Looks like that guy is joining stacks and then giving away his association bonus as bounties. Look at his network profile and you'll see a one rep point per stack. He only joined two days ago.
@Lilienthal I saw you refunded rep when undoing bounty, what if user decides to try it again? Their activity at MSE makes me feel that it's quite possible
@gnat It's possible. There's been some discussion amongst network moderators with no clear consensus. It would likely depend on whether he bounties the same question, whether he leaves a comment justifying his bounty (as he did on some other sites) and who on our mod team ends up seeing/handling it. It looks like that bounty was already previously flagged and left alone by another mod (which I saw too late).
I see the argument that this is a beneficial action but I don't agree in this instance considering the question he picked and his lack of involvement, which is why I ended up removing the bounty.
(Removing the bounty always refunds the rep, we don't get a choice in that.)
@Lilienthal oh, so user gets rep back and can repeat bounty. If it turns out harmful again, the only way to stop them seems to be "cool down" suspension (along with undoing bounty)
I don't see this as being malicious. Even if these were rewarded to sock accounts, it's only 100 rep per stack. Certainly isn't going to upset the balance of the SE universe. It's probably taking up more moderator head-space than is needed.
wonder what happens if this user deletes account at one of the "bountied" sites and joins it again a bit later. I've read somewhere that system simply checks some database flag in network profile and awards bonus rep if flag value is true (like "yeah we already know this user is trusted enough for 100 repz"). If bonus is awarded again in cases like that, this would open some interesting possibilities for abuse... — gnat3 hours ago
As for your comment on the meta, I'm also curious whether he gets an association bonus again but that's really not a major concern in my view. If he actually started doing that I'd wager that he'd be hit with a network-wide suspension virtually immediately.
@gnat That still doesn't really answer how this can be viewed as "abuse" or damaging to the wider community. One user per stack will be getting a 100 rep bonus. Yay for them, I say!
Someone who cried a lot made it to HNQ, and scored a lot of points. Then a lot of other people started crying too in the hope of making some easy points. Don't read too much into it.
It is one user doing it now, but if this trick becomes popular, several users may start doing it. If such a question hits HNQ, it will certainly "help".
I'd just deal with it as an when it happens. In the meantime, raise the rep level needed to award bonuses to 125, as was suggested in the meta discussion. It does seem a bit pointless for people to award bonuses on other people's questions when they've made little to no contribution to a stack.
@Pete I suppose this is a case of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". I am not sure it is even necessary to place any restriction to award bounty. We allow users to upvote answers on communities that they have never been to before, and that does a lot more damage than awarding bounties.
Making any special rules for bounty now sounds like an unnecessary patchwork to me. It is like saying, "look we give you an association bonus because we trust you know what to do with these privileges ... but, no, wait, except for that bounty thing, we don't trust you with that."
As I mentioned, sometimes I get a task by the phone when my English boss is outside. And he is making it difficult for me to express the task with a lot of details. Therefore I wonder which expressions or sentences to ask him to describe the task briefly and politely. Here are my expressions:
I...
@Pete It's clearly using the bounty system for something that's outside it's normally intended use. Who knows what he's trying to accomplish but giving increased visibility to questions that need it is clearly not it. Couple that with the fact that it's likely meant as a statement considering his username that makes this something that I don't think should be condoned.
As long as you have an ID badge - we have additional security to ensure that no non-employees take any cake.
@JoeStrazzere - I've always felt that people on SE will often strive hardest to find a reason to close a question, and then only answer it if they can't find a reason not to close it. Personally (like you), I'd rather help people than tell them they can't ask a question correctly.
Then again, I am a bottom-feeder who can do no more than tell people how to answer emails....
Is there a way to encourage reviewers - especially new ones - to use "Skip" button when they are hesitant and not 100% sure what to do?
For example, this edit was approved, although it is 100% incorrect and should be rejected at once. The answer will be considered wrong and hence will get down-v...
@ChristopherEstep That sounds like a great idea. The 25k analytics privilege is pretty unimpressive presently. It is supposed to be a "pinnacle" of privileges, but that glory is practically taken by the 20k trusted user privilege.
I think the best way to deal with that is to just ignore it. Like I said earlier, he is leaving the network soon anyway, so why bother? Besides, you know, don't feed the ...... :P
That thread has talk of raising the bounty rep to 125, but I think that's too low. I think it should be 500 unless it's your own question you're putting bounty on. You should have to have participated somewhat in an exchange before rewarding answers with anything more than an upvote. IMHO
I agree with Christopher, however maybe 500 is too high. I know it is the max bounty possible, so it is a valid amount, but still I think is too high. The differentiation between your question and other's is also a good idea
All of these examples point to the fact that the concept of tying reputation to privileges is not perfect. We give association bonus because we trust them to use the privileges that come with it ... but, eh, no, not the "award bounty" privilege. We don't trust them to use the upvote privilege correctly either ... especially noticed on HNQ. So what's the point of association bonus? Just scrap it altogether.
We don't trust trusted users (oi!?) to use their privileges correctly either, hence there is a need to do an "automated" review of reviews. And what is the guarantee that the computer gets it right? So let's have another privilege to verify the computer reviews, and then one more computer review to review that.
@ChristopherEstep you don't understand why review actions are public (as opposed to similar actions done by diamond moderators), don't you. Even 1-rep users, even unregistered visitors can see reviews, why do you think system was designed that way (from the very start). Hint: coonsider how many reviewers and reviews are there and how many diamond moderators would it take to audit review decisions...
...(or, since you mention 25K, how many trusted users would it take and how it is possible that these would spend their time scrutinizing review decisions instead of providing content)
@JoeStrazzere nah, it's ok. I just cleared that up because of what I just said to gnat :) I don't really see how further back/forth on that is going to be adding value and just purged the convo for that reason
also that comment was for a question that I just deleted (not directed to you guys at all)
@gnat That comment was specifically a response to your Meta question - you posed a question to the entire Workplace community when you really wanted to know why a specific user acted how they did.
Now you have spoken to that user in chat and gotten a response. It's clear that the two of you don't agree and no amount of discussion is going to change that. Drawing the conversation on longer will not have any positive result.
@Lilienthal this thing brings ~100K clicks a day. I think that's about as much as whole Stack Overflow or maybe even more. Which means it is probably safer to assume that we don't understand something about it :)
@Kaz I don't like the colors, try using material design for a matching color palette .... LOL joking. So you actually have used that Word Cloud as a CV?
Someone who cried a lot made it to HNQ, and scored a lot of points. Then a lot of other people started crying too in the hope of making some easy points. Don't read too much into it.
As I mentioned, sometimes I get a task by the phone when my English boss is outside. And he is making it difficult for me to express the task with a lot of details. Therefore I wonder which expressions or sentences to ask him to describe the task briefly and politely. Here are my expressions:
I...
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