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Recently, I have seen an issue that has been prominent for a long time, and I don't think that the StackExchange/AskUbuntu staff have done anything about. Here's how it goes.

  1. 2 People who are friends both get above 125 Reputation on AskUbuntu, so that their votes are seen.
  2. They both ask questions that may be ignored due to a few reasons.. including (just inside the boundaries, but not about Ubuntu. Knowledge of an advanced script that no-body knows how to fix, etc.)
  3. Then they paste an answer to their friend, their friend upvotes the question, answers it, then friend 1 accepts the answer and they both get reputation for doing literally nothing.

I am not naming names but when people jump from 600 rep. to 1250 In a single day, something is going on.

What is going to be done about this?

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    Please clarify. Your 1st point doesn't make any sense, nobody's votes are "seen" and 125 rep gives you the right to downvote. The only way of getting from 600 to 1250 in a single day is winning bounties. There are automated methods and tools available to mods to detect what I think you're describing but I can't be sure since you haven't mentioned any specific examples and your 1st and 3rd points don't really make sense.
    – terdon
    Oct 21, 2015 at 20:57
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    Examples would be reeeeeeaaaally interesting. No doubt some occasions of incidental friendly(/unfriendly) voting (or more likely: sympathizing voting) is unavoidable (one almost would say we look like humans). I am pretty sure however that structural abuse is not happening unnoticed or unattended.
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Oct 21, 2015 at 22:04
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    If it goes on for a while, it will be detected as serial voting and undone by the system.
    – muru
    Oct 22, 2015 at 2:58
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    Some unknown stranger was kind to me and upvoted every question or answer on my profile, whether they were of decent quality or not. I was pretty stoked to have gained the maximum 200 rep in a day, but the rep points were removed the next day as serial voting. I was immediately pretty miffed, but when I read about the reasons behind it, realised it makes sense. The system does work!
    – Arronical
    Oct 22, 2015 at 13:18
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    The system is well prepared to deal with this :)
    – Seth
    Oct 22, 2015 at 14:19

2 Answers 2

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I am not naming names but when people jump from 600 rep. to 1250 In a single day, something is going on.

You will need to edit into your question real questions and users to make this logical. Reputation can NOT go from 600 to 1250 in a single day unless bounties are involved or 30 questions got accepted.

  • The 1st one is probably not a problem since it would cost 1 of those users that same amount of reputation to create the bounty. Plus you can have a max of 1 bounty at a time of at a max of 500 rep. Could just fit the max bounty (600+200 normal rep or upvotes leaves 450 rep).
  • The 2nd one will get caught by the system (there is an automated reputation checker that catches serial upvoters). 30 upvotes or even 10 upvotes on the same day is something that would attract attention.

What is going to be done about this?

(Probably) Nothing at the moment. This really requires actual user names and examples. If you feel uncomfortable naming users you can also go to chat (20 rep required) and talk to a moderator.

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Recently, I have seen an issue that has been prominent for a long time, and I don't think that the Stack Exchange / Ask Ubuntu staff have done anything about.

Oh they have. Serial voting has been prevented from the begining

Here's how it goes.

  1. 2 People who are friends both get above 125 Reputation on AskUbuntu, so that their votes are seen.

What do you mean votes are seen? No one can see anyone's votes - not even moderators can see more than voting trends.

  1. They both ask questions that may be ignored due to a few reasons.. including (just inside the boundaries, but not about Ubuntu. Knowledge of an advanced script that no-body knows how to fix, etc.)

Right...

  1. Then they paste an answer to their friend, their friend upvotes the question, answers it, then friend 1 accepts the answer and they both get reputation for doing literally nothing.

So they get +10 and then +15 (so +25) for answering a question? Answering a question about "an advanced script that no-body knows how to fix" is not a bad thing.

I am not naming names but when people jump from 600 rep. to 1250 In a single day, something is going on.

600 to 1250 is a change of 650. To get that you need to gain a bounty of 500 plus a 200 reputation (capped) plus 3 accepts. That's quite infeasible to be honest.

11 people have done it. The most recent was almost 1 year ago -November 2014. That was 7 months before you signed up - so your numbers are totally wrong. I'm quite sure those 7 people have not been cheating with this.

What is going to be done about this?

Serial voting is already auto reversed.

If you have noticed something that looks odd, feel free to post it in chat pinging a diamond moderator. You can even use the contact us link at the base of the page.

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