We had a random post in an anarchist community on our Polish speaking instance. Some 45 English speaking accounts came out of nowhere to downvote it, with a single one engaging in discussion. None of them were ever active on the instance, nor particularly in this community.
Mods could not really do anything about it, so the accounts were banned from the entire instance as this was considered hostile behaviour by our community.
Which rises the question; should people be able to vote, end specially downvote, in communities they are not a part of? Maybe this could be at least a setting?
Another interesting concept that came from the discussion over that was “constructive downvote” - requirement of commenting why one downvotes a post.
Speaking only to this…
Hexbear chose to remove downvotes, and the “dunking” comments came to replace them. Getting ratioed is a thing, which purportedly started on Twitter.
The consensus on Lemmygrad came to be that (and I’m paraphrasing because I’m not sure of the original phrasing) “dissent without elaboration” is valid. We don’t always have the time or energy to articulate our dissent (and sometimes gish gallop doesn’t deserve it).