[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in body (68): E[X] derivation in Coupon Collecting Problem in Ross Probability Models by psue on math.SE

@Jack I asked the question because I cannot understand your motives. You said "This one is not going to be in your deletion list anymore. No more.", as if you have superiority over me. Given your demanding tone, I wanted to know what your moral stand on cheating really is. Either you support facilitating cheating, or you don't, and I hope that your refusal to answer my question does not imply that you support it.

Delete: DA, DB, DC, DD, DE, DF, DG, DH

Delete: DI, DJ, DK, DL, DM, DN, DO, DP

duplicates This today's question has several duplicates. Perhaps the two oldest ones are good candidates for duplicate targets. I have chosen one of them, perhaps somebody could add a duplicate close vote with this question as the duplicate target: Evaluating Limit Question $\lim\limits_{n\to \infty}\ \frac{1+\sqrt[2]{2}+\sqrt[3]{3}+\cdots+\sqrt[n]{n}}{n}=1$?

@MartinSleziak The question is already closed, now a gold badge holder is needed to add another target to the duplicate list. Perhaps @RRL can do that?

D1, D2, D3.

D4, D5, D6.

D7, D8, D9.

D10, D11, D12.

D13, D14, D15.

C1, C2, C3.

C4, C5, C6.

C7, C8, C9.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer, blacklisted user (72): Partial fraction with a constant as numerator ✏️ by Best Method on math.SE

@Jack This is the last time I am saying that my question was not about that specific post, but about your motives given your high-handed attitude towards me. You again mention "this site", which I did not. I therefore assume you are unwilling to divulge your true opinion on cheating in general (not restricted to this site).

If you do not want to answer my question about cheating in general, you have no right to stipulate any restriction on me. That's it.

I'm not going to respond to your failure to respond to my question.

This old question is a duplicate, but at the moment the target is wrong. Does anyone around here have the approapriate gold badge to correct this ?

@Jack Since you claim there are no cheater here, this implies that you don't believe that those who engage in voting rings are cheaters. But at least one user has gained between 30k - 50K rep (iirc) from her voting ring (with hard evidence), and though she (and cohorts) got long suspensions, not all of that rep was removed (too much work to do so). That is not "cheating" by your definition?

There are also examples of blatant plagiarism of others answers (sadly by the same user). Again, you don't consider that cheating?

Alas, likely none of that would occur were it not for the gamification of the platform.

ANother example is users who have sockpuppters that vote on each other's answers (which is easily detectable by mod tools). So none of this is "cheating" to you?

One of the reasons that former mods like Jyrki and I are so sensitive to these matters is that we have seen how bad these abuses can get (mods have tools and info not available to regular users). If you saw how ugly it can get then I suspect you might change your views. Some users have gotten so hooked by the gamification drug that they have not let ethics restrain their activity (apparently because - sadly - they let their (math) ego get hopelessly entangled with puerile "rep")

Also I recall reading that some users use their high-rep here on their resumes, e.g. to help gain tutoring work. If that rep is gained unethically, then imho that is cheating students that they tutor, by knowingly misrepresenting their expertise.

@Jack Yes, of course I refer to that sentence you wrote about cheating in general. It is good to see you (finally!) agree that there are some actions here that meet your definition of "cheating". For a minute I was worried that there might be some users who don't consider as cheating actions like those I described above. That's a scary thought.

I think it was wrong to delete that meta post on the huge voting ring. It is useful to have to point out how wrong things can go. It can - of course - be stripped of user names if that was the concern. Alas, I no longer have the link so I can't recall if there were other concerns.

Did anyone save a link to those meta posts?

The plagiarism meta thread still exists so at least there is still some historical evidence to show how bad things can get without proper checks & balances. The huge voting ring was far worse. This is one of the primary reasons why I am so sensitive to anything that smells like the beginning of a voting ring.

If we have the chance to reason with users before they get hopelessly hooked on the rep drug then we may be able to nip many of these problems in the bud.

@BillDubuque I don't really know which post you're talking about. But if you remember something about the post, you could still be able to find it. For example, if you have a reasonable guess which tag might have been used on that post: data.stackexchange.com/meta.math/query/845253/…

@MartinSleziak Good point. Your search turned up one related thread, but not the one I was trying to recall.

Yes, I just chose one tag as an example. (All that I'm saying is that some info is stored in SEDE also for deleted posts - sometimes it might help to locate a post.)

@MartinSleziak Iirc there was one thread that gave strong evidence that the ring was active for at least a few years, and some users were getting obvious ring votes of over 100 rep/day from the ring at times. That amounted to a huge amount of unethically gained rep, much of which never reversed (the SE staff only reversed very recent stuff since it was too much effort to (reliably) identify it all)

-_-

If - as likely - the ring was active for a few years then there could have been as many as 50K fake ring votes cast. Among other detriments, these votes artificially raised the visibility of (likely) poor answers, making it harder for readers to locate the "best" answers. Try to comprehend the amount of damage that did to the site. It is important to learn from these mistakes. What starts out as something that may seem harmless can quickly spiral out of control due to the gamification devil.

you can't learn from it, if the evidence is deleted

@skullpatrol Yes, that's one of my points. It'd be helpful to be able to point GENTLE users at some history so they can avoid repeating such. I think many of the users who got sucked into that ring initially justified their actions in way analogous to ways that GENTLE users are using to attempt to justify some of their current actions. Little-by-little these "infinitesimal" ethical violations add up - leading users to get way in over their head, esp. with a persuasive ringleader nudging them on.

(ringleader refers to said old voting ring, not anything currently happening in GENTLE)

Btw, browsing that old thread reminded me of this rich answer a few months later. Hmm...

Alas, CRUDE deleted it recently.

This could well be one of the best baits on the history of the site ... hook, line and sinker!

The author appeared only for that one question. C'mon, confess! (it wasn't me)

There are a few more examples of such MSE fishing expeditions that account for some of the heartiest laughs I've had here. Alas, I didn't save them all. Helpful for relaxing after more serious endeavors such as pearl diving with Jryki.

Oops, @Jyrki

@Jack Yes, it may be that the evidence was in comments there, but unfortunately a mod deleted them. Iirc there were links giving indubitable evidence of such ring voting happening over many years.

Even richer, I just noticed there is a comment on that answer ("Needs another TU! +1") from one of her voting ring members (who was also suspended). They really reeled 'em in on that one. Such comments was one of the ways they solicited reciprocal voting before it started being automated

And they got 5 upvotes for that gem of an answer - likely almost all from the voting ring.

Meanwhile, the rest of us honest folks are lucky to get one upvote - esp. if we resist FGITW temptations to take our time to post more insightful answers long after the question is off the front page.

?? did i miss something about Namaste?

I think it's best not to dig up too much old dirt. The possibility of there being a voting ring of users producing reasonable but not top notch material, of course, is there. But there are other explanations to less useful posts raking in a lot of upvotes. The standards of the voter base may simply be slipping. So without evidence it may be best not to think about it too much. I'm sure the diamond bearers occasionally check out the limited vote stats they can see.

Sorry, I'm not at liberty to tell exactly what their tools will tell them.

@JyrkiLahtonen No one claimed there's a similar voting ring now (but I wouldn't be surprised to learn of such). Rather, I brought it up only as an example of how bad things can get, and how easy it is to get sucked into such rings little-by-little. Iirc some folks were shocked to learn that certain users got sucked into it since - unlike the ringleader - it was uncharacteristic compared to earlier behavior (I wasn't active in their tags - mostly calculus and logic - so I don't know firsthand).

That said, I do agree that it is best to focus on issues and not users, so we should strive to avoid any mention of user names in discussions like this inasmuch as possible. We did try to enforce that policy on meta for many years (e.g. removing user names but leaving the discussion) but it was not always consistent - depending on the whims of the particular moderator or mod team.

^^^ I don't know firsthand if it was uncharacteristic (to avoid ambiguity there)

Understood @Bill. I am possibly overly sensitive about digging up that case. One major player of that ring got their account deleted (together with all the votes).

@JyrkiLahtonen By their request, right? Imho, for such a major ethics violation all of the accounts should have been deleetd and all of their votes nullified since it had gobe on for so many years. My impression is that SE almost did that.

Also, may be I should avoid naming users in the on-going discussion? That is arguably bad. I do it because I "crossed that bridge" already. May be I should reconsider.

@BillDubuque Yes, the account deletion was by their own request. I don't know about vote handling. SE staff made that decision. I don't know, whether that was also by request. None of my business. I just noticed a significant drop in the rep tallies of certain users on that day.

@JyrkiLahtonen By my records that user had about 106K when they deleted their account (in protest to the voting ring suspension) so likely it did affect many users. One thing is for sure - things were a lot less boring back then. It was far more "interesting" arguing about which 100K+ users account should be undeleted rather than some measly PSQ! Those were the days....

The combined rep of the suspended users in the voting ring was about 400,000 (which was a lot back in early 2015). It would be very interesting to know how much of that 400K was gained unethically. Something to ponder about the grand scale of the operation.