@quid Thanks for the reply. My flag explicitly points out that the user had 7 puppet-upvotes on 6apr (all within 4 min), and no other votes for the rest of the day. From the response "will follow up" I do expect the puppet-votes to be reversed just as with the previous vote reversals on 21feb and 23feb. I also expect the 11 puppet-votes on 23feb to be reversed. Clearly the puppet was retaliating against the (obviously correct) vote reversal.
My concern is simply that puppet voting should be dealt with properly. If not we are simply sending these puppets the signal that they can get away with dishonest voting. And in this case the evidence is irrefutable, which is why I expect to see those dishonest votes reversed.
@user21820 you speak about "puppet-votes"; I do not know why you are so sure that these are "puppet-votes". It maybe depends on the definition one uses, but for me a "puppet-vote" would mean a vote that is cast by a "sock-puppet" account, that is an alternate account controlled by the same person as the original account, or also (more rare situation) a "meat-puppet" account that possibly is controlled by a different person but whose main or sole purpose is to support the original account.
What seems clear from your observation is that there are bursts of votes where indeed virtually certainly the votes come from the same source (at least for each burst, but quite likely also globally).
It is true that such bursts of votes almost always are something that should be avoided as they fall under targeted voting, and there is a script in place to catch the worst. However, it is also true that such bursts happen for reasons that are not all bad-faith.
Indeed, the notion for targeted voting that we use is such that it is not intuitively obvious what it means. We see this frequently, e.g., in discussion when users in abstract and in good-faith defend practices that as a matter of fact are targeted voting.
Against this context there is thus a spectrum of actions I take when faced with such situations. It ranges from "immediate deletion of source plus suspension of target" on the one end to simply informing that what happens is not in line with our recommended practices on the other end.
Regarding invalidation, this is not a straight-forward process and I personally do not see any absolute necessity to jump through the hoops to invalidate a handful of borderline votes in a context where the points incurred are more or less irrelevant.
Ironic, @quid, isn't it, that some of us are targeted by by such patterns in dvs, including Xander, (all involved in CURED), and yet ... sorry, we've done everything we can... All you've told us is that SE/SO has failed to address the frequent abuse of users by other users in a more robust, committed manner. "We will not tolerate targeted abuse of users." But you, they, do indeed tolerate it and have been tolerating, throwing their hands up it the air, then fail to improve their strategies
@user21820 It's all a lot of crazy making, in which the downvoters and the SE team participate, likely unintentionally, to gaslight victims of chronic downvotes.
@quid But the same user has been very much a victim of serial downvotes, just like me, and just like we've both had nefarious serial upvotes. The fact remains I've seen a return of only 8% of lost rep due to targeted downvoting, but dang sure you all saw fit to invalidate any unearned upvotes. Why in the hell can't the powers that be do the same thing, with respect to downvotes??
@quid Of course it's true! I've experienced just that. I'm not asking for your agreement. I'm asking if SO/SO sees what happens to users like me as "collateral damage"?
And how are we supposed to take any mandate from mods seriously, when you fail to enforce it???
@amWhy your and my assertion are different. You claimed a difference in treatment of up and down. I meant to assert that it is true for "in general", that is, for up and down.
Honest folks don't need the mandates. The dishonest folks need to heed the mandates, and when they give mandates the middle finger, they need enforcement.
I would prefer that you present your concern separately from the one of @user21820 because there is a rather serious risk of confusion since I am talking to them assuming as background some details of the situation they have but others don't. Notably the indedity of account they flagged.
@quid Irrelevant? Not at all. 100+ fake rep in just a span of a few months for a user with 4k rep is significant, because I didn't even look beyond the first page of the user's reputation history.
As for what I meant by "puppet", yes sock-puppet or meat-puppet, whether instigated by the user or not. Why do I use the term "puppet"? Because it is literally that; the voting privilege of the account is merely abused to increase the rep of that user rapidly within a few minutes.
@quid The reason I think invalidation of the obviously fake votes is the best route is that it precisely removes the wrong actions without doing any possible harm to any innocent party.
To be more specific, I'm looking at something more along the lines of someone who's making repeated minor edits to all of their posts - 5-10 per post in the first three days, but it happens with everything they post.
(Totally fine with hearing "let it go", just wanted to check in about it and get a little perspective)
It may serve to justify that "is significant" in that it makes sense to look at it, which is what I said and did. However, it does strictly nothing to support the claim that the global impact is significant.
@user21820 then this does not apply to the current situation for all I can tell.
@user21820 what is a "fake" vote? In any case what I gave you as the reason for not invalidating is that it is too much effort for too little return. What you say is orthogonal.
