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How many users have created more than one profile on SO to vote themselves on their other original profile? There are some benefits when you have more reputation and sometimes you don't want a single -1 vote on your question or answer. In this case you may have an extra account to convert that -1 vote into 0 vote and upvote for each of your questions and answers to gain reputation. I think it is not a good thing to do as a good developer.

Is there any way to recognize this situation? I think there should be some stats in each user's profile about how many votes are posted by each user on him/her or something like that.

So how many users have more than one profile?
How to handle this situation?
I have not created one yet but............ I don't think so :)

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    yet? Were you planning on doing this?
    – Troggy
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 8:57
  • 9
    I am panning to give advice to make SO more better. I think you don't like jokes.
    – Naveed
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:02
  • 7
    @NAVEED: I probably should have added a little ;) to my post to indicate my intentions. Haha. It is ok, it is great that you are concerned about site.
    – Troggy
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:09
  • For multiple profiles alone (and not alleging sockpuppetry), if you ever want to search for "Oscar Reyes"...
    – random
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:23
  • And just for the record: yes, Oscar has avoided the temptation to self-vote; no puppetry there, although this isn't necessarily the preferred mode of use ;-p
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:49
  • 1
    @Troggy - and now you get to look out for this on superuser! Congrats.
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Jan 19, 2010 at 21:57

3 Answers 3

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In answer to "how many" - we don't keep count, we just delete them. We don't make a big song and dance about it, nor (for obvious reasons) do we disclose the exact ways these things are investigated. See also blog 1 and blog 2 on this topic.

This isn't the way to get rep. It has been tried, and there are multiple safe-guards, and most are pretty easy to spot with the right tools. Sure you can probably get into an arms race to get around some of them, but who exactly are you trying to impress?

Stop worrying about points, and start caring about awesome questions and answers.

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  • 40
    but.. but .. my POINTS!!!!
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:25
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    there is a subdomain careers.stackoverflow.com to create your CV and attach your flair with it. Then your rep can help you a lot. When I see a profile with more rep it impressed me.
    – Naveed
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:33
  • @NAVEED - the point is that sock-puppetry won't work long term - it's hardly difficult to spot (not to minimise the achievements of the no-doubt-awesome code that detects it).
    – Dominic Rodger
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:36
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    @Naveed - having good questions / answers for an employer to look at would be a much better idea. Without that, how good does it look, especially after the nefarious rep has been detected and reducted.
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:44
  • @Marc: Votes and Reputation increased on good question/answers and employer does not have so much time to review all the question/answers. Employer will prefer just looking on reputation if voting system is perfect.
    – Naveed
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 10:31
  • @Marc: Question title is changed after your comments on "How Many". Now what is your idea if you want to detect such case.
    – Naveed
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 10:34
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    @NAVEED the site already does, and the details of "how" are not public.
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 10:38
  • psst: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53096/…
    – user1228
    Commented Jan 25, 2011 at 22:14
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    "who exactly are you trying to impress?" you say? Then what's the point of showing the reputation publicly? I don't mean that sock puppets should be encouraged, but your logic is inconsistent with your site design.
    – Masked Man
    Commented Feb 14, 2013 at 19:25
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Rep re-calcs are how the system prevents sock puppets from giving reputation. What happens is, after the sock puppet is found and deleted, the system will run a rep recalc. What that means is that it will remove all the up-votes the sock puppet has given, so the reputation would go back to what it would be if the sock puppet had not voted at all.

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There should be some stats on each user profile like this:

10 up-votes from person with above 10,000 rep
27 up-votes from person with above 5,000 rep
50 up-votes from person with above 3,000 rep
45 up-votes from person below 1,000 rep
10 up-votes from deleted person.
20 up-votes from inactive person.

OR

20 rep on one up-vote from a person with above 10,000 rep
15 rep on one up-vote from a person with above 5,000 rep
10 rep on one up-vote from a person with above 1,000 rep
05 rep on one up-vote from a person with above 500 rep
02 rep on one up-vote from a person with below 500 rep

OR something like the above can help.

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  • 12
    There are existing checks and balances in place. With all due respect, I think they work OK "as is". I'm also not sure what problem you are trying to solve with the profile thing.
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 9:51
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    it's not a bad idea, it's just complicated. We have reports like this that moderators can see which identify unusual statistical patterns in voting.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 10:16
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    I think you've missed my main point, which is that gaming the system is not the way to gain rep. Focus on questions / answers and the rest should follow naturally.
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 10:42
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    There are undoubtedly many users whom I have up- or down-voted more than 25 times. This simply means that we are active in the same tag(s), not that we are in any way connected to each other.
    – Ether
    Commented Jan 17, 2010 at 18:04
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    @AEther: If you have up-vote someone 25 times and you have more than 5,000 rep, it means its Ok. But If you have up-vote someone with your rep less than 50, its means there may be something wrong. So when there will be some figures like this on each user profile, we can recognise user's perfection.
    – Naveed
    Commented Jan 18, 2010 at 5:39
  • +1 I do like this idea. Btw, I am not a puppet account;)
    – Harvey Kwok
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 17:27

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