I honestly believe everybody involved would agree with you, Jacob.

In a perfect would this system would have been in and running before Ask Ubuntu was even started. But it wasn't. It has taken years of watching how people abuse the system to work out how deep social ties can be.

It is also important to reiterate that this is not just people voting for other people. It is also how they're voting for those people. While you're right that it's impossible to definitely say what somebody was thinking when they voted, consider that it is possible to work out that they were serially voting for a single person. I won't spell it out, but (almost) everything is logged.

While I'm reiterating I should also point out that the people worst affected by this are the victims here. People have inappropriately latched onto you instead of the site. There's no animosity from the mods here. We still love you and your answers.

We have to move on from this. All of us. Together. For two reasons:

1. The site needs people like you. Your answers, maturity, experience makes us all better. Without you the site is worse. Support for the Ubuntu community is worse.
2. We have a moderator election. I would be very sad if the best possible candidate didn't put themselves forward because of this.

I understand that I'm asking you [all] to forgive what must have been a horrible and seemingly punitive experience but it needed to happen to keep the site fair.

I honestly believe everybody involved would agree with you, Jacob.

In a perfect world, this system would have been in and running before Ask Ubuntu was even started. But it wasn't. It has taken years of watching how people abuse the system to work out how deep social ties can be.

It is also important to reiterate that this is not just people voting for other people. It is also how they're voting for those people. While you're right that it's impossible to definitely say what somebody was thinking when they voted, consider that it is possible to work out that they were serially voting for a single person. I won't spell it out, but (almost) everything is logged.

While I'm reiterating I should also point out that the people worst affected by this are the victims here. People have inappropriately latched onto you instead of the site. There's no animosity from the mods here. We still love you and your answers.

We have to move on from this. All of us. Together. For two reasons:

1. The site needs people like you. Your answers, maturity, experience makes us all better. Without you the site is worse. Support for the Ubuntu community is worse.
2. We have a moderator election. I would be very sad if the best possible candidate didn't put themselves forward because of this.

I understand that I'm asking you [all] to forgive what must have been a horrible and seemingly punitive experience but it needed to happen to keep the site fair.