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In the Meta Stack Exchange FAQ of review tests (audits), it is mentioned:

Also, if you find something in the review audit system that makes audits extremely obvious (as in one can tell that a review is an audit in just a few seconds, with little to no extra investigation), feel free to report that flaw.

So, the goal of this post is to report such a flaw.

Screenshot of review test (audit)

In the above screenshot we can notice that the question has 0 answers. So it's pretty obvious to the reviewer that this review is an audit.

But there's also one more thing mentioned in the FAQ:

Easy-to-identify audits help legitimate reviewers pass and help better hone new reviewers' skills.

So is this a flaw or is it meant for new users to improve their reviewing skills?


After Zanna's suggestion (given in her answer), I asked a question in Meta Stack Exchange (link to the question).

2 Answers 2

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I don't know exactly how review audits are generated, but it looks like the question is displayed as is. If that is always the case, then a deleted answer would most probably cause a wrong count in one or other of the small numbers on the right panels as you noticed here (other answers count or answer count) and reveal the auditness at a glance. I have spotted audits this way on a few occasions. It is indeed a flaw of the kind that post is telling you to report, because it only takes a second to check whether answers=other answers+1 or not. I am not sure how it could be fixed, but it may be worth posting a bug report about it on Meta Stack Exchange (I or anyone else can do that if you prefer not to).

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Audits are usually for identifying and suspend "robot reviewers" who click on "No action needed" or up/down vote for every post they encounter. If you observed the answers count, you're surely not a robot and were paying attention while reviewing. As of now the question on which that answer was posted has 2 more deleted answers (visible to 10k+ users).

There are many flaws in audits. For example:

  • Once you're an established user, you can split the votes. And if you do that on the deleted posts, you'll get "This post has been deleted" (if you have <10k points) or see discrepancy in vote count (10k+ users can see splited the votes on deleted posts as well).

  • Once you get edit privileges, you'll see suggested edits from random users and once audit is done, it'll be owned by Community bot.

    Funny thing is that once I got an audit from my sock puppet account. (Sock puppet accounts are allowed as long as they are not used to increase the main account's reputation or amplify its votes, or vice versa).

  • Once you get cast close and reopen votes, you'll get access to close and reopen votes queues. There, in audits, you may see people who don't have enough privileges or visited site some decades ago have cast close vote recently.

Also, in audits the displayed reputation points may not be the "actual" points. So, you may see some discrepancies in the reputation points as well. You're not reviewing the posts, but a mirage. So, I'm not sure if they are bugs that are to be considered.

And lastly thank you for all the good work you're doing in reviews. Happy reviewing :)

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    People whose only concern is passing audits to continue reviewing without actually reading will look for easy giveaways.
    – Zanna Mod
    Sep 8, 2020 at 10:27

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