I've been running into a strange little phenomenon here on Everything2. I've been looking at the writeups of a friend of mine, and discovering that their writeups, all their recent writeups, good and mediocre alike, keep getting downvoted into negative territory. It's very consistent.
Too consistent. It almost looks like a certain group of someones is doing this deliberately.
But hey, maybe it isn't! Maybe a small number of people independently noticed this particular noder, independently decided to pay attention to every one of their writeups, and independently decided that every single one of those writeups sucks, such that, by sheer coincidence, the poor noder's work is landing in negative territory every damn time.
But if this amount of downvotes is deliberate and coordinated, then I am extremely disappointed that a friend of mine is being treated poorly and that their work is being judged unfairly.
I am also quite disturbed, because dammit, I came here to get accurate feedback! That was the subject of my very first daylog! How the hell am I supposed to improve my writing if I can't be certain which of my works everyone likes or dislikes? And don't ask me to solicit private messages, I'm not going to demand people take time out of their schedule to give me their critiques. The voting system is supposed to reduce the burden of feedback by spreading it out and making it simple. Can I still trust the wisdom of the userbase if we're voting based on popularity and not writing quality?
I fear that hatred has marred our website's democracy. I don't want this to be my last daylog but if I can't actually get accurate feedback here then why do I bother to post anything?