Hi, @youngguilo - I've created this space for us to talk more directly.

I've used a special mod ability to poke you through chat into a room that you've never been in. It should be in your inbox soon and when you see it, I'll be happy for you to join me here.

Hey Grace I'm here to talk.

Ah, there you are. Welcome.

Ok so here's the deal

I like to help people. And I joined the site because it looked like a great opportunity to learn and teach.

I didn't care about reputation as long as the person I was helping understood and found my answer helpful.

Up until 2 weeks ago that's how it went.

Then I get 2 messages in my inbox saying that I had had serial downvoting.

Mmhmm.

I received 8 and 16 reputation back. I didn't know how I had gotten it but I didn't think anything of it.

A week ago me and another user, I don't remember who, got into a dispute and he called me out for being a "Bounty Hunter".

I didn't care about reputation and I still don't now.

However it seems like whenever I try and help someone it always gets downvoted to a point where the asker doesn't give it a second look.

This has also been goin on with my unanswered questions.

One of the one's particular is gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/123439/…

I don't know why it was a bad question and still don't know.

Then I got bombed.

Mmkay.

I had aksed this question a while ago:gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/118321/…

It was fine I think it was a plus 3 question.

Now it's a minus 8.

I'm now frustrated by the fact that people will not give me a chance to voice my opinion without constant negative feedback.

I can address those two questions if you'd like.

that would be great.

These are both handy questions. But they're very vacant in terms of what you asked. Certainly, the root problem that you seek solved is in them, but there's not a lot to work with, and that frustrates answerers in much the same way you feel from all this poor treatment you've been receiving.

ok

The Cortez one, to someone who may not have played the game, it seems completely out of left field. Now, we usually ask people to stay out of games which they don't play when it comes to moderation on a general case because lack of information makes for poor results - we've had quite a few bad judgments from people who thought something wasn't a question, when it really was a question. Yours is a case like this here.

I thought so but only Seven seemed to realize that.

Retrosaur's edit, and the advice in the comments, talks to this direction. Rather than having just asked "Is there a scenario for Cortez that I play against the Aztecs", you ask that and explain both why you figure this might actually be a thing in the game and why it is of importance to you.

Ok

The desert biome question falls prey to a similar issue. Here, it is a topic that people do know about, and there's an obvious solution (head to the next biome) that seems too clear that it is unparseable why this would be asked. The reality is that you are specifically trying to figure out where to find wood in the desert without leaving the desert, and this is absent from the question.

yeah I can see that.

That's actually something you can fix about that question now - if you were to edit it now and write out things about the intent is to determine if there's any means to obtain wood in a desert (for any purpose at all, really) without leaving the biome, this would probably result in not only some more upvotes but also perhaps get some of those downvotes reversed.

let me give it a shot.

wait let me load my world, just to get some facts straight

I would start off by rephrasing the title is "Is it possible to find wood naturally in a desert biome?". Certainly, making a chest is the end goal here but the problem you're facing is the lack of wood resource.

The rest is up to you but if you want to run the edit by me before you submit it, I'd be happy to help you with it.

I've edited it.

Good, good, we're off to a good start although "make collect" isn't proper in English so you'd want to just say "collect" in the title.

ya that was just from the old question

But this is basically the route we've got to look at. I looked across your unanswered questions, like the several on the 1998 Centipede game (which may be unanswered more relevantly by the lack of folks in our community who have that). We can see similar things there - the question body will state a problem but nothing else besides the problem.

ok

Downvotes aren't comfortable to receive. They're in fact typically pretty disheartening, and it can be frustrating to see them accumulate without explanation. However, I want to make sure one thing is clear - people are downvoting content. They do not have any qualms with the individual behind the content. If at all this dissipates and they start targetting you, that is when it turns wrong and we should be taking action. That is what happened with the serial downvotings that we've reversed.

Why would someone be serial down-voting me though?

There's never a good reason for serial downvoting.

This pattern across your questions is mostly based on the lack of information present in the questions beyond a statement on the problem, but there are individuals who may, for no good reason, dislike you and target you directly. That's why we run the scripts and even do in-depth investigations for users - we'll help ferret out the illegitimate votes.

ok

Once that's done, what remains is not serial downvoting, but downvoting done in accordance to the content - in this case the lack of information.

Our model kinda behaves similar to the golden rule of debates, which is "Never attack a person, only attack an argument". In this case, we look at posts and content instead of an argument but it's all the same. People can downvote your content because they feel it is unclear, lacking information, or demonstrates no effort. But once they start going past that, especially if what people say in comments starts to say things against you as a person, that is not acceptable.

could you just review the 3 other questions I fixed just so I know I have the hang of things

Those all look really good, I'd say.

Ok I want to thank you for your help.

Is there anyway I can contact you for user-user support?

I do want to warn you that we do have a rate-limiter on editing so try not to fix all of your questions today. Just do a few each day and you should hopefully see positive results.

whats a rate-limiter?

Yes, you can reach our support channel by emailing us at team(at)stackexchange(dot)com. If you want to reach me specifically, note in your email that you'd like to specifically speak with me.

A rate limiter is a thing that limits how often things can be done. For example, you can only vote 30 times in one day, you can only post 50 questions per 30 days, you can't post more than one comment every 15 seconds, etc.

oh ok

In this case there's a limit on how many edits you can do in a day before the system starts to get suspicious of your activity - we've a problem with users who do mass vandalism of their posts (putting things like curse words or just erasing everything) as sort of an ugly escape, so we do this kind of thing to stop that from destroying too much content.

It does kinda block some legitimate forms of action but at the same time, editing too much also floods the front page so it is always helpful for big editing jobs to be done across multiple days.

I can see that. Once again I want to thank you for your help.

I'm happy to help. Is there anything else I might help you with?

Yeah it's a little off-topic though.

What's up?

I'm trying to start a SE for Mythology. Any ideas on how I can make sure that the people joining don't run into the same problems as this?

The best way to get people to follow is to lead by example.

Good words of advice.

As well, if you think it necessary, an early meta post helping explain this to your starting community would also be helpful.

Is there a meta for all SE sites? Or do you need to ask for it seperatly?

With the exception of Stack Overflow (it's a weird case there), all sites on the Stack Exchange Network have their own meta site. We also have a Meta Stack Overflow for network-wide issues. You don't need to ask for a meta site once your site launches.

Who becomes the moderator(s) for the site?

Shortly after a site enters public beta, the Community Team will review the users of the site and select "pro tem moderators" from those who demonstrate they'd both be good at the subject and would also make good moderator material. After a site hits graduation by getting a full design, there will then be elections for moderators.

We haven't had elections on Arqade since 2012, actually, haha.

So I may not be a moderator? I may be I another downvoting?

You might not get appointed as a pro tem moderator necessarily, no, but that shouldn't stop you from taking care of the site. A moderator has certain tasks to take care of beyond the tasks of normal users, but there are still many things a normal user may do on the site to help keep it up. You also have no obligation to stick to downvoting things.

You could be giving people guidance with comments or handling things like closure and the like. There's a lot to do, downvoting is but one facet of the tools available.

I presume there's no "Add Friend" option in SE :)

Nope

Ah well I got to go but thanks for the information!

No problem! Again, happy to be of service.