Unethical tricks to answer questions

Question

I am writing this to address something I have (suspect I have) seen happening lately.

1. Note an easy question that you can solve.
2. Down vote it but don't flag it.

3. (this is a guess but rings true) Use an alt account to downvote it again if necessary.

4. Everyone skips over

5. Answer question

I have seen a number of high K users do this. Once you have moderator privileges, you can delete comments that point this out.

My question: Is there a way in the API to link users to votes to detect patterns like this?

And just curious. Why not add a "Grab" feature that says, "Hey I got an answer, give me 5 or 10 minutes. Penalize for failure to submit. Honestly, just eliminating how many times people answer the same question with only one coming through would probably cut down on some of those queues. For IT professionals, maybe answering a question while eating lunch, this is particularly frustrating.

Answer 1

Why on earth would you do this?

To the extent that this works at all, you'd be pretty much guaranteeing that fewer people are gonna bother looking at the answer that you eventually post... So unless you're just going after the Accept bonus, or are trying to construct some weird abusive relationship with the asker themselves... This is wholly counter-productive.

But hey, let's check anyway. Looking at Ask Ubuntu over the past 90 days...

• 4989 posts got an initial downvote that wasn't retracted for at least 30 seconds

• 24 of those posts got an answer from the downvoter

• 12 of those answers weren't deleted

• 4 of those answers were posted after the downvote, 2 of which were posted after the downvote was retracted

• 1 of those answers was posted after the downvote and the downvote was never retracted

So... It's possible that 1 or two people do this. It's unlikely they're doing it as a trick. It's quite possible that these are chameleon questions and the answerers are just as frustrated as everyone else.

---

Ah. You left out the "why" of all this and had me chasing shadows. That was rude.

So... You're talking about this recent answer you posted on Stack Overflow, wherein you accused the other answerer of gaming the system somehow to snipe you, got all rude about it, and ended up suspended to cool down.

You should, uh, probably try to cool down.

I examined the data. Nothing even close to what you're alleging happened there. You should not accuse people of doing implausible things that you have no way to prove. You're annoyed because someone beat you to a solution; as a moderator told you already,

Anyone can answer questions at any time. If you post a partial answer in the hope of getting the "first answer" then there's a good chance that someone else will come along an post a more complete answer before you get a chance to update yours.

Now, please walk away from the keyboard, get a nice cup of tea, and come back when you've got a cool head on your shoulders.

Answer 2

I'm going to add some points Shog9 hasn't covered yet.

• Note an easy question that you can solve.
• Down vote it but don't flag it.
• (this is a guess but rings true) Use an alt account to downvote it again if necessary.
• Everyone skips over
• Answer question

Step 1: Note an easy question that you can solve... okay, that makes sense. One should only answer when he is definite that he can supply a good answer. Step 2: Downvote it but don't flag it... does the post need the downvote? If it doesn't, you are abusing your privilege. Downvotes are only for posts that are low-quality or off-topic per the site's respective Help Center and meta discussions. Step 3: Use an alt account to downvote it again.. why, oh why would you do that? That's not going to help at all. This step kinda reminds me of something called using sock-puppets to apply multiple votes on the same post. A big no-no. Step 4: Everyone skips over.. hehe, nice try. Usually downvoted questions do attract quite the attention. Users who are keen on moderating (using their votes and flags for example), are going to view that post and decide what to do. If it's an easy question, people might will jump on board to answer it. Step 5: Answer question... if your goal was to be the first answerer or something like that, why go through steps 2 and 3 when you can just... well... answer the question!

This overly complicated plan doesn't work since you have to:

• Abuse your privilege (use it incorrectly)

• Risk a ban by using a sockpuppet improperly

• You probably wasted a couple minutes voting and getting the sockpuppet to vote, not to mention the time needed to create the answer

• People are still going to see it regardless

Honestly, just eliminating how many times people answer the same question with only one coming through would probably cut down on some of those queues.

Hey, your loss not the OP's. If you care more about your own rep rather than allowing the OP to get a good answer, you shouldn't be here. Period. If people are rushing in to answer your question only a few seconds later (or maybe after a minute or two), the OP has probably demonstrated the fact that little to no research has been done at all. Downvote and close and bye.

If the answers are rushed and they post first and you come out of nowhere with an exceptional answer that makes the others look like spam (hyperbole about quality here), you will be noted and upvoted and maybe the OP will accept your answer. Note, I said exceptional, not just correct. It has to be of high-quality since... well, the OP needs high-quality, correct answers.

For IT professionals, maybe answering a question while eating lunch, this is particularly frustrating.

SE is not an arms race nor is Stack Overflow. Yes, the Fastest Gun in the West is annoying, but a better answer will shine from the rest. We all have jobs and lives, we all understand. This isn't a site where you lose rep the longer you are inactive. Just try the best you can.

---

According to Shog9, you are complaining about a user beating you here.

If you couldn't answer that in time, then move to the next. So what if he beat you or not. Just go ahead and answer another question. Or provide an alternate solution that is not a dupe of the other answer.

Answer 3

As an answerer, I have the habit of voting up the questions I answer. It is because if they wouldn't be useful in my opinion, I wouldn't answer them.

From a rep collection perspective, I would say voting the question down, distracts the other answerers, but it also distracts the viewers. Thus, the chance that my answer will be voted up, significantly decreases.

Although the chance of - in the lack of other answers - finally my answer will be accepted, significantly increases. Particularly because it would be a "good policist, bad policist" game for the OP: he would see that his question was unfairly downvoted, but despite that, this nice guy answered it.

Beside the major ethical side of the trick, there is also a strategical problem: if my question gets accepted, it results only +15, but I can get this +15 only once per answer. While I can get an upvote any times. Thus, from a rep collecting perspective, I see more results in upvoting the question as voting it down.

The overwhelming majority of the reputation gained on the sites is coming from answer upvotes. It is far more as the rep gained by accepts, edits, bounties or questions. Likely all the experienced answerers know this very well. If we want to get many rep, the obvious strategy is to maximize the answer upvotes, every other has only secondary importance (including the possible downs).

---

However, I also think that on the SE network, many people likes to harm others on many ways, on perfectly irrational and unsaid reasons. I think, these unsaid reasons may be in many cases, that the destructive person thinks, he would gain something with the harm. Knowing their this habit, I think it is quite possible that it is more wide spread phenomenon as it would be reasonable.

---

However, I think the trick would work.

The statements of others, saying that this would attract likely a mod intervention, is not realistic in my opinion. A single, silently downvoted question, where the interaction between the downvoter and the answerer isn't trivial, probably wouldn't even attract the attention of the CMs.

And probably even the mods wouldn't see anything, because also they can't see induvidual voters. Their voting irregularity detection is tuned against the voting chains, not against such tricks.

Although it is possible to catch somebody having a habit to answer -1 voted questions.

If the answerer has 2000 rep, then he can relative silently edit the question, and revoke (or invert) his downvote on his alternate account.

Also this likely wouldn't excite the CM control, because there are no votes between different users of the same induvidual person.

Although I think, they could (and maybe they do) watch also this trick. Collecting the users with the habit of answering and downvoting questions, would be a singleline query with database access.

---

In my opinion, the main reason, why it is likely not a wide-spread "strategy", that the lost upvotes (by the decreased number of viewers) results more potential loss, as the increased probability of the accept.

---

In the case of the SE, I would more likely watch for an opposite pattern: the cases, as the seemingly "concurrent" answerers comment eachother's answer and then everybody silently votes everybody up.