First, let me say I have absolutely no intent of igniting another flame-war. I apologize in advance if this occurs, despite this specific preface. What I am intending to do is to try and discuss the phenomenon, not the incident itself.

Recently, a post from sierrathedog04 turned into a major catastrophy. The only reason I even noticed was because I hit the Worst Nodes listing, and discovered two new entries, both of which were rapidly edging up to the infamous Finite Automaton (which is presumably now in the private collection of NodeReaper).

People could certainly misunderstand the intent of the post, something that could easily explain why it had received such a negative review. However, the more I dug through the thread, the more I noticed that any post by sierrathedog04 was downvoted viciously, even if the post didn't seem to merit it. Even more surprising was that relatively inane or spiteful replies to his posts were able to garner 10+ XP. A reply by sierrathedog04 which attempted to address this in an objective manner: -10XP, easily. Post after post, all I can find is massively negative posts from sierrathedog04 surrounded by equally vigorously upvoted follow-ups.

That the initial few posts attracted a lot of negativity is unfortunate, but not entirely surprising. What I found astounding was that even at extreme depths, these posts were getting voted on. It's almost as if this sort of thing has a real audience here.

Then there's the case of merlyn's Posting "Other Users" on potential personality voters from now on which is holding steady on the Worst Nodes list. Maybe celebrity is a double edged sword, even in the world of Perl Monks.

In reply to Attack of the Downvote Bots by tadman

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