As best I know, they can't tell which are the low-rated ones 'till they've actually voted. So, they can't intentionally target the low-reputation ones.
Now, if we assume that all of your votes are near average, the odds of a loss are 1/3. Therefore, to lose 30XP suddenly, you'd most likely have had ~90 downvotes. (these numbers actually work out as the same as picking the low-rated ones, as the odds of losing XP are never greater than 1/3).
As the level 'pope' only gets 54 votes/day, and there's only one (Vroom, who hasn't been on for a month), and there's only two others with more than 44 votes per day (BrowserUK, merlyn), I'd say that to suddenly lose 30XP is a sign that it's much more likely that you're managed to piss off quite a few people, rather than just a single (or couple) vindictive people.
...
(yes, I know that it's possible with this sort of distribution to lose 30XP in less than 90 votes, but it's just as likely for it to take more than 90 votes)
update: okay, there is a way to see the lowest rated. The math still holds. And hope that we don't have a whole lot of people who would indiscriminately downvote nodes based on the author -- it just seems like a prick thing to do. (I personally rarely down vote nodes ... of course, I don't up vote nodes that often, either, but it's an order of magnitude different, I'd estimate) update 2: Yes, I have 3 nodes w/ negative rep (this is one of 'em) ... I think kyle upvoted those two nodes, as two of 'em are at -1. However, even without that, I have 728 of 790 nodes at < 3*$NORM, so you'd still have good odds on random downvoting being effective for me. (and I would assume, most others on here, but there might be a few who are less likely affected)
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Howdy!
Ummm... If I, say, go to your home node and click on the number of writeups,
I can sort them by reputation, either highest first or lowest first. That makes
it easy to work from the bottom up, if I'm a determined personality voter gunning
for you.
Picking at the numbers I threw out dodges the point of my message, however. If you
suddenly lose 30 XP, it's highly likely that one of your recent posts was a real
steaming pile -- a peanut-laden steaming three-coiler -- and people are expressing
their disapproval. It is possible (and I think merlyn has been known to get this
treatment) that such a dip would be the result of a determined effort to inflict
'--' all over you.
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Hi jhourcle,
I went to your user page and clicked on the search for your writeups. Then I selected Order by "Lowest reputation first" and clicked the search button. Then I voted on the top two so I could see their reputation. They were both negative.
So I think it would be pretty easy for someone to intentionally target some user's low-reputation nodes.
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