@arjafi: Doug is continuing to disturb me through useless comments either on my post (math.stackexchange.com/questions/1703442/…) or directed at me (math.stackexchange.com/questions/1783025/…). However, I can see that they are not exactly suitable for flagging. What should I do?

@DanielFischer (or any other mod, really): Is it possible to search through flags?

I mean, I obviously can go through the thousands of flags I raised and search one page at a time. But maybe you have some slightly better mechanism at your disposal?

@AsafKaragila Not that I know of. Flag history and Ctrl-F.

@DanielFischer Crap, there are 71 pages of flags. Oh well, I'll see if I can restrict the range of dates and maybe narrow this to a few pages of search. Thanks.

@AsafKaragila You can restrict the type of flag (post/comment/spam/abusive) if you know it, that should also narrow things down.

And if you remember whether it was declined or helpful …

"Declined" would make the search quite manageable ;)

Well. It was definitely a helpful post flag. So I'm down only to 56 pages. Thanks.

@user21820 Yeah, I've looked at those comments, and they seem to be somewhat related to the post in question (though talking about Aristotle's logic was perhaps stretching the topic). For the most part we cannot prohibit Doug, or anyone else, from addressing comments to you. If it becomes closer to harassment, sure, but I don't think we're anywhere close to that right now.

I would suggest that you remain as civil towards him as possible at all times. This is mainly for your protection, as I'm sure you don't want to receive a sternly worded message from the diamonds.

Beyond that decide carefully whether it's important to respond, knowing that he may well respond again. If you do respond, keep it brief and to the point. And civil, of course. But certainly don't get drawn into a long back-and-forth. Make your point clearly and concisely, and move on. If he doesn't get it, it's his loss.

From here: "Also, a downvote sometimes comes from other users answering the same questions (because they want their answer to stand out)."

It is difficult to judge whether this happens often, probably occasionally it does.

If wonder whether there is some mechanisms to detect this. (For example, something similar to the detection of serial voting. Or software automatically raising moderator flag if some user does this several times or downvotes several answers competing with his/her own.)

@Martin I never stated that that was what happened in the comment you linked to. Only that it sometimes happens. But I think your question is valuable, and worth stating. (Sorry, at first I thought you were criticizing my post.)

@amWhy I did not say you claim that about this particular situation.

I am just curious in general, whether behavior like this (which probably sometime happens) can be somehow noticed.

Similarly like software can detect serial down/up-voting, unless it is done intelligently enough.

@MartinSleziak No, I realize that. (see my last comment in parentheses.) And I am curious too!

And since the mods know probably most about stuff like that, this seems like to corret room to ask about this.

@MartinSleziak Absolutely.

It seems that this was discussed also on main meta: The answer to tactical downvoting problem?. With several related discussions. They even have a tag for this.

But after quickly looking content of the discussion on the question I linked above, I do not see any mention of some kind of automated detection.

There is an answer with some stats for SO. But the poster does not say how they get those stats. (Probably through SEDE, unless they had some kind of diamond powers at the time.)

Now I see this sentence: "It is fully audited - so problem users are automatically picked up and we can ban accounts if needed (or reverse votes)."

But the answer does not say how the problem users are automatically picked up.

Interesting, @Martin! Thanks for all your sleuthing so far!