My top rated answer has 274 upvotes and just received its second downvote. The downvoter was a user named DGDD.

The question I voted to close was this, by DGDD: Link to an anchor AND force reload current page

My answer is this: Make div 100% height of browser window

After downvoting, DGDD left the following comment:

Viewport-Percentage don't have nearly enough support in order to be used in a production environment. You have to write a fallback every time which ends up creating more of a mess than if you had simply not used VP.

Now don't get me wrong, this would be a perfectly valid downvote reason in some circumstances, however I believe in this case it was purely a revenge thing.

  1. The question my answer is on mentions nothing about required browsers.
  2. My answer works perfectly on the vast majority of browsers released in the last 3 years.
  3. I don't feel "not enough [browser] support" is a good enough reason to downvote a working answer.

The user then went on to defend his downvote by stating that it will not work for mobile users. Once again, the question itself specifies nothing about having to work on mobile browsers, and I think this is a pretty lousy reason to legitimately downvote an answer.

I believe this user has downvoted me out of nothing but spite and if possible I'd like this to be investigated and/or removed, especially as my answer here had a 99.63% upvote rate prior to this downvote being given.

You cannot know who downvoted your post. Even if they leave a comment, that is not a guarantee that they actually voted on your post, or how they voted. Moreover, bringing in a specific user to Meta because you disagree with how they vote is not a good way to resolve issues, it feels like a public shaming. –  Martijn Pieters Jul 4 at 16:01
@MartijnPieters it's pretty obvious though, isn't it? 14 minutes after his question was closed I receive a comment by that user on my answer and a downvote to go with it? Not to mention when accusing him of downvoting on my answer's comments he didn't even try to suggest that it wasn't him. –  James Donnelly Jul 4 at 16:02
Even if the user downvoted out of spite, moderators and the community cannot do anything about that. You ignore it and move on. –  Martijn Pieters Jul 4 at 16:03
@MartijnPieters surely this counts as user abuse though? What if I'd been downvoted on more than 1 of my answers, would you still give the same response? –  James Donnelly Jul 4 at 16:06
-1 for assuming you know who downvoted a question. –  Oded Jul 4 at 16:06
So? How is that anything but circumstantial? Or an assumption? And why do you care about 1 downvote? –  Oded Jul 4 at 16:08
@JamesDonnelly: Serial voting is already automatically dealt with in the system. If I were to downvote a series of your answers, or upvote them, for that matter, those votes are reverted automatically at around 03:00 UTC. Other than that, no, the intent of an individual downvotes can never be inferred, let alone be qualified as user abuse. –  Martijn Pieters Jul 4 at 16:08
A single downvote on a single question? Yes that is tolerated. You have no way of knowing why it was downvoted. Did you consider that the actual issue raised in the comment has merit? –  Oded Jul 4 at 16:10
Be that as it may, it is a drop in the ocean of reputation you got from that question. Complaining about it and human nature is going to be counter productive. –  Oded Jul 4 at 16:12
@JamesDonnelly so you mean a -0.000084% decrease to your rep is "reputation suffering"? –  Sompuperoo Jul 4 at 16:15
@JamesDonnelly - again. You are assuming things. I see no where that this user said they downvoted your answer. You are overreacting here. If there was anything here over the loss of 2 rep, we would take things more seriously. –  Oded Jul 4 at 16:16
Frankly, the question and the flurry of comment responses from yourself suggest that you may be writing in the heat of the moment. Perhaps you should step away from the keyboard, calm down and then come back? –  Oded Jul 4 at 16:17
You should know the rules. This is not serial downvoting and no one can or will do nothing about it. Hundreds of upvotes and a couple of downvotes, come on! If people don't comment, there's a problem, if people comment, there's a problem, let's abolish those dreadful downvotes once and for all, yah?! –  brasofilo Jul 4 at 19:38
Look at my profile, I get downvote for correct answers as well (even accepted ones, check the split), you can do nothing but move on, haters gonna hate, see the other side, you have 274 upvotes :) –  Mr. Alien Jul 4 at 20:45
Everyone asking "why are you allowed to downvote without commenting" should be linked here. –  David Robinson Jul 4 at 22:09

2 Answers 2

up vote 18 down vote accepted

I sympathise with you. You're probably well aware at this point that one cannot be 100% certain who might have downvoted one's post, so I won't harp on that. It does seem more likely that the downvote might be somehow connected to the comments than it all just being sheer coincidence, given your situation. But again, this is all just speculation; nobody can tell you for sure if it's one way or the other.

Keep in mind that this sort of thing happens all the time to everyone (life isn't just unfair to only one person, as odd as that might sound) and that we can't possibly account for every individual vote that is given to/from every user on the site, much less determine whether or not its intentions were pure. Even if we could verify that someone downvoted something for less-than-pure intentions, we aren't in a position to handle this sort of thing on a case-by-case basis.

Plus, as crappy as this sounds, we don't want to give users the idea that casting a single downvote at a time is not allowed just because it might be perceived as personal or malicious. Users downvote for petty reasons all the time because people like to be jerks like that, but that doesn't mean users don't downvote for legitimate reasons either. This is why we handle user-targeted votes only when a suspiciously large volume or proportion of these has been cast.

Given that your top post has already suffered one downvote prior to this, I can really only advise you to shrug off this second downvote. More than a few of my top answers have had wayward downvotes now, some I shrugged off, others I made fun of (once I had two downvotes on the same answer, several months apart, both of which caused my reputation to become a palindrome, which greatly amused me). Incidental downvotes like this can't be investigated or removed, so you'll just have to find other ways to deal with them, I'm afraid.

so you'll just have to find other ways to deal with them, I'm afraid. - envy downvote back :D –  Mr. Alien Jul 4 at 20:53

I received 2 suspicious downvotes on 2 old questions today, 2 seconds apart from eachother. Yes, it was likely from the same user, out of spite or something, but there is nothing I can do about it.

If the same user does enough downvotes on the same day to a single user's questions/answers, the system will automatically reverse the downvotes. However, 1 or 2 downvotes, will likely not be reversed.

There is no asking for a moderator to look into it, since they can't see who voted which way either.

Just laugh it off and move on.


You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .