Here is a summary of the reasons why I often downvote your posts:

• You ignore posts that demonstrate flaws in your technical advice.
• You re-post the same flawed technical advice over and over, even after it has been shown to be flawed.
• You repeatedly post the same home-spun wisdoms to questions to which they barely relate.
• You never provide code to prove your pet theories and home-spun wisdoms.
• You post at length on topics on which you have limited experience or expertise.
• You do not follow up on bugs you claim to experience with this site, in particular being repeatedly logged out.
• You repeatedly open new discussions on banning anonymous monk and downvotes, without providing links to previous discussions, while repeatedly claiming you do not mind being downvoted.
• You repeatedly make unfounded accusations that you are being downvoted by sock-puppet accounts and bots.
• You repeatedly reply to the wrong post, thus losing context. (Update: still doing it anonymously).
• You threaten legal action when criticised.
• You gratuitously decorate posts with extravagant typography, stylistic devices, flowery analogies, and unnecessary quotes (update: and underlines without a hyperlink).

• Your replies are typically vague, inaccurate, rambling opinion and never provide working code or useful links (2021 Update).
• You display a patronizing air of superiority, accompanied by condescending platitudes, cliches, truisms and banalities (2021 Update).
• You make ignorant humble-bragging assertions pretending to be a question (2021 Update).
• Your answers are often irrelevant to the OP's question, just a vain attempt to appear knowledgeable (2021 Update).
• Eight times out of ten you post nothing but opinion; of those eight, some are objectively, spectacularly wrong (2021 Update).
• You repeatedly implore others to give back to the community, though you've given us only eye-ache (2021 Update).
• You repeatedly ask for more information ... yet never act on that information when provided (2021 Update).
• You ignore posts that ask for evidence of your dubious claims ... instead simply re-posting the same dubious claims (2021 Update).
• You are the laziest monk who has ever had long term participation here, your stature further enhanced by "out of date, half-baked skills, absolute lack of Perl chops, and braggadocio" (2021 update). (See also two lazy replies to Minion as a job scheduler?).

It looks like you forgot the preamble:

When in the Course of the Web's events, it becomes necessary for one website's users to dissolve the bands which have connected them with another user, and to assume among the powers of the network, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of The Web and of The Internet's Nature entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all monks are created equal, that they are endowed by vroom with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Anonymity and the pursuit of Perlness. --That whenever any Monk becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the the other Monks to downvote or to squelch him, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Sanity and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Monks long established should not be banned for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that monkkind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by banning the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and tirades, posting invariably the same Material, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Monks, and to provide new Monks for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Monks; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Freedom of Monks. The history of the present sundialsvc4 of Perl Monks is a history of repeated complaints and scrawls, all having in direct object the establishment of nonsense throught this Site. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

I'd like to apologise. I down-voted your post above; and I regret having done so.

At first reading -- scanning really -- I did not recognise the only somewhat familiar piece you were 'paraphrasing', and interpreted it as a 'in support of individual freedoms' and anti-'collective actions' piece.

Having re-read it, I think it is in support of the idea that: an individual's freedoms must be curtailed, where their exercise encroaches on or curtails the individual rights of others.

I can't give the vote back, nor correct by another upvote; so please accept my apology.

Even if I was right originally; and am now mistaking your intent; the fact that I voted on the basis of what I expected from you, rather than what you are actually saying, means that I should not have voted. To that end, I encourage people to downvote (or at least non-vote) this apology.

---

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

I'm with torvalds on this Agile (and TDD) debunked I told'em LLVM was the way to go. But did they listen!

^ that, right there. I don't personally down vote anybody (I think I may have used less downvotes than I can count on one hand), but I do agree with what eyepopslikeamosquito has said here.

I am downvoting ≈ 90% of your posts as they, in my view, deserve it and I still hedge/waffle on the rest because you posted working code recently—I believe for the first time in a decade—and are sometimes in the ballpark on problems if not in point of fact helpful to the OP with links or code. Without code or a link or an actual answer, your vague, typically inaccurate in at least some way, replies no longer get any benefit of the doubt. I said exactly that this is where I, at least, was headed with you several times. I would not be surprised at all to hear there are six or more others who have come to a similar conclusion.

When I post a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g on this Forum, it will be Downvoted within about 30 seconds of its posting.

Simply factually incorrect. A quick scan showed a couple of nodes that had been posted for hours and not received any down-votes.

objecting to them with such clockwork regularity.

There is no clockwork regularity. Indeed, there are so many monks who now at least somewhat frequently downvote many of your nodes that it is not easy to find a relatively recent (but not too recent) node of yours that didn't get at least a couple of down-votes. And, indeed, many of them appear to get downvoted fairly quickly.

So, is there, like, a bot at work here?

No, if there is a bot casting down-votes on your nodes, then it is not doing it very reliably or frequently. Many of your nodes are downvoted by disjoint subsets of monks. Some only by monks that I have personally met. To think that some significant subset of such a diverse set of monks is being orchestrated by some shadow conspirator(s) requires a penchant of ludicrous conspiracy theories that but 1 monk in 10,000 could achieve.

I can’t honestly believe that actual people are actually reading my posts and objecting to them

I obviously can't guarantee that all of the downvotes cast by humans were done after reading each posting. I suspect the majority of them are cast after at least scanning the posting.

But none of this should be particularly surprising to anybody who has been paying much attention.

Well, there it is. Yet another example (as if the world were somehow short of them) that extrapolating a large dataset from a small dataset, being fraught with risk, is especially unwise if the dataset is merely anecdotal in nature.

One of the human being's greatest strength is the ability to find patterns in anything.
One of the human being's greatest weaknesses is the ability to find patterns in anything.

I don't know about a bot. I think they are not allowed on PM. All I can tell you is I downvoted your OP because it is narcissistic drivel designed only to get attention, like most of your posts. That's why they get downvoted.

I realize that by responding to you I am only giving you the attention you crave at the expense of diluting PM ever so slightly. But I do so in the faint hope that you might actually care about what you say you care about, i.e. not getting downvotes, and that if you do, you'll see that the way to decrease them is to decrease the number of your posts.

Mike Robinson, Sundial Services, you should be ashamed of yourself

The thing is, has anybody ever met that Mike Robinson in real life? is he a real person?

I have

The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

"...has anybody ever met...™"

A very interesting thought. Please see also Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Regards, Karl

«The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

No, there is not, as far as I can tell, a bot voting down your posts. There are, certainly, a small number of monks who sometimes spend a significant portion of their daily votes on your nodes; but not as many as you might think. And in any case, I see no voting patterns that would indicate the action of a bot.

Each of these monks (and they are not who you might think they are) runs a script which simply logs in for them, scans the Newest Nodes and votes on them according to a set of rules. This is why you often see some nodes, not just yours, getting one or two votes almost immediately.

Every few days, another script runs and gathers all the nodes that have been voted on, then divides up the links to the team for psychological analysis. They have been doing this for years.

The trick to getting a good reputation here - or anywhere for that matter - is being mature.
I'm about 35 years younger than you but I can pull it off just fine.

On a related note, TIL that you can format things to make it sound exactly like whining.

Perhaps this is covert operation of the former KGB?

BTW, I wondered if someone invented a bot that up-votes sundialsvc4™.

Karl

I think that when you've irritated as many monks as you have, it's statistically very likely that any one of them would be currently logged in to immediately downvote your latest commentary.

Perhaps you might lay low for awhile to allow folks to forget about your existence? That might be a successful tactic, since everything else you've tried has been an abject failure.

When I post a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g on this Forum, it will be Downvoted within about 30 seconds of its posting.

Also, IIRC, there's an IRC bot which announces the title of new posts as they're made, so it's to be expected that monks idling in the appropriate channel would be able to react within seconds when a post is made.

Furthermore, sometime within the next twenty-four hours, it will attract seven (specifically, “seven,” plus-or-minus one ...) downvotes.

it will be Downvoted within about 30 seconds of its posting

I've independently noted a similar trend -- smaller sample set, of course, because I could only notice such a thing on the posts where I've quickly come to the conclusion that you're actually saying something I'd upvote. I, too, have wondered if there was a bot at work.

I remember reading some time back that bots are not sanctioned here. At one point their use was, apparently, discovered for the purpose of mass up- or down-voting nodes by author, and this was pronounced by a Monk of fair placement (a la vroom, tye, etc.) as bad form.

I seem to recall the Monk in question had indicated they'd coded up watchdog routines which would catch anyone using bots for this purpose, and warned the users to cease and desist or face consequences (banning or whatever, I can't recall). I can't seem to find the reference in Super Search.

I have no idea if those watchdog routines are still in use, or if they still work, but I do suspect much of the remaining old-timer Monks are good enough to find ways around detection code written potentially ten years ago and unlikely to have been maintained much. (Not an accusation; a compliment, if anything, on perceived skill sets relative to the proposed theory.)

I would also note, sundialsvc4, that not all who are logged in show in the "Other Users" nodelet; I suspect it has something to do with cookie expiration as seen by the browser vs. the site, but that's just a WAG (Wild Donkey Guess).

However, let's face it -- the difference between a bot targeting you and a live human action targeting you is fairly unimportant -- you are a target.

What you do with that knowledge is really up to you. As always, you have three options: Fight, Retreat, or Surrender.

I think focusing on the weapon (interesting though it might be) isn't the wisest area to have garnering your attention. But that's just me.

Hello marinersk,

I remember reading some time back that bots are not sanctioned here.

The FAQ How should I spend my votes? -- General Voting Guidelines says:

One issue concerning voting is not a matter of opinion but of site policy: votebots are not allowed.

And in the root node of the referenced thread, vroom says:

If you have a votebot that's smart enough to evaluate the quality of a post on criteria other than the node's author I'd be very interested in seeing it.

— which nicely sums up why votebots are disallowed: Voting on a node should be based on its content, not on its author.¹

...not all who are logged in show in the "Other Users" nodelet; I suspect it has something to do with cookie expiration as seen by the browser vs. the site...

It’s also possible to log in “Cloaked,” as explained in Logging on to PerlMonks. Apparently, if you are “cloaked” when the Vote Fairy does his rounds then you won’t receive your daily allocation of votes. But whether it’s possible to cast votes while logged in “cloaked” I’m not sure.

¹Ok, I also up-vote nodes in Worst Nodes when I feel the downvotes were undeserved, too harsh, or likely to discourage newbies. And I’ve noticed that other monks do the same. Ironically, this often has the result that the node’s author gains more XP than he or she would have gained if the node hadn’t been downvoted in the first place (because the first downvote is guaranteed to produce no loss of XP, and the first upvote is guaranteed to give the author +1 XP — see Voting/Experience System.) Go figure.

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

Pretty sure that's the one -- funny it was in a FAQ, not a conventional post, and perhaps I biased my search and blinded myself to the answer .

Knows my arrogance no bounds?

Update: Struck out my deeper levels of idiocy after re-reading the message more closely and discovered the link to the thread (and a second reference to it, showing just how badly I'd skimmed it the first time).

We just identified this account to be controlled by such a bot.

Yes, its called sundialsvc4, a stubborn piece of floatsom that won't flush, just keeps posting out of the commode

Oh no, people don't like poop, what doo, what doo ... flush it

Anonymous, as always . . .