"Abusing" bounties for unlimited profit

Question

Six days ago I put a +50 bounty on Why doesn't jQuery work in Chrome user scripts (Greasemonkey)? which wasn't asked by me, but to which I'd previously posted a pretty decent answer. Since then I've earned 130 reputation from upvotes on my answer, netting me +80 reputation and a bronze badge from no work.

It seems possible to slowly generate free reputation by "investing" in your answers like this. I expect I could repeat this perpetually and continue to profit from it.

This strikes me as an abuse of the bounty system. Should anything be done to prevent it?

EDIT: For more concrete questions:

• If I put another bounty on this question after this one expired, would that be considered abuse?
• What if I did it several times? (In this discussion the answer was "yes", but the author was doing so to promote his own project.)
• What if I didn't do it to the same question, but was constantly promoting questions I'd answered, in order to promote my answers?

Answer 1

As noted by Robert, this has come up recently. Posting a bounty is a perfectly reasonably thing, a good thing (with badges too!). However, when applied repeatedly to a question it does start to represent abuse.

To help minimise this, but while leaving open the option of offering a subsequent bounty when you really, really are looking for another option we will be implementing a change here, where subsequent bounties have a higher minimum offering. This means you can't place 6 "cheap" bounties of 50 rep, to keep your answer on the bounty board to get lots of pass-by upvotes, as subsequent bounties probably¹ will not cover your "spend".

We now double the minimum "spend" for successive bounties on the same question by the same user. So if you started at 50: your next bounty on that question has a minimum of 100, the next 200, the next 400, the next (max).

Another related change has been mentioned by Sam Saffron:

• If you are placing a bounty on a question you answered, your minimum spend is 100

_{1=Unless of course your answer is super-awesome, but if it is super-awesome it'll probably already be doing the rounds for free (insert obvious regex/html jape here).}

Answer 2

Since then I've earned 130 reputation from upvotes on my answer, netting me +80 reputation and a bronze badge from no work.

Not true! You put work into your answer and into the 50 reputation that you needed to place the bounty in the first place.

It seems possible to slowly generate free reputation by "investing" in your answers like this. I expect I could repeat this perpetually and continue to profit from it.

This strikes me as an abuse of the bounty system. Should anything be done to prevent it?

This doesn't seem like an abuse of the bounty system to me; in fact, I would say that this is by design. No one was forced to upvote your answer, and everyone who did recognized its value and made that clear to any anonymous visitors from Google who see it. If a bounty causes you to benefit from great answers that the community approves, I'd say that it's a win-win situation for everyone. (In other words, I agree with waffles's answer to a similar question.)

The only exception to this, I think, is repeatedly placing a bounty on the same question to give it constant exposure.

Answer 3

I don't see this as an abuse. You could do nearly the same thing by editing your answer and bumping it to the front page. I know it's not quite the same as putting a bounty on it since, but you'd potentially get the same effect. After all, you're not guaranteed to get the extra votes to offset your bounty loss. Seems to me that you'd maybe have as good a chance at losing rep from the bounty.

I'd actually see this as less of an abuse on SO than on other sites as time went on since the Featured Questions list on SO is half a dozen pages long, even at 50 questions/page. Whereas the Featured Questions list doesn't have near the velocity of the front page on SO that's still a lot of questions to filter through.

Answer 4

I was initially 100% supportive of you, but after re-reading your question a few times and thinking about it more, I've dropped to, I dunno, 70% supportive.

My first concern is sort of a reply to squillman. I think it's fairly clear that using a bounty is less abusive than submitting a no-value "bump edit." However, editing to add more great info and/or improve existing content is probably even better.

My second concern is about volume. What happens when lots of people start doing this? How many times will any given question be bountied? When those numbers grow, the featured list could become so long and repetitive that it stops serving its primary purpose: drawing attention to bountied questions.

I do wonder whether you could keep this cycle up indefinitely, or at least for a long time, with a single answer. Would the cost of opening bounties eventually make it "unprofitable"? It would be interesting to see data. Curiously, there is an equilibrium point: when more people do this, the featured list becomes less useful (see previous paragraph) and the tactic is less likely to work.

That said, this whole scheme is predicated on the existence of great answers, and as long as you're posting those, it's not abuse. I don't think there are enough users capable of doing this to justify the concerns I listed... at least not yet.

Answer 5

Looking at the bounty FAQ you've definitely gone away from the designed intent.

A bounty is a special reputation award given to answers. This feature was designed to motivate answerers, and make questions get the answers they deserve

You're not doing that since you've already provided an answer. Which is why I agree with Popular Demand that it definitely negatively impacts the people that are actually looking to get a bounty or looking get their question answered. Since it takes eyes away from unanswered questions and gives it to questions that have answers.

My gut says that if this tactic takes hold and becomes common place it will probably be regarded in the same way camping is regarded. Some will think its cheating while others simply will feel its part of the game.

Also I disagree with Popular Demand and others that it is "predicated on the existence of great answers". I think it would actually be most successfully employed on answers to Bike Shed questions. We have enough attention paid to those as it is.

Finally if you really want to draw attention to an answer you gave you can do it in a way that doesn't negatively impact the real bounty questions. Namely link to it from outside SO. If you're good at it you can earn a announcer booster or publisher badge.

Answer 6

Please don't do it more than once on the same question.

One time seems reasonable to me, maybe even innovative. You gamble that you make more on increased rep than you spend on the bounty. Do it more than one time on the same question, and people begin to get irritated.

After all, the question I linked already has an accepted answer with high upvotes. If the purpose of the bounty system is to get attention for your old, unanswered questions, then putting multiple bounties on a question that's been asked and answered seems a bit hinky.

Answer 7

The bounty system is the most expensive (and effective) means of drawing attention to a question. It fulfilled it's purpose.

The fact that you had a high-quality answer on the question that received upvotes is a GOOD thing.

You can't really "abuse" this since you have to have a good answer to begin with.

Answer 8

Putting a bounty up drives traffic to your questions. It's worded as "This question has an open bounty... This question has not received enough attention"

So if users feel the answer is deserving an up vote they will do so. Quite possibly another answer will even get their vote. So it seems like it is serving its purpose of driving traffic and votes on content. Really great answers will yield positive results.