Drawing attention to a specific user and their detrimental behaviour

[soswalt]

Forgive me for being so blunt, but I find this rating obsession just sick.

Many have expressed similar views as this. And yet, the rating system exists, presumably to provide somewhat meaningful information about a puzzle's 'beauty' to users. If the rating is meant to be meaningless, then it neither serves nor ever served any purpose at all, so I'd question its very existence. I find it strange you are hung up on this. Niverio and many others have noticed a pattern, and using statistical analysis to dismiss the existence of one pattern does not mean there is no pattern to be found. It's natural to notice when a puzzle's rating randomly drops by upwards of 5%, and since this seems to closely align with solves by a particular user, it's not that absurd to notice that either. 

There are other users on the portal who I've also happened to notice don't rate particularly generously, but no one complains about them because everyone understands that its their prerogative to rate critically if they so choose. The complaints listed here are only with respect to one of them, because only one of them has a history of registering solves for difficult puzzles within 5 minutes of publication. As a setter, you really don't need to obsess over your puzzles to notice it getting a solve registered almost immediately after posting it.

I also question the idea that the user in question rates poorly specifically because solutions are readily accessible, since I can recall just from personal experience instances where the solution is not publicly known at all, but still gets solved within a couple minutes because it happens to have a vanilla ruleset.

We are open to pursue complaints which are really factual and not just inflated in order to make a point. For example, I have a great deal of respect for Richard, who I know slightly better than most of the new setters in the Portal. If he says there is a problem, he has my attention. By making exorbitant accusations, you are weakening your own point. And by the way, calling the mods "willfully ignorant" is not helping either.

Richard acknowledged Niverio's observations in this very thread, so I'm not sure why you're bringing him up at all.

How can we make factual complaints when we're not the ones with access to the facts so as to analyze them? Not just that, but the only facts available to us are readily passed off as a ratings obsession, and never taken seriously? I know for a fact the user in question has been reported in the manner intended with no feedback as well. So what is it exactly you expect from other users? That's an honest question.

I do acknowledge the difficulty associated with even attempting to address the concerns presented by Niverio, but dismissing them simply because his name isn't Richard seems pretty inappropriate to me as well. Niverio is far from alone in noticing the pattern he's described here, it seems important to keep that in mind.