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Possible Duplicate:
Gaming the edit system with tiny edits?

Related: Should adding redundant but related tags be encouraged or discouraged

Suddenly the start page of my StackOverflow is flooded with questions with my favourite tags.

What happened?

A zealous user seem to have discovered retagging as a quick way to earn reputation. He retagged over 90 questions in one day, adding a single obviously fitting, but redundant tag to them. Most of these questions were already answered and older than 6 months.

Those 94 revisons were accepted. He actually tried retagging 226 questions within three hours.

The aforementioned user has earned +180 reputation for this retagging rampage. This kind of rep farming seems a bit cheap to me.

  • Is this behaviour encouraged/tolerated?
  • What should be done in such a case?

I do not know how to draw moderation attention to this particular user, since users cannot be flagged.

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  • I'm surprised the review queue would have 0% success rate on reviewing those edits. Did he really go 90 for 90 with bad edits? I would have expected something in the 80% approval range (meaning 20% correct reviews).
    – Servy
    Jan 21, 2013 at 17:00
  • I corrected the numbers. Of 226 in total 94 were approved.
    – Lucius
    Jan 21, 2013 at 17:08
  • Should you wish to flag a moderator in a case like this, just flag one of the edited posts and go for the "other" option. In the textbox then clearly explain what you've seen and what the problem is.
    – Bart
    Jan 21, 2013 at 17:12

1 Answer 1

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No, gaming the edit system is not tolerated. The community should be rejecting these edits... People need to start reviewing them closely -- but, beside the point.

The first thing to do is comment on the post with @username and politely request an explanation. Then, if they don't respond, find someone with edit privileges and ask them to rollback the retags (otherwise, do it yourself).

Additionally, if they continue to not respond, flag one of the posts for moderator attention, and select other. Give a short explanation, and all relevant information (including the username), then wait.

But it's best to ping the user first.

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  • 7
    Note: Rolling back the changes should only happen if the edit was wrong or destructive. Not merely because the edit effort was lacking.
    – Bart
    Jan 21, 2013 at 17:03

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