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I'm sory if title is little bit off and some might find it even rude, but that was my first reaction when I read this question and answers.

As someone who is fairly familiar with SE network, but in the very same time the very beginner in SWOTOR, the answers are just confusing.

Why this reputation-grinding answer is not deleted ASAP. User itself in comment stated what he is doing. Not only this behaviour is simply wrong, but the whole concept of this site is undermined - as someone who is looking for an answer - I'm just confused.

And above all, why did he got 25 points from community?

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  • 2
    He got the bounty because it was automatically awarded, instead of manually awarded.
    – Raven Dreamer
    May 3, 2012 at 18:51
  • 12
    The lack of action against this user has disappointed me as well.
    – Invader Skoodge
    May 3, 2012 at 18:53
  • I find this hilarious. It was pretty pointless anyway, as I would've been awarded the bounty regardless.
    – ediblecode
    May 4, 2012 at 12:37
  • 3
    @danRhul I love a good joke as much as the next guy. In fact, probably more. But I can tell you from personal experience the community doesn't take kindly to being 'played', made to look bad, or otherwise abused for the sake of entertainment. You're going to end up suspended if you're not careful.
    – GnomeSlice
    May 4, 2012 at 12:55
  • @GnomeSlice I didn't do it for entertainment, I did it for reputation (still on a net gain by the way guys, you should probably keep up the downvoting).
    – ediblecode
    May 4, 2012 at 12:56
  • @danRhul It's not about bounty itself, it's about trust in the community and the representation of the site. Something went terrible wrong - is it community, is it you or did mods fail; I'm not quite sure. But just imagine I was for the very first time on this site and saw mess like that and read comments under the answers - I would NEVER EVER trust again this site. Like Poe once said: "Never more, never more..."
    – StupidOne
    May 4, 2012 at 13:02
  • @StupidOne As if that would be the only thing to be put off by on this site. The community giveth, the community taketh
    – ediblecode
    May 4, 2012 at 13:07
  • 1
    I've just stumpled upon this discussion, and I honestly can't see anything confusing about the questions or the answer. I'm guessing the content in question has been removed?
    – heishe
    May 7, 2012 at 15:19
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    @heishe It was. Read the badp's answer (from "Team replies back:").
    – StupidOne
    May 7, 2012 at 19:25
  • 1
    @StupidOne I still don't get what happened.
    – Mateen Ulhaq
    Jun 2, 2012 at 1:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Because there are no grounds to delete the answer. I can't really understand the topic (ah, the joys of moderating plaintext gibberish), but it's from what I understand the "best" answer to that question that is currently available on the Internet. The fact the asker's been less than honest in attempting to wrangle the bounty reward out of it is not really relevant to the contents of the answer.

I feel that any action (including downvoting correct answers) other than separating the (apparently, good) answer from the (definitely, bad) answerer does not do justice to the greater good of giving great answers to great questions: the whole point of this website.

From my understanding of how things work here, by anonymizing the answer, the answerer would simply lose all reputation gained or lost from his answer; that wouldn't give the bounty back to Sorean, but from what I understand Sorean wasn't going to be awarded the bounty anyway without danRhul's downvote. This, however, is just my proposal for fixing this one problem. I cannot implement it myself and there's not mod agreement for enacting it. The agreement, rather, seems to simply ban the dude.

Truth of the matter, however, is that we (as moderators) don't have any tools to detect this particular kind of voting fraud short of the user spitting the beans out — which did happen here! I don't want the user to think "I wish I hadn't been honest! Next time I'm just going to keep my mouth shut."

"If you're going to commit fraud at least be quiet about it" is a message that makes a lot of sense, but I'd much rather send a different message: "Don't do fraud in the first place: we will bust you." I've contacted the team about it, we'll see what comes out of this.

In the meantime I encourage bounty placers to not let their bounty be automatically awarded.

Team replies back:

  • This specific situation sucks too hard to be handled generally. A tied bounty with two answers that fail to gain enough votes and the asker can't award it because he's suspended... we should've just refunded the bounty when we suspended the guy. It would've avoided the whole problem to begin with.

  • For the specific solution the team "orders" and I now will:

    1. delete the top answer
    2. move the bit that's only in the top answer into the other answer
    3. cancel Mark's bounty
    4. CW the entire mess
    5. Purge the relevant comments.
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    Before you suggest "convert to community wiki", something I can do: IIRC, converting to community wiki prevents all future vote changes from resulting in reputation changes and does not work backwards.
    – badp
    May 3, 2012 at 19:04
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    Contacting the team is good, they can remove the bounty if they see fit. On a personal note, I found the assumption that it was about Legacy exp to be strange and the answer therefore not useful, and the addition of the other number to be even worse because the reference was technically there but not explicit; he should have said it came from the other answer.
    – Matthew Read
    May 3, 2012 at 19:13
  • @MatthewRead Unfortunately it is hard to moderate when you have no idea what you're talking about :(
    – badp
    May 3, 2012 at 19:24
  • Goes both ways -- it's also hard to moderate fairly when you know too much about the content and sometimes have your own answer in the mix, hehe. In any case, I hope my comment was taken as predictive rather than instructive; the rational part of me agrees that we shouldn't vote based on the asker instead of the post, despite knowing that wasn't about to happen.
    – Matthew Read
    May 3, 2012 at 19:32
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    This is a good answer, but I still must disagree (-1). Leaving this answer around with the ridiculous comments (gloating, etc) and editing history to it is just a broken window on the site. It should be deleted if not as a lesson for the user, but to help the site in general.
    – Resorath
    May 3, 2012 at 19:32
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    Thanks for reporting back on the team's decision, I think this is a very satisfactory outcome.
    – Matthew Read
    May 3, 2012 at 21:45
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    @badp could you take a screenshot for me? I spent 10 minutes determining what's wrong with the question and answers, and then I managed it's deleted. Could I see it please?
    – Martin.
    May 3, 2012 at 22:43
  • [Please stop hurting your own case --bp], banning me for a downvote? When all other users have done is downvote me (for which I can understand on the SWOTOR question) but since, people have actively started downvoting my questions/answers across StackExchange. Would you propose they be banned as well? As it falls under the same criteria for banning you have set with my downvote? No, it's a downvote, get over it
    – ediblecode
    May 4, 2012 at 12:40
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    @danRhul You're also continuing the vandalize posts on the question being discussed against the will of the community and moderators. Which is bannable.
    – GnomeSlice
    May 4, 2012 at 12:56
  • @GnomeSlice I didn't vandalise it. I rollbacked edits that were done by moderators to give an alternate answer, which isn't a cause for edit.
    – ediblecode
    May 4, 2012 at 12:59
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    @danRhul Entering edit wars with moderators typically is a bad idea, I'm sure you can understand that. :)
    – badp
    May 4, 2012 at 13:18
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    @danRhul The post was fixed, and you're suspended. Sounds to me like the mods are doing just fine.
    – Beofett
    May 4, 2012 at 15:13
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    @danRhul - Just one small tip - next time when you decide to go in open war with community, don't be so stupid and leave your LinkenId profile. I'm very close to write one big negative review about you and I'm pretty sure people would stand in a line to sign on it. So please, stop!
    – StupidOne
    May 6, 2012 at 9:24
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    @StupidOne He can't reply to you. He's suspended.
    – badp
    May 6, 2012 at 12:07
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    @badp Why did I have impression you could post on meta sites even under suspension? Nevermind, I guess all this drama is over then. Shame it has come to suspending one of member of this site, but I guess some people just want to see the world burn.
    – StupidOne
    May 6, 2012 at 16:14

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