You'll be pleased(*) to know that I just ran a report on downvoting patterns in the last three months and the results show that you have been a favorite downvote recipient of about seven different monks.

One most recent node of yours matching your description is Re: PERL csv files to Excel. And the first vote on it (which was, yes, a downvote) occurred 8 minutes later. Hardly "immediately".

In any case, I don't find any evidence of automated downvoting.

Well, thank you for the information!

G'day harangzsolt33,

"My past 10 or more posts have all received downvotes instantly. As soon as I press the button to Submit post, there is a downvote."

I strongly suspect this is an exaggeration. That's reinforced by, two sentences later, "instantly" being downgraded to "very quickly almost instantly". I understand that anger, frustration, and other emotions can colour what you write; however, this doesn't help your case. It's often a good idea (before posting) to leave what you've written, take a break, then reread and maybe modify the text.

Posts that I make are often voted upon very quickly: there's certainly nothing unusual about that.

"... yesterday I made a post around 1 am, and very quickly almost instantly it received a down vote. The post was quite long, so there is no way the person could have read it and thought about it and form an opinion so quickly."

It would be much better to provide a link to the node in question so that we don't have to (potentially incorrectly) guess. Also, PerlMonks is a global community; writing a time without any timezone information is not useful. My guess is that you are referring to "Re: PERL csv files to Excel".

That node originally had colouring which could have interfered with another monk's colour preferences (via Display Settings) resulting in rendering which was difficult to read. Far from needing time to read the post in its entirety, annoyance at being unable to read it at all could easily have resulted in a "very quickly almost instantly" downvote.

Claiming it was "quite long" is an understatement: it was excessively long; my response has fuller comments. Someone could have easily become fed up with the amount of scrolling needed and decided that a "very quickly almost instantly" downvote was appropriate.

All of that is, of course, pure conjecture; however, it does provide scenarios in which that post was quickly downvoted.

"... raise the awareness of the admins ..."

Please read "RFC: Policy regarding abuses of the voting system" — admins do monitor and are aware.

Many of your posts seem to be intended to antagonise. A couple of examples: colouring resulting in difficult or impossible to read text (e.g. Re^5: I prefer not to run the latest version of Perl because:); forcing large font code on readers (e.g. Re: Edit lines from a file and replace multiple lines.).

It's not impossible that you have sufficiently annoyed one or more monks that they are automatically downvoting any of your posts that they encounter. For instance, I upvoted a response you made to me (Re^5: PERL csv files to Excel) resulting in "Reputation: 0" — I don't see anything in that post that warranted a downvote.

In conclusion, I rather think that the ball's in your court: continue posting as you have been and downvotes will also continue; choose to play nicely with others and upvotes will accrue.

You are not the first monk to ask this question: Just curious: is there a BOT that downvotes "me?"

(Update: just like your claim, after investigation by the site administrators, that claim was found to be mistaken)

If you improve the quality of your posts, the downvotes will go away.

Please check that your post is nicely formatted, and easy and clear to read, before rushing to post. For a good role model to follow, take a look at the formatting of kcott's posts. As a start, I suggest you simply take a bit more time and care during Preview before rushing to press the Create button.

Thirdly, if I wanted to write an automatic down voting script, it would have to download a page from PerlMonks every second to check the new posts by that user.

Of course, the notification feeds would also make it easy for a bot to react "instantly" to new posts, but Occam's razor says that curious (or bored) monks with irc up in another window so that they can immediately read new posts is the more likely explanation, given that those monks are quickly checking out everyone's new posts. Neither bots nor conspiracies targeting you are needed to explain what you've observed.

> There's an irc channel (and quite possibly more than one) which publishes notifications of new posts on PM

It might be worth documenting them here, do you have details?

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

Nope. There's an irc channel...

Or just check the Newest Nodes page.

> Or just check the Newest Nodes page.

Which links to an RSS feed. There are mobile apps for RSS to alarm you about updates.

I'm currently experimenting with a Telegram bot which polls this RSS every 3 hours for new threads.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

?node_id=6364;user=harangzsolt33;orderby=lr;length=25

There is no indication for automatic downvoting.

You have about 20-25 negative nodes out of 290, but they spread over all years° and 10% for a polarizing participant like you looks normal.

I looked into those and you are constantly repeating contraversial positions and forcing respected monks to lengthy replies to correct sometimes dangerous statements.

You are also regularly complaining that people misunderstand you, while not showing much understanding for other positions yourself.

The point is hundreds of silent visitors read the posts here, and we need to set misinterpretations straight. It's not enough that "we know that you know what you didn't say"!

I suppose many just ran out patience now, and the reactions come just quicker.

Furthermore, you aren't censored, others are expressing their opinion by voting, just like you do. For instance our established standards and best practices seem bad in your opinion.

I for my part mostly ignore your contributions here, before even voting. I could list the reasons again, but this has been done many times already.

Tho the embedded IMG as table stuff was fun. 👍:)

Update

FWIW I'm leaving this thread now, I don't have time for that. (Voting is quicker ;)

update

°) roughly 5 from 2018,2019,2022 and 10 from 2023. Those from 2023 mostly split between 2 threads where you are giving disputed general recommendations which are hitting on some nerves.

Automatic vote bots don't have nerves.

The first time I pointed out to you that you were recommending non-best-practice things to wisdom seekers and reinventing wheels was roughly 5 years ago. Since then, over the years, I've pointed out similar things to you numerous times: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

I've also explained the why: This this site is a resource to help people learn Perl, and recommending things that go against the best practices is frowned upon. Plus, quoting myself from here: “I don't do this just for the sake of the criticism itself or because I want to discourage learning or take from any enjoyment you might get from writing code in this style - I'm very much a fan of TIMTOWTDI - and if you want to write these scripts like this for yourself, that's fine. But as soon as you put these into some kind of "production", what I've said before become real issues: the more code your write yourself, the more code you have to test and maintain. (And for asking questions, it gives others much more code to wade through.) And if you expose this to the world, there's the added issue of having much more code to secure properly.”

Yet your recent post still contains all of the problems that have been pointed out to you: reinvented wheels, two-argument open with bareword file handles, using uppercase variable names for non-constant variables, use of vec, silently clobbering characters from strings, and I even see a no warnings this time. Yet your post contains no disclaimer that the code is not following best practices. And once again, your reinvented wheels have caused bugs, for example, GetFileDate reports the incorrect month and time zone.

If you want to show off your code, then you are welcome to post it e.g. in Cool Uses for Perl, or perhaps as a RFC to Meditations, the above node would have been fine there. But the code style you've been posting here for the past 5 years is not suitable for recommendation to wisdom seekers.

"Is it possible for a user to write a script to monitor my activity and down vote everything I post automatically?"

As a programmer, yes this is achievable.

"As soon as I press the button to Submit post, there is a downvote."

I doubt that's true, what evidence do you have?

"Does PerlMonks allow members to set up an automatic thing?

It's against the rules, and the spirit of the place, which isn't to say someone can't do it, but there's no evidence of this. Historically our most down-voted users have claimed such things existed, and those with the powers to check such things proved otherwise.

"Secondly, how would I do that without being logged in?"

1. A user has to be logged into vote. 2. computer programming.

"Thirdly, if I wanted to write an automatic down voting script, it would have to download a page from PerlMonks every second to check the new posts by that user."

"eventually downloading the same page a billion times would raise the awareness of the admins (maybe?), and I think that user would be placed in a timeout. So, how can someone pull this off? I don't understand it.

See all of the above, basic computer programming... it's against the rules... we don't really have the kind of user... and nobody really cares about votes, just pertinent responses/critique.

> > Secondly, how would I do that without being logged in?"

> 1. A user has to be logged into vote. 2. computer programming

I think the OP meant the list in "other users"

1. One doesn't show up immediately when logging in
2. One doesn't need to be listed, since PM has a stealth mode
3. PM has various ticker/RSS feeds to monitor the site
So no hacking needed.

And it couldn't be hidden from the gods, if there were really downvotes instantly after publishing, before reading the post was even possible.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

I doubt that's true, what evidence do you have?

I don't have evidence; it's just an observation.

It's against the rules, and the spirit of the place, which isn't to say someone can't do it, but there's no evidence of this.

Yes, but you know, it would not be very difficult to do it.

I do, but you literally asked if this was possible. It's unlikely that automation is the cause of your down votes.

> , but you know, it would not be very difficult to do it

There had been discussions lately about ppl using automated voting for gaining XP, yes.

But the gods are monitoring this and punishment would be drastic.

For the record: they can see who is downvotig who!

But honestly I think you are overrating yourself if you think someone would set up a bot just to punish you. Sorry!

It's far more likely that your style has some non-fans.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

Maybe try to write better elaborated posts with less fill words like LOL and more <p> formatting?

DISCLAIMER: I prefer to stay anonymous,but downvoted you only once in the last 20 occasions.

"I doubt it's automatic. Many of us get downvotes."

I believe this is true.

"Maybe try to write better elaborated posts with less fill words like LOL and more formatting?"

Post quality is an issue as you say, regardless who is posting.

Dear harangzsolt33,

Please know that someone in the world feels your pain. There are some things in life that make absolutely no sense, unfortunately.

Reading your post made me sad.