I have been contacted repeatedly by many members, on two hubs where I am a HL. Several of the members who have communicated this via PM's or email, are also HL's on both boards, and I have raised this issue before, as other HL's have, such as drandres.

The bottom line is, HL's on both hubs, and we are not alone, see added votes immediately after a new member joins, and the scores are dropping. Personally, being a Pres vs VP re: star votes, has zero effect on me, nor does it strip me of any tasks or duties as a HL. It's a title....OK......

However, it is important to many HL's to have the Pres status as a measure of their contribution to the hub.

Many of the new members, who immediately vote down a HL's score, end up getting a slew of violations and eventually banned for not following the 6 rules. Many "newbies" come here with an agenda to disrupt the forums, and Agoracom is well aware of this problem.

Solution that would help but not cure the situation, is not allow voting rights until reaching the Treasurer Rank. By then, enough posts will have been made to see if the new member is "legit" or here to cause trouble.

Admin management, to include GT himself, has told me Agoracom has tools in place that can detect malicious patterns of 1 star voting, but it seems to me, IMO, monitoring such tactics would be labor intensive and not practical for an employee to mess with that often. Raising the bar to Treas Rank before one could vote would solve most of peoples concerns.

I have had no less than 50 members contact me about this in 2010.

Please consider this request, and thank you in advance.

Dischino