So this question is currently being looked at for various reasons, but I note the following (I assume Mod) comment:
Hey, guys, voting to close and downvoting don't have to go hand-in-hand. VTC as unclear, and hold off on the downvotes unless you actually think there's something bad or not useful about this question. It doesn't seem to warrant a -3 score to me, at least.
Here are the guidelines on downvoting:
When should I vote down?
Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.
Here is the offending post at time of posting this:
So I'm making a campaign that involves a half-elf named Ebveron being captured by half-ling followers of Nerva and being turned into a lich against his own will & used as a high-level assassin. Until he (finally) after 5 years musters up the courage to escape (WITH HIS PHYLACTERY). Unfortunately this whole "killing people and using their souls" crap doesn't exactly work with him (keep in mind he's a calligrapher/sage & a pacifist) so in complete desperation he make a deal with a grandmother hag and is tricked into staying in a mountain for 35, only breaking out when the party (including his daughter Phina[PC]) kills the hag, and in the process sees him reform in front of his phylactery (i've shortened the time to reform but the mountain is a week away from the nearest town) in turn breaking his illusion spell.
IS THIS OK?
Other facts: at the time of posting this is currently at a stable "0" equilibrium of votes. Last night it was at least at -3. My "downvote" is still highlighted red.
Putting this all together, it seems that the Mods stepped in and removed downvotes on a post that people are voting down because it clearly fits the guidelines of what to vote down:
The post is "egregiously sloppy." It includes vast amounts of unnecessary information (such as character names), is an incoherent ramble of a storyboard, and the question itself makes no sense
The post is low-effort. It has poor punctuation, poor idea separation, a poorly formed question, poor formatting (E.G. "IS THIS OK!?"), etc
So getting to the final point of the question: Did mods actually remove votes on this question and/or why is it acceptable for mods to remove votes? Why is that even a feature?
Should we consider designing a system to:
- See how many votes have actually been cast thus far
- Be able to validate that those votes are real so that someone like myself can ask this question is a less conspiratorial manner
I get that I have some tinfoil going here, but the correlation of the downvotes getting cancelled out and someone saying "hey we shouldn't be downvoting this" is obvious and seems to show that the voting system has been subverted. I have a hard time believing people upvoted this question.
Apologies if the tinfoil is unwarranted here.