@DavidZaslavsky: Do you have any idea why that guy keeps assuming you are responsible for his downvotes? Did the two of you have some initial interaction that made an impression on him? Or has he just latched on to your name because it's common on the site?

@ColinK No idea, but I'm guessing the latter. I can't think of any unusual interaction between us that would make him focus on me.

My best guess is that he noticed that one of his posts was downvoted, happened to look at my reputation graph, and saw that I got a -1 around the same time, so he just assumed that I was the one who cast the downvote. And for some reason, every time he gets downvoted, he checks my rep again.

hmm

well in any event I think he's either a troll

It doesn't really bother me that much... that particular behavior is merely annoying. And to be fair, he's entitled to explanations of why he's being downvoted (at least, it's generally polite to do so)

oh yeah, the fixation on you is just a little odd, nothing more

@ColinK yeah... well, I'll be keeping a close eye on him as well (mod duties of course, nothing personal :-P)

but in general I think he's trolling. I mean, he even got an answer and then just decreed that its not the answer he wanted

and the comment in all-caps is a bit of a giveaway

@ColinK all-caps? Where? I haven't seen that one yet

either a troll or a somewhat troubled/disabled person

in the comments to the question, just before my comments

yeah, I see it now... lol

the hilarious part is that it came only after the third downvote, not the first.

(and I know this because I was the second downvote (for which I did indeed provide an explanation))

Well, if he sticks around long enough he'll have to learn to take downvotes less seriously

and to ask better questions

yeah

oh did you jsut suspend him?

I did... out of curiosity, does it tell you anything about the reason why?

"voting irregularities" sounds like something that SE does automatically. Unless you discovered something going other than the trollish behavior in the question

ahh, it wasnt SE then

yeah, it had nothing to do with the trollish behavior

I probably shouldn't say too much, but he had a sockpuppet account

ah-hah

not really a shock :)

yeah, I found it suspicious that a few of his clearly bad posts were still at 0 net vote total, which tipped me off to check some things using the mod tools

I'm hoping that as a side effect, he'll come back from the suspension a little less touchy

that would be good. I'm not hopeful, but it's worth a shot

I can't help but wonder when I run into characters like this on the internet, what they are like in real life

this sort of internet persona is not novel at all

I can't figure it out. Is it just a lack of knowledge? a personality disorder? trolling for entertainment? or maybe some combination of a language barrier and a poor attitude?

It's interesting

No idea

I imagine some people think they can get away with worse behavior online than in real life

so most internet trolls probably aren't quite that bad IRL

yeah that's definitely a part of it

but this guy and those similar to him are in a slightly different class, in my mind at least. Their behavior isn't just trollish, its bizarre in a way thats hard to describe.

I dunno, maybe its intentional; a technique to enhance the trolling

doesn't matter in any event, its just an interesting internet phenomenon

Yeah, I'm just not sure what to make of this sometimes

Anyway I have to run

sure :)

Hi, Science Fiction and Fantasy mod here

(with a suitable explanation of what “mithril” means, of course)

This was asked on Science Fiction and Fantasy, but the asker was about properties of real-life materials. So it's more of a materials physics question.

Should I recommend that the asker re-ask on Physics? (I don't intend to migrate the question.)