1
$\begingroup$

Just curious: Is someone gaming the point system a bit here? I just got two rapid-fire down votes for recommending a very relevant section from Feynman's QED book, on a question about whether complex math is required for quantum physics. Even if you don't agree with Feynman's perspective, you'd certainly think that a Nobel prize winner's very clear opinion on the topic might be relevant! And no explanatory comments, hmm! Fascinating dynamics, that.

If this is some case of aggressive gaming, is there a mechanism to moderate it? I don't know how often this problem arises, but it's an interesting one. If relevant references get fast-zinged on a regular basis, that can't be good for the overall answer quality of the group.

$\endgroup$
2
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I just returned to find some fairly anomalous downvotes myself, with a dubious connection to answer merit. I suspect that someone occasionally logs in and make the rounds downvoting, which is just a part of how SE works. $\endgroup$
    – Alan Rominger
    Jul 28, 2012 at 20:28
  • $\begingroup$ Alan, thanks. As long as it's singular votes I'm not too worried, even if they hit a lot of answers at once. The way SE is set up seems robust enough to "self heal" from that, even if it's annoying. If folks do nothing but down vote, that should eventually show up as suspicion of vandalism on the summary reports that the SE Higher Beings :) will take action on, since it would clearly undermine the overall business model that SE relies on to stay in business. $\endgroup$
    – Terry Bollinger
    Jul 29, 2012 at 0:19

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2
$\begingroup$

The timeline for the relevant post shows only one recent downvote (2 points, natch) and no particular evidence of a misuse of the system.

I suspect that the voting on that question is turning on the interpretation of words like "fundamental" and "naturalness" or somesuch. Makes me wish I'd closed it as "not a real question" which used to be labeled "subjective and argumentative".

There doesn't seem to be a case for moderator intervention here.

BTW-- The "timeline" url is a a general construction that can be applied to any question to see what happened when.

$\endgroup$
1
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Ah! I see one reason for my perplexity is that I thought two points meant two down votes. One down vote I can easily see; two seemed statistically unlikely for that type of highly referenced answer. So, I'm good with that! But I'm glad you didn't close it, because the main thrust of the equation was very close to a question that Feynman spent a lot of time wondering about. $\endgroup$
    – Terry Bollinger
    Jul 26, 2012 at 8:28

You must log in to answer this question.

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