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I got curious about the Mortarboard badge (200+ rep in one day) today and took a peek at several awardees' profiles to see what I could learn from their high score answers. I discovered that for a few (links withheld to avoid the appearance of spitefulness but available upon request), the rep points of the only 200+ day subsequently were voided in a "Serial upvoting reversed" action, which apparently is what happens if you upvote yourself with a sock account or conspire with a friend for mutual upvotes. If the system has determined that the awarding of those points was illegitimate enough to remove them, is it desirable or intentional that the badge recognizing them remains? Should I be asking this somewhere else?

(It also doesn't seem like counting bounty-related points towards this badge really jives with the extreme quantity+quality of activity that is otherwise implied by 200+/day, but that's a separate issue. Yes that would apply to me.)

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    Quite frankly, invalid badges are the least of my worries, as long as we don't get the "TRUST ME, I HAZ GOLD BADGE!" posts too often.
    – user98085
    Commented Jun 13, 2013 at 2:31
  • I'm one of the few :( It happened three or four days ago. I even saw part of it happening. All in a couple of minutes. Next morning, my rep was back to normal but the badge is still there!
    – user25656
    Commented Jun 13, 2013 at 5:52
  • So there is also the possibility that the 'auto-reversal of serial upvoting' heuristic got one wrong, here or there, so the apparently illegitimate badge could still be legitimate. (Nevertheless, it is a bit odd.)
    – belacqua
    Commented Jun 13, 2013 at 21:29
  • @belacqua, it was definite serial upvoting. My rep was rising so fast that it was clear someone made a list of my questions/answers and was just voting them up without taking time to read them.
    – user25656
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 5:10

2 Answers 2

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I can't speak for the badges other than to say I don't think we (mere Moderator demigods) can remove them. StackExchange staffers don't play by the same rules as us so they could probably do something about it, I'm just not sure they'd be that interested as it's probably quite an involved process.

However, even with our limited powers we can taunt and/or suspend. If you spot somebody doing something you think is ethically wrong, feel free to flag something they're doing and we'll look into it at try to take the appropriate action.

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  • Are you sure? It seemed like Bill could...
    – Seth
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 4:38
  • @Seth Who's Bill?
    – Oli Mod
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 8:07
  • Sorry, should have been more specific (I was tired). I thought Bill the Lizard could do it, but after looking again it was indeed an employee.
    – Seth
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 14:17
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Most badges (almost all I think) only get revoked manually. By a Stack Exchange employee (dev or community manager).

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