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I've noticed an increase in what looks like random up-voting of my posts over the past few months, and just now had a second reversal of serial up-voting.

I've experienced a(t least one) case of serial downvoting in a different site, but serial upvoting is a new experience for me.

Are other people seeing this as well, or is it just me seeing this?

In the case of votes on my post, might this just be a bit of beginner's enthusiasm, or is "a type of voting fraud" being perpetrated against me here as well, but with the opposite sign?

I'm not a "rep freak" and don't take the number too seriously, and would advocate for a two digit logarithmic display for rep (e.g. mine would be 4.4) in many instances of rep-display SE-wide to help put this in perspective. (Also the point behind this joke about prime numbers)

But since many people do, I thought I'd explore this further.

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The plateau between November 2017 and March 2018 appears flat and yet "noisy" because my bounty rate was equal to the upvote rate. I don't know how to plot the cumulative upvoting by itself.

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It was me I've been going around and up voting everybody's posts like crazy to get my up vote badge and it is easier to up vote 1 persons posts at one time. I tend to focus on posts that have the least amount of attention or negative score that IMO deserves an up vote but will be refraining from over voting on one profile. I have changed the way I up vote now I know it is a problem.

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    $\begingroup$ +1 for honesty at least! And that's because votes in meta don't count. Voting without sincerity and consideration is bad for SE, it tends to defeat the purpose of the system. Better stop your "uncontrolled voting compulsion" or whatever it is, that's my view. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Oct 10 '18 at 3:03
  • $\begingroup$ @uhoh I vote on stuff I can understand and relate to. $\endgroup$ – Muze Oct 10 '18 at 3:13
  • $\begingroup$ See my update. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Oct 10 '18 at 3:18
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh your not the only one I up vote and it is not to inflate you even if I tried it would be like 2%. $\endgroup$ – Muze Oct 10 '18 at 3:43
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    $\begingroup$ How to convincingly ask a serial upvoter to stop doing it when they already know better? $\endgroup$ – uhoh Nov 21 '18 at 21:34
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    $\begingroup$ Muze - if you find yourself doing things like this, please think about stepping away from the computer for a day or two. It causes problems with any site - votes are to help rate quality, not to go full pelt for badges (which you mentioned previously was your reason for this) $\endgroup$ – Rory Alsop Dec 10 '18 at 17:49
  • $\begingroup$ @RoryAlsop I should be able to up vote as many questions and answers to I like but I have limited myself lately. $\endgroup$ – Muze Dec 10 '18 at 17:56
  • $\begingroup$ You can, sure. But you should upvote questions which deserve it. As it says on the tour page, "Good answers are voted up and rise to the top," not "All answers are voted up" $\endgroup$ – Rory Alsop Dec 10 '18 at 18:09
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A quick search doesn't reveal any instances of "serial upvoting removed" in my history for the past 4 months.

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This answer mentions the related questions in the margin and that reminded me that I may have done that when I was a new user as well, to a limited extent. Entering a new site full of answers I've never read before makes me feel as happy as Homer Simpson in Flushing Meadows, NY.

However it would feel more than a little strange if someone more experienced were to engage in this pattern, especially on multiple days.

update: Just now, a "vote storm". The solid block of +10's followed by most of the solid block of +5's all happened in under 10 minutes. Speed reading?

This plus votes from previous days have already been auto-deleted by the "suspicious voting pattern detection bot" (or by a moderator or system developer) in under one hour.

If such a voting pattern continues to happen between two users mutually or from one user towards another, or otherwise falls outside of normal voting patterns, moderators and/or developers may investigate the matter; intentionally voting merely to reduce or inflate another user's reputation is considered abuse.

Such votes will generally be invalidated as part of an automated process that runs every day, but may also be invalidated manually by the staff after an investigation. When the votes are invalidated, the reputation gain or loss from the votes is undone, which results in a record in the recipient's reputation history labelled "voting corrected".

"recipient's reputation history" = my history.

vote storm

Another vote storm 10-Dec-2018:

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Another MAJOR vote reversal 25-Feb-2019:

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ I just had a similarly major drop due to "serial voting reversal". I'm not sure it was warranted, I have been answering a lot of shuttle questions lately. Oh, well, sand in the gears. $\endgroup$ – Organic Marble Feb 24 '19 at 21:58
  • $\begingroup$ @OrganicMarble ya, regolith in the "space suit joints" ;-) $\endgroup$ – uhoh Feb 24 '19 at 22:04
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    $\begingroup$ I'll ask a specific question. $\endgroup$ – Organic Marble Feb 24 '19 at 22:05
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Once in my time here at SE I had a serial upvoting reversed. (It may have been on sci-fi though). And yes, in the last month I had a couple spates of enough random upvotes that I was concerned it might happen again (it didn't). I ended up concluding that someone was clicking on a lot of the "related" questions on the side, so a good thing, I guess.

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  • $\begingroup$ Ya I think there is just some enthusiastic voting, which, yes, could just be a good thing. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 24 '18 at 19:54
  • $\begingroup$ Did something like this happen to you, below: Second time I've ended up with my answer becoming double-posted. What might be happening here? $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 24 '18 at 19:55
  • $\begingroup$ It may have been partially self inflicted. I posted the answer, then switched to another browser tab for a long time. When I came back to this tab, it looked like I hadn't hit post, and I wasn't really sure if I had or not. So I clicked it, and then there were two! It also subjected me to a "captcha". $\endgroup$ – Organic Marble Jun 24 '18 at 20:10
  • $\begingroup$ That sounds familliar, when it happened to me I had more than several tabs open (including several Space SE tabs) and was probably overclocking my attention on a few things at the same time. But I certainly didn't start asking the same question in two places, and I don't remember doing anything particularly unorthodox. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 24 '18 at 20:13
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    $\begingroup$ Hmm, I read your linked question and it does sound the same. $\endgroup$ – Organic Marble Jun 24 '18 at 20:15

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