22

Recently a lot of different new users have gotten Necromancer badges for answering with recommendations to use ForeUI on various old posts. Could they be collaborating to spam the site or is this genuinely the community supporting this product? Examples:

There may be other examples too.

Improve this question
10
  • 3
    Great catch. Also add Whitney: stackoverflow.com/users/272670/whitney - Each has 6 upvotes on one question, each has 61 rep. Very suspicious!
    – Stephan202
    Feb 14, 2010 at 13:50
  • 3
    Also see the overview of active questions mentioning ForeUI. A lot of recent posts, all by new users: stackoverflow.com/search?q=foreui&tab=active
    – Stephan202
    Feb 14, 2010 at 13:52
  • 1
    I wonder what else Amanda used her 19 upvotes on...
    – Mark Byers
    Feb 14, 2010 at 14:42
  • 1
    Update: those accounts are all deleted now. I wonder if that was the actions of a moderator or someone trying to cover their tracks.
    – Mark Byers
    Feb 14, 2010 at 14:45
  • 2
    @Mark Byers: Great catch on this. All of those accounts were sock puppets. They posted those answers and upvoted each other to get the top answers you linked to (now deleted). Thanks a lot for bringing this to our attention.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Feb 14, 2010 at 15:03
  • 5
    It's too bad this person decided to abuse the system. ForeUI might actually be a good product.
    – user102937
    Feb 14, 2010 at 15:14
  • 1
    @Robert Harvey: I totally agree. By spamming the site and abusing puppet accounts they've just made their company look bad to everyone who reads this.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Feb 14, 2010 at 16:01
  • 3
    @Bill: did any of these users leave a contact email in their profile? I wonder if it would be fruitful to either contact the user(s), or contact the company and warn them that someone is making them look bad to the community (possibly themselves, in which case someone deserves to get fired!)
    – Ether
    Feb 14, 2010 at 17:41
  • 5
    @Ether: One user was suspended and all of the sock puppets deleted, so an email was definitely sent explaining that much. The only time moderators will take that kind of drastic action without sending an email is if the user doesn't provide one. You raise a very interesting point about the possibility (however slim) of a 3rd party being responsible for this. It really looks like someone inside the company was trying to promote the product, but I'm not 100% sure with the information I have available.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Feb 14, 2010 at 17:53
  • Is this also a sock puppet promoting ForeUI: stackoverflow.com/users/201700/cody ?
    – user140014
    Feb 24, 2010 at 13:56

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

I'm quite sure of it. Smartutor has answered three questions, all about prototyping and he links to ForeUI in all of them.

I guess it's not coincidence that 4 new members mention this software at the same time.

Improve this answer
2
  • OK, I have now flagged them all as spam. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't jumping to conclusions! Thanks.
    – Mark Byers
    Feb 14, 2010 at 14:29
  • 1
    And all with massive upvotes. I bet they come from each other. Good catch @Mark!
    – Pekka
    Feb 14, 2010 at 14:47
2

At the end of the day, if the software author keeps spamming the site with advertisement like this, it will only hurt him:

  • ForeUI might become part of the blocked content list and his product will never be mentioned by legitimate users.
  • His IP range will be blocked and won't be able to use SO for reference.
  • ... ?
Improve this answer
2
  • 7
    Profit! (15 chars)
    – Stephan202
    Feb 14, 2010 at 18:05
  • Who can see the IP address/IP range?
    – Nemo
    Apr 12, 2015 at 7:11

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .