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Possible Duplicate:
Who is the Community user?

On the community bots user profile, it says:

Hi, I'm not really a person.

I'm a background process that helps keep this site clean!

I just saw that the Community bot edited an answer. But this edit does not look like it has been done by a bot.

https://stackoverflow.com/posts/767213/revisions

What happened there? Is the bot remotely controlled?

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  • +1 agree with you, if it wasn't human, it would do only static actions.
    – Lucifer
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 11:08
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    The particular case you saw is what happens when an anonymous user has suggested an edit. Since there's no actual Stack Overflow user who suggested the edited, and someone has to take credit for it, the community user is used for this. Also see this answer of mine.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 11:40
  • "Remotely controlled"? You mean, like from the orbital platform?
    – ale
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 17:02
  • Sorry, I am not a native speaker. Actually (to) remote control is the right verb for the kind of stuff you are doing with a remote control, am I right?
    – iblue
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 17:20
  • But actually I like the idea of the stackoverflow staff circling around in low earth orbit, programming bots from above. So I won't change the title. :)
    – iblue
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 17:28
  • It's just the NULL user in the database, to be more precise.
    – Calmarius
    Commented Sep 8, 2013 at 19:31

2 Answers 2

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Is the bot remotely controlled?

Nope, it's not a bot but rather a user that takes all the stick.

What do I mean? Well, if for example a post is deleted by flagging from multiple users, it shows up as deleted by community. If a post is edited by an anonymous user, it belongs to community and so on and so forth.

Basically, where a user might ordinarily have been attributed, if no one user can be, or no user can be, community shows up as responsible.

The user does also take some actions on a periodic basis such as editing posts just to bump them, and so on.

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  • That means it is not an auto controlled system, its manual. am i correct ?
    – Lucifer
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 11:27
  • @Lucifer no. There's nobody sat there controlling the community user - it's the user that gets assigned to tasks no user can be attributed to. Nobody uses it, it just happens to own some human generated content.
    – user142852
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 11:29
  • ok got it. it has been programmed such a way.
    – Lucifer
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 11:31
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That is a suggested edit done from an anonymous user. The "suggested" link takes you to the page showing you the suggested edit.

screenshot

screenshot

When it comes to suggested edits, and approving them, what is reported as something done by the Community user is really done from a human being. The Community user is not really able to suggest edits, nor is there anybody that logs in using the Community user account.

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