approach? Madness! ;)

@nielkj: I think I speak for mathoverflow when I say "don't encourage me"...

Daniel Moskovich comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13611)

2011-03-09T08:01:41-08:00

This is probably the worst idea I've heard on meta; it's responding to a small wrong (insincere downvote) with a much bigger wrong (shaming a mathematician in public).
In my ideal world, websites would treat contributors as customers, and would always be polite and courteous and give good service. If a contributor does something which goes against site rules, it should be dealt with super-discretely and in the most polite and sensitive way possible. In my opinion, being courteous to all users is in general immeasurably more important than site rules.

nielkj comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13609)

2011-03-09T04:16:12-08:00

@Harry: the controversy you generate on MO could surely be put to good use. I am sure that you're more well-known in the mathematical community because of it. I have little doubt you can use your reputation as a springboard for applying for jobs after getting your PhD. And, maybe, just maybe, MO is the post-modern equivalent of the Putnam exam?

Ben Webster comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13327)

2011-02-15T14:49:18-08:00

Harry, you've been told so many times by so many people (who have signed their names) that you are embarrassing yourself and trashing your reputation, I can't imagine that anyone thinks a few downvotes will convince you. At this point, it would be rather extraordinary if you weren't concerned about how the community perceives you. I regard it as a lot more likely that the people downvoting you are doing it to piss you off, and they seem to be getting exactly what they want. In fact, at least one person started downvoting your posts after you started complaining on meta.

As a general comment: it's been said before, but I'll say it again. If you think someone is downvoting you inappropriately, email the moderators, we will investigate, and do our best to deal with it. As Scott points out, we have lives and may not do so instantly, but we will. We take inappropriate downvoting seriously, and have already handed out suspensions in connection with this incident. Keep in mind that as with any trolling behavior, responding publicly is the worst thing you can do, as it just gives satisfaction to whoever is doing it.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13320)

2011-02-15T09:01:38-08:00

Dear Thierry,

I'm not worried about the points (first off, 15 voted down questions is 30 points, which even a nonmathematician could gain in a day, provided he already read the FAQ, but second off I don't actually care anyway). The point is that someone is voting down my posts etc as a way of intimidating me anonymously. If a tenured professor receives a string of downvotes, it doesn't really matter. When an undergraduate or even graduate student receives a large number of votes down like that, it definitely seems reasonable to me for him to be frightened about how the community perceives him. The desired effect is an effort to intimidate that student into leaving Math Overflow.

If an MO user wants to "run someone out of town", I think that he or she should be forced to at least make such efforts public.

thierryzell comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13319)

2011-02-15T08:43:30-08:00

Dear Harry: I sympathize with your predicament, and, unfortunately, my opinion of humanity is lucid enough that I can perfectly imagine how some MO users could stoop so low. Unfortunately, your proposed solution would probably do more harm than good. If your goal is to raise the level of civility on MO and discourage abuse, the stocks is most definitely not the way to go. On the practical side, I doubt it would help much since anyone who is that determined to hurt you reputation will resort to proxies.

Mostly, I want to urge you to take the high road on this one: even if your reputation did take a hit, no one will realistically be able to bar you from your hard-earned high-reputation user privileges any time soon. You might take a bit longer to reach the fabled 10k rep, but probably not that much longer. When a user has been so active on MO for as long as you have, the numerical reputation is probably not as relevant as the effective reputation your questions and answer built.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13298)

2011-02-15T01:06:48-08:00

You could've suggested them to the moderators first.

You could've spoken too soon.

Oh well!

Scott Morrison comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13294)

2011-02-14T17:11:14-08:00

Indeed, Harry did suggest exactly this to the moderators. We didn't respond immediately (I have more important things happening this week!), but there's a steady stream of emails going on in the background. We'll eventually do something, and if anyone feels they need to know exactly what we do they should email us asking.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13293)

2011-02-14T16:40:33-08:00

@nielkj: but don't you get it? If Harry improves his behavior because of downvotes, the terrorists have won.

In all seriousness, this is something only the moderators can address anyway, since they're the ones with access to the right information. If you wanted to suggest punishments, you could've suggested them to the moderators first.

nielkj comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13291)

2011-02-14T15:47:16-08:00

@Harry: I like some of your comments, but others I find abrasive. Part of the blacklisting you're getting is no doubt related to your sometimes bad citizenship. Diplomacy can do wonders.

Yemon Choi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13290)

2011-02-14T15:39:45-08:00

I largely agree with Noah's comment. While it may be annoying for the person being downvoted, I think that this is best left to behind-the-scenes moderation (with appropriate consultation of the downvotee).

YC's rule of thumb: it is impossible to stop people who want to BACAI from BACAI (I hope that the acronym, while a signifier for something NSFW, is not unduly offensive to people here; I plead North-East English idiom). The best one can do is to corral such people and minimize their effect.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13289)

2011-02-14T14:32:03-08:00

@Noah: I don't agree that this thread is completely unnecessary. I still stand behind my idea of putting people who tried to abuse their anonymity in the spotlight. As you said, the punishment should fit the crime.

I also think that it's one of the few offenses on MO that has real malicious intent. I don't think that could be said for very many other "crimes", as it were.

Edit: He's at it again. The current count is 18 that I can see (not counting CW). I think that there must be more than one person involved.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13288)

2011-02-14T14:28:55-08:00

@Andy: I guess you have information to which I'm not privy? I won't press you for more details, then. =)

Noah Snyder comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13287)

2011-02-14T14:27:16-08:00

"Voting fraud" issues like this just aren't that big a deal. It's bad behavior, and it's good that moderators can and do undo such voting sprees. But it's really not a big deal. I'd say it's worse than starting an unnecessary thread on meta (like this one), but not as bad as leaving an offensive comment on the main site. I think the way that they're currently dealt with is completely appropriate.

Andy Putman comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13286)

2011-02-14T14:23:31-08:00

@Harry : There are plenty of suspensions that you don't hear about...

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13284)

2011-02-14T14:20:09-08:00

@Andy: Sure, but when someone else gets suspended, most people know why it happened because it happened in public. People engage in this kind of nonsense with voting because they know that they will face few to no actual consequences (such behavior does not usually result in anything more than a warning). I should also note that people who vote like that are very likely not regular participants here, so I suspect that suspensions (even if they were carried out) would be an effective way of controlling this kind of stuff.

Meanwhile, whoever voted up four of my posts, I appreciate the gesture. Thanks.

Andy Putman comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13283)

2011-02-14T13:08:01-08:00

@Harry : As has been said many times before, the correct response when you think something like this is happening to email the moderators. Complaining on meta won't accomplish anything (aside from possibly giving satisfaction to whoever is doing this [assuming it is happening]).

I view downvoting like this as being bad, but not any worse than anything else that gets people suspended, and my understanding is that it is a matter of policy that we don't have public lists of people who are suspended from the site. Trying to "publicly shame" people would accomplish little but pollute the collegial atmosphere of MO.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13282)

2011-02-14T13:05:15-08:00

I'm not even mad. I'm just giggling that people would bother to click through all of my questions to vote them down one at a time.

an_mo_user comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13280)

2011-02-14T12:47:24-08:00

Is this really happening ??

I do not want to imply your claim is not accurate, I merely wanted
to express my absolute surprise that such a thing is happening
(on a more or less professional site of adults).

While it might not be worth much from a random anonymous,
I wanted to say that I understand your anger.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13279)

2011-02-14T12:18:59-08:00

Haha, since a lot of my old material is community wiki'd for various reasons, now they're just downvoting all of my posts in order, and when they hit one that I failed to CW, I get an indicator in my score.

I hope that the moderators will suspend this person/group of people.

The current count is 15

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13278)

2011-02-14T12:07:16-08:00

Haha. I now have fourteen downvotes over the course of the two hours. Somebody's got a gear to grind..

I suspect that there are two people working in collusion with one another.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13277)

2011-02-14T12:02:08-08:00

@Andy: This wouldn't be for voting down once or twice. I get things like six votes down in the course of ten minutes. I'm sure that the following two things are true: It happens to people other than me, and also, the moderators would be very happy if they didn't have to get e-mails about this kind of thing.

These are just people who have some kind of gear to grind and are just being spiteful.

What if instead of the "stocks", we called it a "rogues' gallery"?

Andy Putman comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13276)

2011-02-14T11:45:59-08:00

@Harry : This is a terrible idea! I understand that you feel that this happens to you a lot, but I find it unbelievable that you actually think that such a system would be good for the climate of this website.

Harry Gindi comments on "The Stocks: Public humiliation to prevent abuse of the voting system" (13275)

2011-02-14T11:29:33-08:00

From time to time, people think it's a good idea to go and vote down a large swath of someone else's posts. This is not a legitimate use of the voting system, and I think that, like convenience stores, which keep pictures of attempted shoplifters behind the counter, we should make it public whenever somebody does this.

That is, we should have a public "stocks", where people's names would be made public for abusing the system. To avoid starting fights, it would be fine if the person's "crime" was kept hidden.