How is your experiment going to prove that it is one person and not many?

It won't, it was never intended to and I haven't claimed it would.

It can, however, be used to highlight when it may be happening to someone and thus prompt further invesigation which may end up at GOG who can (in theory) get a list of the people who downrate the posts and see if they are the same person.

For example, GOG may find that:
The same accounts are downrating the same set of posts.
Those accounts were all made around the same time.
Those accounts have no rep.
Those accounts have no forum posts.
Those accounts have no purchases.
Those accounts are all accessed from the same IP.

I hope you would agree from that set of findings, a objective conclusion would be that one person has a lot of accounts specifically to reduce someone else's rep.

This script isn't the solution to the problem you posit, but it could be part of the solution.

EDIT: Removed the "100" from the "same 100 accounts" as the number isn't relevant in that set of findings.

It can't. Only GOG can "prove" that.
At most, it can prove that people have a vendetta against tinyE IF he would stop posting irrelevant crap all over the place for a few weeks. If he stops being an attention whore, as he called himself, for a relevant amount of time (a few weeks) and he still loses rep then some people have a vendetta against him. I doubt that he can.

So? That isn't a claim it is happening.

It is a request for you to explain how it would be a conspiracy theory when we have seen the exact same thing happen before.

It doesn't require a claim of it happening to discuss a possible situation.

Okay, let me posit this. GOG watches and lightly moderates the forums. There have been countless (20+?) posts about downrepping issues over the past few months. GOG in its moderating oversight reads those numerous threads. Why do we assume that GOG has not looked into this if it really is that important to them? Considering all of the posts and wishlist request and votes, etc, I don't know how GOG would not be aware of this alleged behavior and why they wouldn't have done something about it if it was happening again.

Also, I'm wondering what exactly can be done to stop this alleged behavior. Let's say this mystery user is discovered and all of his accounts are closed. What keeps him from going out and opening another 100 accounts and keeping up his alleged mischief? According to the history you've provided, GOG has already made changes to the rep system because something happened in the past. Are they going to make more changes? What could they be?

I believe, if anything, the assumption comes from their silence. They could quell the complaints by saying "It is a problem, we're looking at the best way to deal with it" or "We've looked into it and no-one is being targetted".

As I am going to bed, some possible changes that could be made:

1) Require a minimum amount of rep to downrate posts
2) Require a minimum amount of join time to downrate posts
3) Require a minimum number of posts to downrate posts
4) Disable downrating from accounts that have had no activity for X days
5) Flag up to GOG staff when multiple accounts are created from the same IP to be reviewed after a week
6) Limit the number of downrates possible per day (either per downrating account or against a particular account)
7) Flag up when one account suddenly gains a lot of low-rated posts
8) Flag up when one account hits the maximum rep loss a day for X days
9) Make the post rating system more transparent (i.e. not anonymous)
10) Make downrating not affect rep
11) Add "ignore user" functionality
12) Set controversial posts (those that receive a lot of both up and down ratings) to 0 rating and disable further ratings on it
13) Add in a meta-moderation system
14) Bias post ratings to the rep of the rater (i.e. someone with 200+ rep would +1/-1 but someone with 10 rep would +.1/-.1)

Please don't pick apart any specific suggestion. I have given literally no thought to them so most of them are probably broken :)

See, I'd probably actually play this. >.> <.<

Aww yeah!

Ok, but I don't think I'll bother since you just made up the precedent.

What precedent?

Why do you say that?

I know you said not to pick them apart, but I can't resist.

Would work, would be easy to implement and would be justifiable. "Contribute before you criticize" seems like a good guideline to me.

Would be unfair for those who contribute to the forum but can only be here sporadically. So no.

All the 'Flag' options would require additional person-time on GOGs side and is thus unlikely. Limiting the number of downrates one account can dish out in a given time would be possible however.

Holds the danger of downrating wars.

Somehow defeats the 'self-policing' purpose that was initially intendet for the whole rep thingie, I think.

As someone pointed out: those who like to go on a downrep crusade would ignore the ignore function. They WANT to be annoyed about their victim. If they ignore them, whom can they then harrass? And those that actually want to ignore a member can do so without such a function (works well for me).

Would probably again require mod attention and so has the same problem as the 'Flag to staff' options.

What's that?

Summary: I'm all for the first three options and they should fix a part of the problem. They won't fix the problem that every system can be misused if you try hard enough and they won't fix the problem that there are assholes in the world. But nothing (short of an annihilation of all life on this planet) will fix THAT problem.

^_^

im game heres my post