What is the view on accounts shared by multiple users on Stack Overflow?

Question

It has been my understanding that accounts are suppose to be for a specific user. This user, Devart, is a company: LinqConnect by Devart. No doubt, this account has provided some quality answers. However, if a specific user cannot be identified, I don't think that the rep gain, rewards, or badges should be given. This should somehow be tagged as a 'Corporate User'. The rep has no real value when you can't be somewhat sure that the same person is giving the answers all the time.

This is where I found an answer by Devart: LINQ to MySql, peddling a product.

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Edit 2
Good points have been brought up and most I can agree with. But we are setting a precedent. Meta Fudgey brought up a good point about the account's ability to use mod tools responsibly and consistently. Maybe this feature is not available to an account that appears to be an umbrella account unless a single user is identified. I think it is important to consider this aspect.

Let me re-iterate: the user(s) has provided excellent content and I would want that to continue. However, there is more at stake here than meaningful content and helpful resources.

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Edit
The view on 'shared' accounts wasn't so bright a year ago. For most of us, we have information in our profiles that identifies us as individuals. No, I don't have absolute knowledge of the activities on this account and how many people might use it. Meh, for all we know it could be a knowledgeable programmer with some good PR sense. On the other hand, it could be a PR person with no programming knowledge getting the answers from an employee. Who knows...

Update
As this post seems to be getting a lot of attention (I'm not sure why), I thought I would review since it has been more than 10 years. I believe my primary concern was in regards to the ability to have access to moderator tools. Someone asked, "Well, how are we going to know if it's a person or group?" I don't think we can. We have to trust the community.

I think moderators are smart enough to be able to figure things out; discuss what evidence suggests individual or group; make an enquiry for good reasons; decide what tools (if any) will be available. It's a good discussion to have because, unlike an individual account wherein the user's evolution is in gain of knowledge and maturity, a group account will have a different dynamic - for instance, a new employee with no experience on StackExchange. A new member who should not have access to moderator tools can do all kinds of things.

Answer 1

I don't think that the rep gain, rewards, or badges should be given.

Why not? Just because more than one user may manage this account doesn't devalue their contributions.

Do you really want to force people to verify that their account is used by the same person every time? I'm not sure if that is even possible.

Answer 2

From SE's legal point of view, subscribers should be individuals:

[...] Subscriber certifies to Stack Exchange that Subscriber is an individual (i.e., not a corporate entity) at least 13 years of age. [...]

(In 2011, at the time this question was asked, this still used an "if", suggesting corporate accounts were okay as well, in "[...] Subscriber certifies to Stack Exchange that if Subscriber is an individual (i.e., not a corporate entity), Subscriber is at least 13 years of age. [...]". That has changed some time later, as noticed in a May 2013 comment by Seth.)

Answer 3

From the terms of service:

1. Access to Services

[…]
Subscriber certifies to Stack Exchange that Subscriber is an individual (i.e., not a corporate entity) at least 13 years of age.

Any account that was created with the intent to be shared by multiple people within a company is in violation of the ToS and would thus be subject to termination.

That said, enforcing that requirement is somewhat tricky, as you cannot assume that an account is a corporate account just judging from the name. You should also consider information in the profile, writing style, edits and votes, etc. when arriving at a conclusion that an account is not a personal account.

Answer 4

An own true story of (a small rise and) a big fail

There are moments in life when you can at least serve as a bad example. I had such a moment, which directly and precisely concerns this question.

So far, I had mainly used Math SE (user736865) as a platform to discuss questions and seek solutions. With increasing interest I dared to answer the one or other question and got my first badges. The increase of reputation along positive feedback (upvotes, accepted answers) activated motivation and curiosity in me and since the end of August I have increasingly participated. On September 29, 2021, I passed the one-thousand mark and in a kind of flow experience, took developing the account as a challenge and documented this "special" moment for myself:

On October 26, 2021 (3 weeks ago), a very good friend who is a mathematician came to visit me from Canada. While doing research together for a joint project we are both working at, we consulted MSE as well. Out of ignorance (which does not protect from fair penalty), I started sharing my account with him and renamed it to "Homieomorphism" and changed the profile picture. Within a few days, the reputation rose by about another 300 points.

On November 8 (a couple of days ago), a moderator election started, which I entered. This was the turning point in which the house of cards collapsed within minutes. I followed the moderator election chat and realized very quickly that I was about to lose everything:

The account was erased on November 12, right after I was immediately excluded from the election. I received a very comprehensible, professional and polite mail describing the reason.

In retrospect I am very grateful for this teaching and grounding including the following lessons learned:

• The line between flow experience and reputation addiction is very thin. Stay grounded.
• Sometimes it makes sense to read through terms and conditions and understand the rules, even if such formal things are tiring.
• When in doubt, ask before doing things that you can't necessarily be sure whether they are allowed or not.

My view on accounts shared by multiple users on Stack Exchange is: don't do it (again).

Answer 5

In response to Pekka's answer:

• A large number of users can gain reputation much faster than an individual SO user. Some of us have to sleep, and do things other than Stack Overflow.

In theory, yes. In practice, there is a rep cap. And also the truism that two average programmers don't equal one exceptional programmer. If the strategy is to throw enough lousy answers onto the site that the account hits the cap via sympathy votes, it's abuse - regardless of whether there's one person or twenty posting.

• A company or software project related user is likely to gain many upvotes in their specific field simply by the power of their name.

This is... Irrelevant. Yes, an official "Microsoft" user would probably do exceptionally well in certain tags, just as John Resig did exceptionally well in jquery... but you might as well argue that Jon Skeet should be hobbled because he's well-known in the C# community. It's a well-known problem with attributed answers, not group accounts.

These are not problems per se, but... the rest of the SO user base is made up from individual users. Seeing group accounts in the reputation leagues, in the top users of every tag and so on feels... odd.

Also irrelevant, since there's no good way to identify a "group account" unless the account owner explicitly admits to being more than one person (see below...) Do you get uneasy whenever you see a user posting under the name of his business?

Also, I am having a hard time seeing group accounts partake in community activities like editing and re-tagging. A company is likely to be active in a number of certain limited tags, and many questions in those tags are bound to be about competing products and technologies. There is a certain potential of friction when the account of Company A cleans up the wording of a question about the merits of a product from Company B.

Ok, I have to give this credence: it is possible that a nefarious organization might put together a cadre of "rep farmers" to build up an account with the intention of abusing privileges to harm their competitors. By posting a massive number of mediocre answers, such an account could conceivably hit the 2K necessary for editing in under two weeks, and then find themselves free to trash the site...

...of course, such an organization would have no motivation to 'fess up to it. We might as well put a "I'm a spammer" checkbox next to the "I'm a group" option, for all the good it'll do. And there's also no point in implementing a separate account type as "punishment" for such users when identified: this is overtly hostile behavior - just ban them!

Conclusion

Implementing a limited account type for group users - a subset of users that may be entirely mythical - would serve only to limit abuse from accounts that have no intention of abusing the site. It might work as a safety-net for a respected organization that wishes to hand login details to the new intern without running the risk of being banned for misguided actions on his behalf... But even this serves only to provide encouragement for a type of account that you're already uncomfortable with.

This is - at best - a counter-productive idea, and at worst, a complete waste of site-developer time. We already require full disclosure from users who are honestly trying to participate without crossing the line into abuse - I see no reason to bend over backwards for users who are not honest.

Answer 6

However, if a specific user cannot be identified, I don't think that the rep gain, rewards, or badges should be given.

Then we should just throw out rep, rewards, badges...

I post from multiple machines, through multiple IP addresses, on multiple topics. If there were multiple people working from behind this account name, it wouldn't necessarily look any different. This is really not possible to determine, and - as The jjnguy notes - it's not really a problem anyway.

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Upon reading the edit, I suspect you are more concerned with the advertising / promotional aspect of this account than the possibility that its posts are authored by more than one individual. This is a valid concern, but - for the most part - a user's bio page is his to do with as he wishes. See: How much advertising is allowed on userinfo pages?

In situations where a user goes out of his way to use answers to promote a product in which he has a vested interest, the restrictions are considerably more severe. See: Limit to self-promotion in answers?

Answer 7

As long as the account is providing quality information to the community, then there is no justification for disincentivizing the account holder(s).

Reputation, badges, rewards are virtual incentives for people to contribute to the community. If the Devart user stopped receiving any reputation points, then: (1) people would be more likely to discount their posts, and (2) whoever is behind the account would take less personal interest in making the posts. If Devart's posts were being discounted, then participating on SO would become an ineffective marketing tool. If participating on SO became an ineffective marketing tool, AND the account user did not have any personal incentive, then they would have no reason to post on SO. If they have no reason to post on SO, then the "quality answers" that "No doubt, this account has provided" would cease. This isn't good for anyone.

Your other criticism was that they are "peddling a product". A lot of helpful users post links to products. We work in an industry that requires such products. Good products help us do our jobs better. Whoever is behind Devart, they clearly work with LinqConnect. We can infer that they spend a great deal of time on the product, are well informed about it and that they believe the product is useful (otherwise, why would they build and sell it?). Would you expect a developer would put that much effort into a product and not endorse it when someone has a problem for which that product is an ideal solution? Nobody wants SO posts to become saturated with targeted advertising, but there is a powerful system of community watch to prevent inappropriate posts. If the product plug is not appropriate then you can always click that little flag button and a moderator will check it out.

I think SO is one of the best resources available for developers. I think we all agree that the resource should be preserved, but giving active contributors a reason to stop using SO will make the resource weaker, not stronger. Maybe it's just me, but I think having the best possible resource for quality information takes precedence over any account's reputation score.

Answer 8

I wholeheartedly welcome companies and Open Source and other projects to be active on SO, as long as it's about truly providing technical support for one's products and not (just) advertising. It's a logical step in the site's evolution and a great way of staying in touch with your customers from the software development world. It's also a great way of getting canonical answers regarding Open Source projects, etc. ... the possibilities are endless.

I also find it a perfectly logical choice to use a group account for company- or project-related activity: The content generated by the company should stay the company's, even if individual employees move on (and take their individual Stack Overflow accounts with them).

There is a number of possible problems with group accounts, though:

• A large number of users can gain reputation much faster than an individual SO user. Some of us have to sleep, and do things other than Stack Overflow.

• A company or software project related user is likely to gain many upvotes in their specific field simply by the power of their name.

these factors can lead to that user account reaching high reputation counts, thus becoming "trusted users" in the community's eyes, very quickly.

These are not problems per se, but... the rest of the SO user base is made up from individual users. Seeing group accounts in the reputation leagues, in the top users of every tag and so on feels... odd.

Also, I am having a hard time seeing group accounts partake in community activities like editing and re-tagging. A company is likely to be active in a number of certain limited tags, and many questions in those tags are bound to be about competing products and technologies. There is a certain potential of friction when the account of Company A cleans up the wording of a question about the merits of a product from Company B.

Should problematic behaviour from group accounts become an issue, I would suggest introducing limited corporate accounts that are barred from participating in certain activities like voting and editing other questions regardless of their reputation. As a matter of policy, official group accounts signing up on SO would be made limited accounts by moderators or something. Becoming a limited account would be entirely voluntary unless there are signs of problematic behaviour, in which case it would be a punitive measure.

Until such problems come up, things can probably stay as they are; If it is desired to have projects and companies on board as group account, I would like to see this mentioned somewhere in the FAQ.