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Just to be clear though, if I find a user because they gave a great answer to my question and then I look at their other answers, *am I allowed to upvote them o

Just to be clear though, if I find a user because they gave a great answer to my question and then I look at their other answers, *am I allowed to upvote them on the basis that they are great answers?* Edit: Just adding so no one reads anything into my post, I have not read any of the SO posts in question and this was more of a question to trigger thought about what appears to be a poorly reasoned application of a policy.

KabaKun 2y ago
I wouldn't worry about it. It's generally not something that gets noticed. This probably got noticed because it set off some automatic warning that caused someone to look into it. Three 500 rep bounties awarded to a single user in two minutes to answers that were from 2015 is a bit unusual. Users can only offer 3 bounties at a time and the maximum value for each is 500 rep. The reputation history for the account can be seen here - https://stackoverflow.com/users/4616250/user4616250?tab=reputation&sort=time https://stackoverflow.com/users/4616250/user4616250?tab=repu... Opening the December 10th and 11th sections shows 1590 reputation was removed - that's 1500 for bounties and 9 upvotes, some on the same posts. Three of the votes on the 10th were within the same minute with one two minutes later - that's not much time to actually judge the quality of the posts. Additionally, just reading the answers, they don't seem to be particularly good answers - certainly not worthy of huge bounties. Considering the age of the posts (2015), quality of the answers (low), and the rapidity of voting (high)... well... I don't think you have anything to worry about.
Aachen 2y ago
For whatever it's worth, I've done that before and haven't noticed them being undone. But then, neither did the auhtor of the article so who knows. What I find glossed over is that the article quotes Stackexchange saying that the author would have gotten the same demotion anyway, just that now someone opened their profile and was like "oh hey an unhandled flag, wonder what that's about" and looked into it. The system being quick for once doesn't make it retribution in my mind, which is the conclusion they draw. If they'd say "probably the punishment was worse because of the context at that point", I could have followed the logic because it doesn't say anywhere how they got to 1 year demotion (it's not a ban, another exaggeration afaik: they can use the site like anyone else just without reputation/karma privileges, is what it says at least), which seems like a lot for what they did, but that's not the argument made

KabaKun 2y ago

I wouldn't worry about it. It's generally not something that gets noticed. This probably got noticed because it set off some automatic warning that caused someone to look into it. Three 500 rep bounties awarded to a single user in two minutes to answers that were from 2015 is a bit unusual. Users can only offer 3 bounties at a time and the maximum value for each is 500 rep. The reputation history for the account can be seen here - https://stackoverflow.com/users/4616250/user4616250?tab=reputation&sort=time https://stackoverflow.com/users/4616250/user4616250?tab=repu... Opening the December 10th and 11th sections shows 1590 reputation was removed - that's 1500 for bounties and 9 upvotes, some on the same posts. Three of the votes on the 10th were within the same minute with one two minutes later - that's not much time to actually judge the quality of the posts. Additionally, just reading the answers, they don't seem to be particularly good answers - certainly not worthy of huge bounties. Considering the age of the posts (2015), quality of the answers (low), and the rapidity of voting (high)... well... I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Aachen 2y ago

For whatever it's worth, I've done that before and haven't noticed them being undone. But then, neither did the auhtor of the article so who knows. What I find glossed over is that the article quotes Stackexchange saying that the author would have gotten the same demotion anyway, just that now someone opened their profile and was like "oh hey an unhandled flag, wonder what that's about" and looked into it. The system being quick for once doesn't make it retribution in my mind, which is the conclusion they draw. If they'd say "probably the punishment was worse because of the context at that point", I could have followed the logic because it doesn't say anywhere how they got to 1 year demotion (it's not a ban, another exaggeration afaik: they can use the site like anyone else just without reputation/karma privileges, is what it says at least), which seems like a lot for what they did, but that's not the argument made