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The question nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing (closed) is continuing to be downvoted even though it's (rightfully) closed, and is going to stay closed (and hopefully will be deleted soon). Is this appropriate behaviour?

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It's obviously wrong, but people love stoning. If you point out a bad thing, even if it's obviously got what it deserved, they will just keep on stoning/downvoting. Evan Caroll is a perfect example of the idea. –  Gnoupi May 24 '10 at 19:55

3 Answers 3

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I think it is appropriate to flag as spam.

Now, it got deleted as spam, because 6 flags were reached (a downvote, total score -7).

I'd say it's a big mistake to change the post to nothing nothing .....

IIRC, whenever the user got a spam/offensive flag, community user put one downvote for 2 days. If there are 6 spam/offensive flags reached within 2 days, those downvotes become permanent, and extra -100 substracted.

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Yes, but why the downvotes? –  Andrew Grimm May 24 '10 at 7:47
@Andrew, There is 4 spam votes at the moment, which cause -4, so it apparently means there is only one downvote, which could be before that questions changed to nothing x 5 or before closed, so thats normal, IMHO. –  YOU May 24 '10 at 7:48
@S.Mark: Ah. Now I get it! –  Andrew Grimm May 24 '10 at 10:32

I'll occasionally downvote such questions if I feel the question proves the author deserves less rep. I will even downvote just before posting the final vote to delete, assuming that I missed the opportunity to downvote earlier.

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In the second case, the rep will come back on the next recalc. You're really only hitting them with the -2 for 6-8 weeks. –  Pops Oct 12 '10 at 12:13

Once a question is solidly off the front page (-5 is plenty), I personally don't see the point of continuing to downvote, although that's never stopped people before. I think at that point, the poster more than likely gets the hint that what was posted was definitely not appropriate.

The exception would be when the question could be considered spam or offensive, in which case the flagging system should be used instead.

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just a note: 1) 10k+ users cannot vote to delete right away, need to wait 2 days from closed date, 2) rescinding the downvote cannot be done after 5 minutes until the post is edited. –  YOU May 24 '10 at 9:28
@S.Mark: Yes, you're right. I removed that part from my answer. I guess I saw spam/offensive flags in that instance because the post disappeared almost immediately after it was closed. –  Jon Seigel May 24 '10 at 16:26
Nitpick: on MSO, you don't fall off the front page 'til -9. –  Pops Oct 12 '10 at 12:12
@Pop: Yeah, this question wasn't about meta-questions... Meta is... different. Sometimes you might upvote so a question doesn't get hidden, even though you disagree. I don't think that would ever happen on a parent site. –  Jon Seigel Oct 12 '10 at 17:19

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