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This question offers an answer to "How to report Sock puppets who upvote their own posts".
This question describes revenge voting.

Recently, I've downvoted an answer and added a comment. After submitting my answer to the same question, I noticed that the downvoted answer has been upvoted (within 2 minutes, probably a sympathy vote, I thought).

I added more explanation to the downvoted answer, because the answerer believed that his answer was correct. A few minutes later, I received a downvote for my top upvoted answer.

My answer became accepted, for which I received another downvote.

I verified (Data explorer) that the specific user did not add new downvotes. So, I suspect this user of having a sock puppet, since the order of events were too coincidental.
However, since the sock did not upvote the owner's post, flagging the post will probably not help.

So, how can moderator's attention be requested for this case?

Attachments:

Comment chain:
Comment chain

Reputation mutation (the times do match):
Weird reputation mutation

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    The potential situation described here is yet another reason not to leave comments when down voting, IMO. (advice I still regularly ignore, to my own detriment)
    – Andrew Barber
    Commented Mar 27, 2012 at 18:51

2 Answers 2

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I verified (Data explorer) that the specific user did not add new downvotes. So, I suspect this user of having a sock puppet, since the order of events were too coincidental.

SEDE is not updated live; updates are pushed through monthly. Remember that the are a lot of SO users, so seeing a scenario like this is not entirely uncommon even though nothing malicious is going on.

That said, if you do suspect sockpuppets, just flag one of the accounts' post and mention the other user's name. The mods can investigate further from there. It doesn't matter whether or not one of the accounts upvoted the other account on that particular post, since mods can't view individual votes anyway.

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  • The fact that SEDE is not updated live was what I needed for verification. I used my browser's cache as a secondary validation method. SEDE and my browsers cache showed 11 downvotes, which is equal to the current one. I don't know the socks username, I've only seen signs of the presence of one. If I flag a user's post, will mods also investigate further, even if I don't know the sock's name?
    – Rob W
    Commented Mar 27, 2012 at 15:27
  • @RobW Oh, I see. Yes, you can flag even if you don't know the sockpuppet's name, and the mods will investigate as best they can.
    – waiwai933
    Commented Mar 27, 2012 at 15:43
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AFAIK, there are two ways for this:

  1. Flag for moderator attention, and describe your problem there
  2. Or, write an email to [email protected]. So that they will look into the issue personally
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