There are some distinguished answer contributors to this site who used to write lots of excellent answers (for which they deservedly got many upvotes and accepts) but who are no longer as active as they used to be. Slowing down a bit and focusing one's energy and attention somewhere else are of course entirely legitimate -- and possibly even quite commendable. :-)
I've noticed in recent weeks, though, that some of these formerly-active contributors continue to receive lots and lots of upvotes even though they haven't logged on to the site for weeks or even months. I absolutely don't mean to single out any person for the sake of this discussion, and I certainly in no way mean to insinuate that they are to blame for these patterns, let alone that they instigated this problem. Nevertheless, it's worth providing details on the upvoting patterns that affect some of these users. For instance, one user -- who last logged in more than 3 months ago -- received 15 upvotes in the span of a few minutes today; 2 days ago: 14 upvotes within 10 minutes (as well as 4 other upvotes at other times during the day); Aug 31: 15 upvotes within 6 minutes; Aug 24: 16 upvotes within 6 minutes; Aug 23: 15 upvotes within 4 minutes; etc. etc.
It's hard to avoid getting the impression that there's an organized process that's behind these concentrated waves of upvotes. Question: What, if anything, is being done -- or could or should be done -- to discourage such behavior?
Full disclosure: About a year ago I briefly was the unwitting "beneficiary" of such waves of upvotes as well. To this day, I have no idea who the person was that was behind this campaign or why I was being single out for his/her/their attention. Initially, I was amused, but I quickly got annoyed. After a week or two, i.e., once it became clear that it wasn't going to end on its own, I contacted the site moderators and asked if they could put a stop to it. I don't know what they did, but the serial upvoting ended immediately. :-)
