was recently caught plagiarising a significant number of answers on both Stack Overflow and on . Many of the plagiarised answers were deleted by a moderator.  Apparently this user wanted to regain his lost rep so badly that he engaged in voting fraud, and had his answers serially upvoted to the point where he gained an association bonus for all of his Stack Exchange accounts on September 16th:    The system reversed the serial upvotes, but it appears that his association bonus remains for his Stack Exchange accounts. The user's SO rep before his suspension totaled about 65 (minus the 100 bonus), while his rep on Share Point only totals 125 (again, not including the 100 bonus).    Additionally, this user's  was plagiarised, though a moderator recently edited it to include somewhat better attribution.  Users should not retain association bonus from voting fraud  It is my understanding that the association bonus  well enough to be trusted with skipping new user restrictions on other Stack Exchange sites.  However, this user has quite literally cheated his way to "earning" his association bonus. He did not, in fact, actually earn it. Yet the system appears to be letting him keep it.  I was about to suggest a change in the system to allow moderators to revoke the bonus, but I suppose that this sort of thing happens infrequently, to the point where it's probably not worth the devs' time to implement such a moderator tool. Would it be possible to just make the appropriate change in the database manually, this one time?  I considered the case that the retention of the bonus , but it does not appear that way to me.  Related: .
123233
When a user's rep gets bloated because of serial upvoting, and as result the user is given the association bonus, shouldn't that association bonus also be reversed in case of serial upvoting reversal?
90647
In  (not feature request), :  ... if we find that people are abusing the system their accounts may get suspended. I would consider that kind of behavior abuse.  Well  sure qualifies. He has 11 Stack Exchange accounts and has in the last day spammed at least 8 of them to gain the Suffrage and sometimes Vox Populi badges. That's over 250 votes† in just a few hours! (And  -- while voting on other user's posts too.) I guarantee that he's not voting on those posts for/by their merits. Here's when he scammed the Suffrage badge per site (while also gaming the Vox Populi on some sites):                      - 2017-03-11 16:23:15Z                     - 2017-03-11 17:41:41Z                     - 2017-03-11 18:08:13Z                           - 2017-03-11 19:25:10Z                  - 2017-03-11 19:55:16Z                               - 2017-03-11 20:00:49Z               - 2017-03-11 20:03:13Z  - 2017-03-11 21:11:40Z  Note that he got the badge on three sites within an 8 minute span (but that might just be job run times). Please revoke badges gained through improper voting. And, maybe also warn/suspend such abusive voters.   † His account vote totals don't show all votes as some serial voting was reversed -- but none of the ill-gotten badges were.
18223
Some preface: I have an alternate account that I'm using to gain rep in order to help test/build bots for the  community on stackoverflow. Bot accounts are essentially users, and they need 20 rep to talk in chat, and 50 in order to add comments.  On this account (with 23 rep), I flagged a question as a duplicate of the wrong post by accident:        When I retracted the duplicate flag, I noticed that the comment was not removed. When I attempted to remove it, there was no [x] icon to the right of the post, and I had no recourse other than to leave the comment up (Which was 100% a wrong duplicate for that post). Additionally, I couldn't even flag it for mod attention, because it was my comment!
77383
I've just been the 'victim' of some serial up-voting:    This has pushed me over the rep cap for the day, so any other up-votes I receive today won't 'earn' the rep so-to-speak.  My question is this: What happens when these serial up-votes are inevitably reversed when the midnight script runs? At what point do those votes that previously didn't count towards my reputation get converted into actual reputation points? Is it automatic, or after a reputation re-calc, etc.?  I realise there are plenty of questions about serial up-voting on this site, but after trawling through most (all?) of them I couldn't find one that discussed how the rep cap is affected by the reversal.  I know I could just wait and see what happens but I'm impatient ;)
43497
Most of us have seen on the profile page a loss of reputation citing as a reason "User was removed". This reason comes with the useful link:  which explains (emphasis mine):     This message means that a user who voted for one of your posts had their account deleted (either by request or due to violating the network's terms of service). As a result, all of their votes were removed, and the reputation you gained or lost from them was undone. The resultant reputation change could be any amount; it could even be a reputation gain if enough of the removed votes were downvotes. All the reputation changes from a single user's deletion are rolled into a single event in the reputation page labelled "User was removed".      This removal occurs whenever a user is deleted, unless that user had a very high reputation score. Because high-reputation users have usually cast a great many votes, removing all of them could be that much more disruptive to other users. In such cases, the staff use a special deletion that preserves the votes, resulting in no reputation change for those who had been voted on by that user.   However, I have got recently such a message on one of beta sites, where I have no posts. Here is  on that site. As you can see, I have only got points from association bonus,  and the last event in my reputation history is the reputation loss with the message 'User was removed'. (Notice that the post, where I made suggested edit, was not deleted. And the users who approved the posts are Community♦ and one another user, who did not delete their account.)  You can also see from  on that particular site that I have posted no questions/answers there so far. Which means there are no votes on my posts which could have been removed.     Why this did happen? How can I lose reputation points in this way if I have never made a post on that site?   I am not sure if this is a . (Feel free to remove the tag if it does not fit the question.) (EDIT: The answer and the comments posted so far indicate, that it is not a bug, so I have removed the tag from the question.) But if there is some reason why reputation posts can be lost even without having some posts and actual votes on the posts, then the description of "User was removed" seems to be a bit imprecise. (Of course, if it is a very rare edge case, it is probably not that important to have it included in the explanation.)    Just a short disclaimer: I do not care that much for the 2 points I lost. (Obviously, it would be very silly to make a fuss just for 2 points, and even more on a site which I do not frequent that much.) But if this could be indication of some hidden bug, it might be interesting to know more about this.    I have also noticed two related questions       In both cases in some answers or in comments as a possible explanation was given that probably a post, where a suggested edit was made, has been deleted. As you can see from the links I, this is not the case here.
6361
We're having , and this week, nominations opened up. A user nominated themselves, but they've been suspended elsewhere on the network and are currently suspended on a different site; as per , a Community Manager went through the nomination removal process. For various reasons, the user is now suspended on Worldbuilding, too - the site having the election. As of yesterday, their nomination was gone, after it had been reposted, and they were (and still are) suspended. The thing is, their nomination is back . . . again ().  The user normally has enough rep to run, but when they're suspended, their rep is reduced to 1 . . . which is obviously not enough meet the minimum requirements to run in an election. I would think the system would automatically see that they have only 1 reputation point if they tried to nominate - let alone re-nominate - and prevent them from nominating . . . which didn't happen.  I'm reporting this as a bug; if it's not a bug, I'd like to make a feature request that users be automatically prevented from running for moderator if they're currently suspended on the site. I can't trust someone as a moderator if in the middle of the election, they're suspended.
75266
I only say duplicates but I think this could be extended to several other flagging reasons. Since accepted answers/upvotes don't get reverted on questions I see people sometimes cut and paste the answer from a duplicate question without flagging as duplicate. In the end they can usually score a few upvotes and even an accepted answer.  Found this related question:   Seems to have a lot of popularity but nothing ever happened  Jeff on Dupes     Those arguing for “remove reputation from dupes” have no idea of the   Frankenstein monster you’d be creating.      That would be an awesome rep-denial tool for griefing others, first of   all.      Second, it creates a MASSIVE disincentive to participation — even if   you had no idea there were duplicates, you could be bushwhacked at any   time even if you contributed a fantastic answer. Oops sorry dupe!   Zero rep, buddy! Bzzzzt! Go away! Take your awesome answer elsewhere!      Incentives are fine, but penalties are an incredibly bad idea and   would actively hurt users and the network.   I guess this answers my question, even if I disagree with jeff.
34661
Upvoting requires 15 reputation, but the association bonus is taken into account, so if you have at least 200 reputation on any site, you can upvote on all sites in the network.  This is a bit problematic when it comes to per-site metas. The votes there are used to gauge the opinion of the community, and they are often taken into account when implementing new policies.  What can happen is that a post from a per-site meta is linked in an unrelated high-traffic chat room, usually because there is some entertaining drama going on or because someone posted a particularly bad idea. This can lead to an influx of votes from external users that usually wouldn't visit or use the site, but currently still can vote on their meta due to the association bonus.  I think a very low minimum participation on the site should be required to vote on meta issues. This would make the votes on the per-site meta more robust and less easily skewed by being linked from outside.  Not counting the association bonus for the upvote privilege would be enough, then all users would have to earn 14 reputation on the site itself.
3234
I was just awarded +100 reputation on all of my Stack Exchange accounts.  What is this bonus for? It simply says "Association Bonus" on my reputation overview.  Also:   What privileges does the association bonus grant users? Can I lose the association bonus? Does it make my reputation 101 everywhere? Can I earn the association bonus on sites I haven't joined yet? Does it matter which site I earn the 200 reputation on? Will I get an association bonus every time my reputation on a site crosses 200 points? Does the association bonus allow me to answer protected questions? Does the association bonus count towards the reputation cap? Can I get the association bonus if I only have a profile on one site? What else is there to know about the association bonus?
60876
Overall reputation scores are headed nowhere but up.  Pretty soon there will be thousands of mods.  What to do?  Thoughts on possibilities:   Thousands of mods is fine.  Carry on. Adjust the threshold values for high-level SO privileges. Do a straight-up inflation adjustment.  You had x rep, then at the turn of the year we applied the Consumer Rep Index to all scores, now you have (x / inflation) rep. Implement a rep decay mechanism, so that inactivity sheds some of the overall rep that's built up.
73574
This request was triggered by the very recent blog post , which announced that now, also retroactively, the askers are given as many reputation points (10) as the answerers for each upvote. This does reward the askers, but also takes away from the answerers by diminishing their relative standing. As an arguably extreme example, suppose that Alice has earned a reputation of 1000 points entirely by answering, and Bob has earned a reputation of 600 points entirely by asking; then now Alice will still have 1000 points, while Bob will move ahead of her, now with 1200 points.   Apparently for reasons like that, the mentioned blog post has generated some angry comments (as well as approving ones).   In a comment at , Frank Conijn suggested to      "split the reputation into one for questions and one for answers. Yes indeed, a two-figure reputation."    This seems to be quite a reasonable suggestion, with no apparent downsides. At least two upsides: it will     be more informative;  make the dispute between relative merits of asking and answering completely unnecessary.    A  was asked 10 years ago, which now seems to have acquired new relevance. Most of the objections there were about, again, relative merits of asking and answering, which do not seem relevant.   The only objection there of another kind was this:      "You can't really do it because you can earn a whole bunch of upvotes after you hit the daily rep cap. So any split like this could be really misleading."    I honestly do not understand at all what this problem with the cap is. Whatever it may be, can't it be solved by using caps separately for questions and answers rep points? Or by abolishing the cap altogether?     Added in response to comments and the answer by Glorfindel:  (i) About privileges, we can just use the total, as is done now.   (ii) I cannot imagine that having two numbers, instead of one, can be considered a "mental load". That would be more informative, though. The suggestion by Liam Morris - Reinstate Monica, to have the two numbers only in the profile information, also seems good.   (iii) Edits to questions, as well as to tag wikis/excerpts (which concern tagging questions), would add to the Q rep. Edits to answers would add to the A rep.   (iv) For bounty, it may be left to the users, where to take their points from.     Remark: My question is not a duplicate of , despite the title there. Indeed, that question is actually about a very different matter: namely, whether bugs, feature requests, and discussion eventually get reviewed by a moderator.
60112
I found a user on Biology SE.  He has been awarded an association bonus on Biology SE, but he's not a member of any other sites.  How is that possible?  Could he have previously earned reputation on another site, joined Biology SE to earn the association bonus, and then deleted his account on the other site?  I'm just asking out of curiosity.
14811
I recently noticed (and ) a pattern of systematic downvoting by one user against all my questions and answers.  I have honestly no idea what the user's reasons or motivations are, since we have not interacted at all, barely even crossed path on the site (both answered the same question once), but he is clearly targeting me, not my content (which there is no physical way he could have read entirely during his downvoting sprees). He has not left a single comment on any post to justify his downvotes, nor has he replied to my polite requests to explain himself and/or stop this.  His first wave of downvotes was automatically reversed by the system yesterday, and I would have left it at that... But he has been at it again today, and just seems to have no other activity than downvoting my every contributions, which is getting a bit old, to be honest. This really isn't about the reputation points (which get returned each time by the system anyway), but I think a verbal notice enjoining him to play nicer with the community could go some way...  Because this particular form of abuse only has to do with votes, not post content, I don't think there is any way to flag him within the site (?). Also, because  is still pretty young, it appears we do not have any moderators yet (pro tempore or otherwise)... Would any meta-SO moderators mind taking a look at it?  Edit: somehow missed  when posting mine. Though I do not know what the policy for redundancy is, with support-requests... Please if necessary, feel free to close this question and I'll happily repost over there.
39510
To be honest I find it hard to keep up with all the changes, and very frequently I have to go look at the privileges list to see whether a user (that I'm looking at, so I have his reputation value) has a certain privilege or not.  However, I still don't know what that user will actually see or how the site actually behaves for that user.  There's quite a number of posts here on meta about "where did this go" and "why can't I" and I can't really tell either way how a site behaves for a user with a reputation level of 2500.  So, I propose the following functionality:   For all users, be able to view the site as though you had less reputation than you actually have Bonus-feature: For all users, be able to use the site at that reputation level, unless some features of low-level users conflict with your actual functionality For mods, be able to view the site as a specific users (be able to see all he sees, exactly the way he sees it), but of course not pose as that user (ie. things I do would still be me)   The UI could be merged into the mod menu and the privileges menu:    (Note, I chose a user randomly, Olivier Pons is in no way related to this question or flags, or whatever that I know of.)
84526
(or at least those of use who have asked positive questions), is there going to be any change to the rep required for, as an example, ? I can see myself suddenly getting a significant chunk of rep, and that may push me past the 25k boundary required for "Access to site analytics". I'm not any more knowledgeable than I was prior to the calculation though, so does this make sense?  Are rep boundaries like those for the association bonus, privileges, commenting etc. going to be adjusted? Or is this adjustment meant to more accurately reflect the site knowledge associated with asking a good question, so no change will happen?
119228
I spent some time trying to help the OP on  this morning.  He evidently didn't like my answer,  and gave me a downvote.  How do I know?  Well, when I deleted my answer, his rep immediately went back up by 1.    Now, I don't much care about the particulars of this question/answer (or my rep), but it seems to me that this is a potentially significant hole in maintaining the anonymity of voting.  Obviously, this hole has only been possible recently -- ever since rep changes have become reflected instantly.  Also,  is very similar, but doesn't take into account the ramifications of the insta-changes to rep that led to this scenario.  Should this be considered a bug?
10515
Probably everybody who is very active on SO has experienced cases of random, serial upvoting as the expression of thanks from a (usually newbie) user. The pattern is usually 5 or more upvotes on your latest answers. The upvotes will be detected within 24 hours, and removed. (Or so I assume.)  No harm done except maybe a minor irritation for people after one of the &quot;rep cap&quot; badges because they are shown a higher reputation than they actually have. Still, I was thinking whether, in an attempt to channel the positive attitude into more productive areas, it would be worth showing a tooltip on the third upvote for the same person within time frame x:  Please use one upvote, a comment, or some quality content of your own, to say thank you Large numbers of upvotes for the same user may become invalid as part of our spam detection mechanisms.  Does this make sense? Maybe it is too localized and rare, but it has happened to me three or four times in the last two weeks alone. You decide.  Clarification: I am not advocating putting up any kind of barrier on upvotes. . I'm suggesting informing people of the barrier and the futility of their ten or so upvotes for a single person because those votes are likely to be revoked.  Update: @devinb makes the good point that &quot;saying thanks&quot; is not the only possible reason for serial upvoting, and the message wouldn't make sense then. The point still stands: Your votes aren't going to count, and when it comes to up voting (which is always some sort of positive behaviour, however misguided if done indiscriminately) I think it's fair to inform people of this.