What should we do about people downvoting to try and push subcommunities they don't like off this site?

Question

I understand that people are in charge of their voting, and we generally avoid legislating voting in any way as it is fundamentally unenforceable. Nevertheless, the use of downvotes to explicitly discriminate against rpg communities the voter dislikes concerns me, particularly since such explicitly action all-but-certainly comes alongside silent action. Recently, the following comment was posted on a theoretical optimization question:

I downvoted because I don't see what the practical problem is here. This looks like a theoretical optimization problem that doesn't involve actual play, and that's enough for a "not useful" downvote from me.

This comment was upvoted twice. I think it's self-evident that this is directly contrary to Can we affirm that RPG.SE embraces a plurality of playstyles? and constitutes "harassment, bigotry, or abuse". If the action of downvoting on this basis were expressed in a comment, it would be flaggable as such. Thus, it seems to me, we have a problem if people are doing this sort of thing regularly. It's important, of course, that voting remains independent and not subject to any sort of review process or whatever. But it's also important that we not use votes to push playstyles-- or other groups we don't like!-- off the site.

What should we do?

Answer 1

Nothing

While we affirm RPG.SE embraces all playstyles, there's no way to force everyone to always vote according to that.

In this case the comment could be flagged as unkind and deleted, but that doesn't do away with the downvote, nor should it. And that really won't have any good effect - they'll just downvote without a comment in the future, and the comment actually serves for people who don't think theoretical CharOp is bad to realize some of the downvotes may be just for that reason not because there's a problem with the question.

This is a public site on the Internet. People will vote up and down for any reason they want. We publish our site norms and then let it roll. After that, it's just a practice of you being content with that - a modestly thick skin is required to successfully engage anywhere on the Internet, and while this place is friendlier than pretty much any other social media, toughening up is the difference between "downvoted and sad" and "downvoted and content".

When I don't like a topic, I just leave it alone and don't go into it. I recommend the same for others.

Answer 2

Vote the other way, if you care.

I'll be honest, I was surprised to see that comment since I didn't remember writing it, and then even more surprised to learn that it wasn't mine.

So. There are boundaries that we as a community have set in order to keep the space clean and usable. The SE model gives most of us access to tools for policing those boundaries, such as close/reopen votes, flagging spam and harassment, and electing moderators. When I'm using those tools, I'm acting on behalf of the community, and I am obligated to set aside my biases and act from that perspective as best I can.

And as a community we embrace a diversity of playstyles. It would not be appropriate to vote to close that question as off topic, because the community has said that optimization questions are within bounds.¹

However, I, as an individual participant, am not required to embrace all possible playstyles. I don't have to write questions or answers about games I don't play. I upvote posts that I think promote good roleplaying experiences. And I downvote those that promote toxic and dysfunctional behavior. Who says what's toxic and dysfunctional? I do, because it's my vote. If you think I'm wrong, then you get a vote, too.

Voting is a quality judgment based on experience with the subject matter. We are a practical community, and quality ultimately comes down to "If I do this at the table, will everyone have fun?" And that's a question for people who have played and know what is and isn't fun.

¹ Just like it's not appropriate to flag a comment as unkind because you knew someone had a negative opinion of your question, and asked what it was, and they told you the truth.

Answer 3

I can't speak for the downvoter, but I think I might have some insight into their thought process. I'm a big fan of optimization questions in general, but over time I've become more and more disillusioned with a specific type of question - the one that chooses a number (usually damage) and asks answerers to make that number as high as possible.

The crab question isn't one of those questions, and I didn't downvote it. But I certainly understand that for some people, some categories of questions can become an automatic downvote, not because of playstyle prejudices, but because of their experience with questions of that kind.

Now, that's not what they said in their comment, and it's obviously possible I'm reading way too much into this. But it can be very difficult to express the sentiment that "these types of questions just don't work" when the only real justification you have for it is your prior experiences. Saying "not useful" is a much easier and more accessible way to explain a downvote.

Answer 4

What should "we" do?

Well, who is we?

There are a number of approaches to dealing with questions or comments that one finds to be a bad fit.

1. Refrain from commenting when one down votes.
   Sometimes, down vote and press on is the best way to approach a question that one does not find useful, or is ill-formed. If one wishes to help the question asking user improve their question, a comment will often be helpful because the intention behind the comment is helpful.

2. Go to the next question
   If a question is coherently written, but one disagrees with the premise, doing what @mxyzplk points to having done is a good course of action: ignore it and press one.

3. Nominate the question (and answers) for a Cheese award
   We have a post that highlights optimizatum absurdum on this meta. Some TO questions fit right in there.

4. Wring our hands at a comment we don't care for
   That's an option, if that's where we get good feelings from using this site

5. Report negative and unhelpful comments using the flag system.
   That's probably the most important take away, and the most important answer to your question. Flag it!

6. Leave a comment under the negative comment that this kind of comment is out of line.
   One can do that, but it may invite an argument in comments, which we prefer not to encourage. Which brings us to:

7. Leaving a comment, after flagging it, inviting that user to a chat
   The purpose of that chat is to talk to that user and explain how that negativity is not good for this site.
   This is an experience-based part of this answer, right here:
   I have found that engaging with a user, on a variety of SEs, often gets one's point across very well. We can have an open and honest dialogue, rather than a one way "I condemn you!" exchange. The tone we adopt during such a discussion makes or breaks it.

We can do a lot of things.

You've been around long enough to know what all of the tools are. So here's my bottom line answer:

Use the tools that we have.

You provided a part of the answer yourself, in the text of your question: we can always link to the playstyles meta in a comment to remind people of how we roll around here.

Answer 5

I personally dislike theoretical optimization questions, but I don't downvote them. I kinda think it'd be better for the site to focus on questions related to playing RPGs, and agree with the sentiment of that comment that there is no such thing as "theoretical optimization RPG playstyle". Then again, I don't think there's a better site for this kind of puzzles.

I think the core of the problem is, some people downvote, because they are annoyed by mixing of the two different concepts: optimizing a character for playing, and find the best solution for a character optimization puzzle with given constraints and single goal. To compare, it's like putting code golf questions to SO, and while I wasn't here when those got their own site, I bet there was similar concerns and downvotes at SO before that.

So, personal preferences aside, as a solution, I propose a new kind of "puzzle" or "challenge" tag to make it clear that this kind of question is legitimate (not sure what would be a good exact tag name here). That should reduce drive-by-downvotes. Then we might even get other kinds of puzzles too, like map or trap design puzzles (because if one kind of puzzle is ok, then why not other kinds). I suppose there's room here for puzzles, and they might add more than detract from this community.

Some tag ideas: optimization-challenge, optimization-puzzle, thought-experiment.