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My situation is as follows:

I answered a question with +500 bounty, I took the time to test it, I verified that everything is working and gave all the elements in order for it to work.

But the asker doesn't want to accept the answer or give any more comments, because everything was clear.

The last days of the bounty (5 days after my answer), I found a new answer, the same as mine (in term of solution but with others words), accepted and rewarded the bounty, It's not fair but I accept it.

On the other side, I took a look at the user who got the bounty. Here is the surprise, I found that he asked a question (with -5 votes) with only one answer and he accepted it. The problem is that the user who answered this question is the same who gave the first question.

So I feel that I wasted all the time answering the first question, when the asker intention was to get the answer for free, and it's not encouraging/helping the community.

I have flagged the question and described the problem but nothing happened till now.

Improve this question
13
  • 4
    Sounds like sock-puppetry. Flag the post for moderator attention and explain your findings.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:19
  • 9
    So, if you already flagged, why did you post this here? What are you expecting from the community?
    – Oded
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:20
  • 1
    Here's a link, for reference.
    – NotDoorknob
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:20
  • 5
    How long ago did you flag the post? The other post was a mere 7 hours ago, moderators have weekends too and they have a backlog to handle.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:21
  • 5
    @Oded probably want more opinions, don't think it's wrong to ask. Also, others might detect more users in the sock puppet ring sometimes, that a mod might miss.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:23
  • 12
    This morning, I'm new to stackoverflow so don't know if it's the right thing to do, that's why I asked this question.
    – Rida BENHAMMANE
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:24
  • 7
    And here he gives the +500 back to his friend or to himself.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:26
  • 2
    @ShadowWizard and if you didn't notice that the possible duplicate of that post was asked by the OP of the original bounty question. There is definitely a lot of interaction between these 2 characters.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:29
  • 4
    @psubsee2003 yep, 99.999% it's a sock created for free bounties. Let's all wish it a warm and quick burning! ;-)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:32
  • It's worth mentioning, if any socks are being burned, that active bounties are not eligible for rep loss from user deletion. Only relevant if there has been voting fraud as well as bounty fraud
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:44
  • @RichardTingle this case is different, the +500 bounty by the sock is on a question that is exact copy of other question. Mod should cancel the bounty and delete it.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:51
  • @ShadowWizard Very true, however, if the original rep was fraudulantly created and if the current bountier is considered to be the "true user" then it would be an issue (lots of ifs in there I know, but worth being aware of)
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 13:53
  • Unfortunately this happened to me today. Posted an answer with working code example and live demo, suported it and helpd OP to merge the example in his code. And when bounty expired he awarded +250 to his own answer which he posted only after got everything from me. And his anwser is completely irrelevant pseodo-code and doesn't even answer the question. These people should be banned I think as they completely disrupt your trust in dev-community
    – 2ooom
    Commented Sep 12, 2014 at 8:13

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
23

Thanks for the flags. This was indeed anomalous behavior, and the worst of it should be cleaned up now (the reputation from the bounties should be reset at the next reputation recalculation). Unfortunately, we can't do anything about them not awarding the bounty to you.

In the future, if you see anything odd like this, do what you did and provide a flag describing the bizarre behavior you see. It might take us a day or so to process, particularly on a weekend when few people are around, but we will get to it eventually.

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  • 1
    What about association bonus? Hope it would also be gone upon recalc. On second thought, if it's the same user why not accounts merge?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 16:00
  • @ShadowWizard - Unfortunately, that one hangs around, and can even be reattached after accounts are deleted. I'd have to search for it, but I know it's been requested on here to change some of that system behavior.
    – Brad Larson
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 16:02

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