Downvote them as they happen, if they're bad. Don't decide "I need to go back and downvote all of tye's nodes because they're all bad and I'd be doing a service to posterity."

Agreed. As always thanks for your input.

If one doesn't see a terrible node as it happens one is now no longer allowed to express an opinion through voting as to the node's quality?

Then why allow voting on "non-contemporary" (for whatever timeframe is "contemporary") nodes at all? Disable voting on nodes after however long giving a statute of limitations on negative node rep.

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

If one doesn't see a terrible node as it happens

Downvoting a terrible node is perfectly acceptable. Downvoting 30 historical nodes by the same author in one fell swoop incurs a penalty (as proposed) and I'm fine with that.

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🦛

soonix put it rather well:

"massive" downvoting, I presume, would be if I find all the nodes from a particular user, and use up more or less all my votes to downvote these.