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  Can we have a "Vote Administration" plugin?

+ 2 like - 0 dislike
1835 views

This is related to Ron's question Already highly upvoted crappy questionsI generally agree with what Ron says there, though I may or may not agree with his specific examples of crappy questions. Many not-that-great-but-still-on-topic-on-P-O posts have recieved too many upvotes (not on PO, but in the places that we have imported from) which should be reduced to half or something since we know that on those Q&A sites, there are not very knowledgable people who still endorse content etc. Similarly, many posts there have been unfairly given trolling downvotes by those without knowledge about the topic. All such votes should, be removed.  

Another different but related issue is serial voting. If some of our friends have a grudge against Physics Overflow, they may try to come here and serially downvote good posts, and serially upvote bad ones, or otherwise just randomly vote to try and disrupt the site. Or any user who wants to upvote a lot of his sockpuppet's, or someone's who answered his question nicely, posts. Or any user with a grudge against another user wanting revenge by serial downvotes. Such votes should also be nullified. I checked by blocking the test user SandPerson. There is no option in the core to delete all a user's votes. 

So I think we need a plug-in, "Vote Administration" that (in descending order of importance, i.e. with highest importance at the top): 

  • Allows a super-administrator to change the votes recieved on a particular question.  
  • Delete all votes by a user. 
  • Delete all votes in the past (specified number of hours) hours by a user.  

Is this possible to achieve in a reasonable amount of time (like a day or so)? 

asked Apr 6, 2014 in Feature Request by dimension10 (1,985 points) [ no revision ]
retagged Apr 17, 2014 by dimension10

Who gets to decide which votes are removed? Do the admins simply override the community if they think that a post doesn't deserve the upvotes?

Good idea, but I suspect at present only Polarkernel can find inappropriate voting patterns etc by looking into the data base ...

@Dilaton Nope, we can just use the history plugin. 

@anonymous (physicsnewbie?) No, corresponding threads will be set up obviously. Also, read the question carefully. This is only for questions imported from other sites.  

@dimension10 If only votes given from external users on imported questions have to be changed, then only the first request is feasible. All votes on imported questions are set by a bot-voter. Neither SE.TP nor SE.P provides a sender of the votes. If we would delete all votes by this user, all votes on imported questions would disappear.
Realizable with this precondition would only be a plugin, that removes all votes on one post that have been given by the bot-voter. Is it that what you propose?

@polarkernel No, the plugin should be accessible for all questions.

Part 1, which is erasing some of (say, half, or any desired value) the votes on a particular question should be done for only SE-imported questions, whereas Part 2, which is erasing all of the votes by a particular user (not SchrodingersCatVoter) in the past few ("few" can be any desirable quantity) hours could be done for all questions.  

But the plugin could as well be accessible for both SE-imported questions and other normal questions.  

I've got it. Will take a little bit more than one day, maybe.

To part 1: Imported questions can contain both, imported votes and votes given by PO-users. Shall the plugin in this part only remove a fraction of the imported votes?

2 Answers

+ 2 like - 0 dislike

I have written a plugin for the first part, which enables to correct votes on imported questions (only votes of users on foreign sites). SuperAdmins may access it on the “User Admin” page.
Part II is more complicated and will follow.
I know that you all are aware of, but nevertheless I like to point on this here: Changing votes is quite delicate. Maybe requests to change votes should not be decided by voting, as long as it is possible to change votes. At least, it must be published somewhere what has been done and why so that users may complain. No secret agents on this site please.

answered Apr 6, 2014 by polarkernel (0 points) [ no revision ]

Good idea about having a similar public log! I agree.  

+ 2 like - 0 dislike

Part II is ready to be used for SuperAdministrators.

answered Apr 8, 2014 by polarkernel (0 points) [ no revision ]

Thanks!

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