Questions tagged [sock-puppets]
A sockpuppet is an extra account created in addition to the user's normal account, especially those created for the purposes of abusing the system.
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Are sock puppet comment and Meta votes retracted?
A user used sock puppets to self-upvote, self-bounty, and self-accept answers they'd ask questions on. It is unknown whether this included voting on Meta posts or on comments.
Only one sock was ...
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Are sock puppet answer accepts retracted? [duplicate]
A user used sock puppets to ask questions and answer with main account, then accept own answers, even if there's other answers, including ones that outscore it significantly. Self-upvotes were ...
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Are sock puppet bounties retracted?
A user used sock puppets to grant self bounties. The user's self-upvotes were retracted, and so were bounty rep gains, but the bounties remain visible on answers, and continue to inflate their worth.
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Is it allowed to start a bounty for your unanswered question using an alt account?
Let's say a user has 2 accounts. The main account has asked a question which is unanswered. Now, is it allowed for the user to start a bounty on that question using the 2nd account given the following ...
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Does "sock-puppet" always carry the meaning of abusive, non-main accounts? Is there such thing as a "benign sock-puppet"? [duplicate]
Does "sock-puppet" always carry the meaning of abusive, non-main accounts? Is there such thing as a "benign sock-puppet"?
The source of my confusion is that the post "What are ...
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For rule-following sock puppets, is there a "guaranteed" way to request they be merged into a puppeteer account?
Background
I am musing on the idea of carrying out an elaborate joke where I create a puppeteer account named "Dio" and then create a rule-following sock puppet, using it to add value to the ...
anon
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How does Stack Exchange know that two accounts belong to the same person? [closed]
A related question (How do stackexchange sites know that two usernames correspond to the same person?) says it's because the email addresses are the same.
But in my case, the accounts were identified ...
user697531
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Is it okay to flag blatant spam using two accounts?
I understand that using two or more accounts to vote on the same post (or interact with it in almost any way) is against the rules. That being said, what if I encounter a blatant spam/scam post that ...
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Questions about merging sock puppet accounts
Recently I created two accounts, and I must admit, I use them to sock puppet (not on meta), but now I want to merge them, because it's really hard to live with this lie, and I have several questions:
...
user1040018
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Are Philippe and Rosie doppelgängers?
Looking at the profile of Sara Chipps ♦ (our Director of community), something struck me as odd. She has recently posted, amongst others, two posts welcoming the latest additions to the CM team, ...
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Are mods allowed to use secondary account(s) to cast non-decisive votes? [duplicate]
(Motivated by this, now falsely dupe-closed question.)
Mods can not cast non-decisive votes. Sometimes they would like to. Sometimes they would like to talk with users so that the diamond does not ...
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Accidentally upvoting an answer written by a main account while using a sockpuppet?
Let's say I have a main account that I've "retired" from and have created a new account to start afresh. Now say I was looking up an answer to a question and unknowingly stumbled upon an ...
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Can sock puppets be used to curate more content? [duplicate]
From a single account, one is rate-limited in how many votes can be cast per day (depending on privilege level for some vote types). Similarly, there is a rate-limit on how many reviews can be ...
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What should one do when they have been accused wrongly of using sockpuppets, and can the deleted accounts be recovered?
On the "A Day In The Penalty Box" post's comment section, someone posted,
If your account has been suspended, do you lose the opportunity of becoming a moderator? My brother has an Arqade ...
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Is it abusive to use a sockpuppet account for API calls? [duplicate]
Other questions ask about acceptable use of sockpuppet accounts, but I'm interested in if using multiple sockpuppet accounts for API calls. In my mind the answer would be that they're not abusive ...
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Can you use the association bonus to post a bounty on one of your alt accounts' questions?
I'd like some clarification on the rules for having alt accounts/sock puppet accounts. I suspect I have seen someone doing this, and think it is exploitative.
Account X posts a question on a site.
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Action upon suspected sock puppeting [duplicate]
About an hour ago I received a series of upvotes. All on different, unrelated questions and answers, all within a few minutes window. This obviously raised a red flag.
Should I do anything with this ...
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May a diamond moderator utilize a second, non-diamond account e.g. to cast regular close votes?
This question is prompted by: Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding close/open vote and Do moderators not have a way to just push a post into the close queue?. Basically, some ...
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How can I get a fresh start? [duplicate]
On stackoverflow I asked questions which were apparently preposterous. I got somehow suspended when creating my recreating my account. I assume this somehow gives me a bad name. Is there any way to ...
user392986
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Handling sock puppets farming rep via accepting answers, not upvoting
I've been keeping an eye on two accounts that are pretty obviously sock puppets, and are farming (small amounts of) rep off of each other. I believe they are sock puppets because:
The accounts were ...
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How many votes on questions by sock puppets does it take to suspend his account? [duplicate]
If a sock puppet votes on a question or an answer, how many times can it do that before the account gets suspended or deleted?
user536488
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Would this two-account situation be appropriate? [closed]
Disclaimer: I know self-answers are encouraged. Take extra/illicit/morally reprehensible/dishonest rep gain out of the equation.
This discussion will inform my actions on a similar online community.
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user527923
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Bad moderators behavior - Account deleted without any reason [closed]
I was deleted from Italian SE, my username was DaniChi, now I see “user5372".
I opened yet a ticket on May, 1st and my daughter (Marybnq) opened one too but for now, we had no response.
My daughter’s ...
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Is this a bug for reputation on 'Top Answers' on my network page?
I was recently suspended on Stack Overflow for a sockpuppet account that I used to upvote my questions and answers. On my network profile, it shows my top answer as being worth 5 vote score, but on SO,...
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Should we retract badges in case of serial voting by multiple sock puppets? [duplicate]
As far as I know all badges being earned once will be never retracted, e.g. when votes are changed on vote dependent badge like “great answer” etc. But what if the badge was earned by serial voting of ...
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I came across a review item from my family member. What should I do?
I think this is somewhat a rare case. We are allowed to invite friends and family members to join an Area 51 proposal and contribute to the proposal. We can also share a link to Social media plat ...
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What is the meaning of sock puppetry on Stack Exchange?
I have seen the terms socking, sock puppet, sock puppeting, sock puppetry flying around in different questions here, but what do they actually mean? I know what a sock puppet is in the real world is a ...
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When deleting as a sock don't move all accept votes to the Community user
Let's say I have user A with a sock puppet, B. B asks a question, A answers (somewhat poorly) but get accepted by B.
Then a diamond moderator comes along and verifies that B is a sock puppet and ...
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Is sock puppetry really that hard to handle?
I, like many other new users, struggle to get enough reputation do contribute in a way that fits us, like upvoting and providing helpful comments (one example here).
One argument for the limits is ...
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Why the name Eggs McLaren?
As you might know, this puppet account asked the first non-deleted question on Stack Overflow and is present on other SE sites as well.
I'm just curious what does the name mean and why that name was ...
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Troll usurps opponent's user name – What to do? [duplicate]
A well-known crank, let's call him "Wolfgang", uses ten different sock-puppets to dump his pseudo-scientific nonsense into several Stack Exchange sites. Every time another user, let's call him "Uwe", ...
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Sock-puppeting and multiple accounts [duplicate]
There's a probability I've made a mistake as Stack Exchange moderator, and I just want to understand if it is indeed the case.
So I've noticed that a particular user keeps posting quite low-...
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Avoid being banned when introducing others to SE
In order to get my girlfriend to join Stack Exchange, I sometimes write questions using her account and upvote these question with my own account.
I'm not doing this because she is my girlfriend and ...
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What to do about harassment? [duplicate]
This morning I happened to disagree with some newbie user on the best way to resolve a question. He suggested that it is absolutely the best way to directly access a static field in another class; ...
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Why is my account suddenly merged with a totally different user's account?
My account has been merged with another user (previously named "moderator") on the suspicion that the latter was my sock puppet, but this is not the case.
Now, that user is using my account ...
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Suspicious activity in the Area 51 proposal for Roblox
It is interesting to notice that a similar suspicious activity for the same proposal has already been reported in 2013
Yet, it has started again. It is the Roblox proposal again. It has surprisingly ...
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How can I flag illegal reputation farming?
How can I flag a person who is trying to earn dummy reputation?
Today I have seen 2 people who are doing something along the lines of this: One is asking and the other is answering and vice versa.
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Is it appropriate for a mod to use sockpuppets? [duplicate]
Yesterday in a SE site there was an answer claiming that the accepted and upvoted answer was blatantly wrong and there was a gross mistake.
The poster revealed that the accepted answer was by a ...
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Can't you hack the upvote system in overflow?
I just noticed something from the Mathematical Community. I had a question with 2 downvotes, (and I had 1 reputation before), making me still have 1 reputation. Then, for some reason, this random ...
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Can team members vote for my posts? [duplicate]
The situation is as follows: there are 6 people in the team, we work together and come up to an answer/question. They all have legit profiles - they are not sock puppets. However, sometimes we do ...
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Should I let someone I know login to Stack Exchange from my machine?
So there's this girl I know.
She's kind and funny and sweet and basically kinda awesome, and as we've gotten to know each other better, my participation in Stack Exchange has come up as a topic of ...
user201929
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I'm 99% certain there's some sockpuppet activity on a site, mods are unable to detect it, is there a higher level of escalation?
I don't want to go into any detail whatsoever on here, I just want to know the procedure for contacting an SE employee to discuss this further.
Who would be the appropriate person to contact, having ...
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Require a minimum rep to edit
Currently, there is no minimum rep required to edit a post, although low-rep user's edits become "suggested" edits and need to be approved to take effect.
However, such approved edits generate 2 rep ...
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Allow moderators to define reputation-limiting relationships between users who consistently display targeted voting
On Ask Ubuntu we've got a bunch of users who we believe to be friends at school together.
They ask questions for each other to answer
They vote for each other (and recently also against each other)
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You answer my question, I answer yours [duplicate]
Recently while visiting a question, I saw two users on Stack Overflow and found uncanny activity. So I visited their profile and saw that these users might be committing vote fraud. One user is ...
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What do to with ultra-sophisticated voting ring?
EDIT 3 Added a picture as a "proof" of what's going on (which may help other users catch such "advanced" voting rings):
In a twisted and weird way, now that my question has gotten 20+ upvotes here on ...
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Active bounties allow sock puppet gold to be hoarded
Background
As a result of another meta question highlighting suspicions of sockpuppety one user was recently suspended and another 2 were deleted. However, 3 hours before this happened (possibly ...
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Suspicious accounts copying my bounty answer
I've just had quite unpleasant experience with this question:
How can I highlight elements that match a regex in CKeditor?
First there was a guy who plainly copied/pasted my answer and got 2 instant ...
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Can SE codify or clarify sockpuppeteering in the Terms and Conditions and rules?
So as a moderator on Ask Ubuntu yesterday, I found a sockpuppet account and nuked it from orbit. I then suspended the puppeteer account through the standard moderator messages interface.
Usually when ...
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Getting a vote up by someone on the same network considered "a sock puppet"?
I am an intern at a company where a colleague knows my Stack Overflow account and he just upvoted a question of mine. I was wondering whether this is considered a "sock puppet". I told him not to ...
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