19

I've discovered what I think is a false account being used to send free rep to a user on Stack Overflow.

Yesterday user nuclearpro posted an answer (now deleted) which was voted down to -10 over the course of the day. He posted a question to Meta asking users to up-vote his question to right this injustice, and was promptly downvoted on Meta as well.

Today I noticed that he's gone from 3 rep to 193 rep in a very short period of time, due to having his most recent 5 answers accepted as correct. I also notice that all 5 answers were accepted by the same user, Amy T, who has only existed since mid yesterday.

Both users seem to use the same lack of punctuation and capitalization (hardly a smoking gun) but the timing is a little too convenient. More convincing is the utter lack of content in the 5 answers in question; they were all accepted as correct despite being pretty poor answers by SO standards.

Improve this question
17
  • 3
    Hm. To be fair, none of Amy's questions got great answers, and it's plausible that someone who's totally new to programming would latch onto the one friendly user who keeps showing up on her posts. But I agree that it's suspicious enough to look into.
    – Pops
    Dec 5, 2010 at 1:05
  • 1
    Yeah, it looks a bit off but I tend to think it's not a case of sock puppetry. (If it is, then he put a lot of effort in the dialogs.) anyway, surely a good thing to look into
    – Pekka
    Dec 5, 2010 at 1:16
  • 8
    The dialogs in the comments of nuclearpro's answers are... almost unbelievable.
    – user229044
    Dec 5, 2010 at 1:19
  • @meagar yeah, I lol'd, too.
    – Pekka
    Dec 5, 2010 at 1:20
  • 1
    @meagar - I agree it looks oddly sock-ish. I also agree about the dialogs. It's certainly possible that Amy happened along at just the right time for nuclear and maybe his mood suddenly changed and everything just clicked perfectly for that whole, series of questions, answers, comments, voting and accepting... but it seems dubious. At least, though; that would be a LOT of work to be putting into all of that, and it wouldn't work but for so long anyway.
    – Andrew Barber
    Dec 5, 2010 at 1:22
  • "and was promptly downvoted on Meta as well" xDD
    – user154174
    Dec 5, 2010 at 2:22
  • 14
    Well, now that Amy T's account has been merged into nuke's, the discussions in the answers have a decidedly surreal bent.
    – Michael Petrotta
    Dec 5, 2010 at 3:12
  • 3
    I think the comment threads may actually make more sense now.
    – Aarobot
    Dec 5, 2010 at 3:42
  • 4
    Out of curiosity, what is the process on the admin side? Did somebody determine that there was more concrete evidence like a they were posting from the same IP?
    – user229044
    Dec 5, 2010 at 4:43
  • 1
    @meagar they must have. In my experience, they do this based on hard facts only
    – Pekka
    Dec 5, 2010 at 9:25
  • 14
    Wow. This guy should be nuked from orbit. Not for having a sock puppet, but for reinforcing the "dumb chick" stereotype. "Wait - what's foo?" "What's that -1 thing?" what an asshole. Anyway, merging the spurious account makes for much more hilarious punishment
    – Pekka
    Dec 5, 2010 at 9:40
  • 6
    @Rejoice, at least this guy got in touch with his feminine side ;-).
    – Toon Krijthe
    Dec 5, 2010 at 9:55
  • 1
    @Gamecat hahaha, yeah! :)
    – Pekka
    Dec 5, 2010 at 10:11
  • 5
    @Rejoice - Agreed, comments that he makes like "I know that people think girls are stupid but im trying." in his fake account are distasteful at best.
    – Brad Larson
    Dec 5, 2010 at 20:56
  • 2
    @Brad @Rejoice My absolute favourite was "oh ive heard of while loop thingys1"
    – user229044
    Dec 5, 2010 at 20:58

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
9

The part that's really, really suspicious to me is that all of his answers come within 5 minutes of "Amy's" question being asked. I was ready to chalk it up to bizarre coincidence until I noticed that. If this isn't a sock puppet then the guy is a creeper.

Also the fact that "she" accepted an incredibly poor answer of his when other, better answers were available to select, but then again, that's been known to happen...

Improve this answer
1
  • 3
    Mostly it's his attitude in the comments of the deleted answer and his Meta question that make me think he'd be pissed off enough to make the sock-puppet account.
    – user229044
    Dec 5, 2010 at 2:51
-6

It was supposed to be funny... Did you really think I thought I would get away with that? It was hillarious to see rep go up so fast and actually it wasn't me, it was my cousin who is in college and actually is new to development. But yes, she was in my house using one of my computers. I have posted on Meta Stack Overflow concerning this. Anyone REALLY pissed should probably read it.

Improve this answer
2
  • 2
    I'd be conserned about the colledge thing if it was you who went.
    – juan
    Dec 7, 2010 at 0:21
  • 1
    hehe ... see i have a sense of humor.. no i didnt but she is.. going that is. I will give no comeback because a. I completely deserve it. and b. sense i dont have a colledge degree i cant think of one right now.
    – nuclearpro
    Dec 7, 2010 at 0:31

You must log in to answer this question.

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