Tavern on the Meta

Rob

1:37 AM

The quantum of the meta.

Aibobot

2:19 AM

Only Slightly (More) Exaggerated | Travel Oregon

►

pretty awesome ad. Also I'm a sucker for animation

Shog9

that feeling when you're scripting actions intended to trigger deletion of accounts created to script actions intended to trigger deletion

Aibobot

0_0

forest

3:02 AM

-85, -64, -5 (all user was removed)

fml

Aibobot

on the same site?

oh, I had a -5 on my main.

shrug

its just a number

and on a site I'm apparently still #1 user?

forest

No different sites.

user302202

Deletion requests were script-assisted too, though rate limiting kept getting in the way.

user302202

@Rob Sorting by active exhibits a certain pattern: quantumcomputing.meta.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active

Charlie Brumbaugh

I just lost -1259 rep on Outdoors.SE

user302202

3:10 AM

Do you remember the last time you saw them? Where were they then?

forest

I wonder who it was who had their account deleted.

It's so odd (and quite frustrating) that they nuke reputation even if a user was deleted for reasons other than vote fraud. It's being penalized for no reason.

user302202

@CharlieBrumbaugh Bamboo lost 2160 on Gardening

Charlie Brumbaugh

Yikes

Outdoors.se is missing at least 3300 rep that an awful lot of votes to invalidate

forest

How do I tell how much rep Security.SE and Crypto.SE lost?

There are few enough users on the latter that I can probably pinpoint who had their account deleted if I can determine approximately how active they were.

Charlie Brumbaugh

Go to users week and then to the far bottom. security.stackexchange.com/… THose will be the users most affected

Aibobot

3:25 AM

@forest with that kinda rep - someone made of meat probably oversaw it

forest

So? That doesn't imply that it was vote fraud, just that a human checked.

Rob

@VoteDukakis Shog did manage to get his 2¢ in, as did a suspended user who's post leads to the former Moderator's opinion about qualifications. --- Responding to chat requirements and multiple comments really spoiled (drove me away) from that site. --- I recruited over a dozen highly qualified professionals during the early days of beta, there's no concern that there's no one qualified; only

Charlie Brumbaugh

That would be a lot of vote fraud 3300 rep is a minium of 330 votes which would be over a week of hitting the max vote count

Rob

that one must invest far more time (though that may have well changed) than any other site (and I'm on many other sites where both what one says might be questioned, and the discourse is more pleasant).

Aibobot

@CharlieBrumbaugh or over a longer period of time.

user302202

3:29 AM

beeshyams -1260 on Android, monomeeth -1130 on Apple and Pierre.Vriens -1120 on Drupal are the other 4-digit losses I noticed.

user302202

and majenko -1390 on Arduino

user302202

Looks like Bamboo wins.

user302202

It's all fun and games until someone finds more fun and games elsewhere.

forest

I wonder what would happen if I deleted my account. Obviously I'm not involved in vote fraud, but I've voted for quite a lot of people. That would be a lot of lost rep.

Aibobot

@forest probably would be reviewed by a CM and the rep kept

forest

3:37 AM

huh

Is there a cutoff value where a certain amount of rep is "too much" to lose?

And if so, why?

Aibobot

Yes, but I have no idea what the cut off value is

the why should be in meta ;p

forest

I wonder if it's a fixed value or if it's judged on a case by case basis.

Aibobot

as I have no intention of ragequitting SE, I've not looked it up

@forest probably there's a threshold + judgyness

since account deletion can be automated

Charlie Brumbaugh

1113

Q: Don't throw away all votes when a user is deleted

Currently, when a moderator deletes a user all of the user's votes are removed along with the user themselves. I was pretty surprised at this behaviour when I first heard about it, and I don't think it is a good idea to throw away all of the votes just because the user is deleted. Votes are lock...

forest

Hm, so in this case, since a lot of rep was lost, it probably was fraud?

Aibobot

3:40 AM

@forest seems plausable

forest

huh

Could also be an account merge I guess.

But that's a lot of rep to double vote for.

Aibobot

erf

precisely

and would be voting fraud too ;p

No matter how much I ~~like~~ hate a post, I'm not going to ~~upvote~~ downvote it twice

forest

I've upvoted and downvoted posts twice, but only legally.

Due to a silly bug where your vote status is reset during migration.

Aibobot

oh part of the issue is the "socks don't interact" rule

forest

Yeah socks can't vote for themselves or the same person twice.

I voted for my sock by accident once but didn't realize it was my post lol

Couldn't undo the vote because of the 5 minute lock.

Aibobot

3:42 AM

even aibobot's probably a bit of a grey area on chat ;p

forest

s/sock/old account whose email addr I lost/

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason this is done is simply because it would take paying a developer to change the current code.

Aibobot

They pay the developer(s) anyway ;p

forest

But every 30 minutes of a dev improving the user experience is 30 minutes not spent advertising Teams and Enterprise and removing themes from sites.

Time is money. :P

Rob

3:58 AM

Those four people in VD's comment seem unrelated in many ways, including location; two are moderators, the only thing in common seems to be that they have enough rep that the loss of a 1000 will be a small dip overall. Rather than "fraud" it could be 'unsolicited excessive upvoting' which upon delation of the charitor sucks back all the praise given; essentially it's a 'delayed downvote attack'.

forest

That's evil.

Rob

There's no way to "undo" do it but to accept that you lose, or let them keep the votes; which hurts everyone else.

Had they spent all their time downvoting the people upon delation of the account the votes would be restored, this (that) way the attack can proceed longer (unchallenged) and upon restoration of civility the loss remains. The "loss" is zero, but I bet it doesn't feel that way. Disclaimer: I lost 10 reputation for user deletion earlier today (in the event someone deems that relevant).

user302202

0

Q: 'User was removed' with significant amount of votes withdrawn. Was it a fraud?

Last time this was discussed here was in Change vote dropping criteria when a user account is deleted. Thought the case had been resolved, because since then, I had not observed a 'user was removed' with significant* amount of votes withdrawn after deletion, until few minutes ago. Was this case...

support reputation votes deleted-accounts

Charlie Brumbaugh

I found more information from the data.se it looks like one user who was created back in 2015 was doing a lot of upvoting, we had noticed because a lot of old questions were getting upvoted and I thought it was just someone wanting an electorate badge.

user302202

Rob Jeffries -1040 on Astronomy, just for the sake of completeness re: 4-digit losses.

Charlie Brumbaugh

4:12 AM

Data.se hasn't rolled over yet, so if you look at the profiles of the top votes and then see who isn't there anymore its possible to find the user

forest

Is this all from the same person?

Charlie Brumbaugh

It explains the Outdoors.se losses

Crypto looks the same, low rep user with name userXXXX 3000 votes

forest

What is the XXXX (I don't want to waste time looking myself).

Charlie Brumbaugh

21894

data.stackexchange.com/gis/query/1055709

Same for GIS

Rob

4:28 AM

That guy is 2300 away from 10K and protests that he lost 90 rep unfairly while working on getting to 10K. I think the expression "gimme a break" is outdated and overused so I won't be saying it, nor can I say something negative about someone whom makes such a complaint; so I'll do my own whining: I don't have enough rep to downvote that question'.

forest

I have >40k and I'm pissed about losing 90. :P

Rob

How truly awful for you, we offer our condolences.

forest

I am truly the most disadvantaged person in all of the network.

Rob

:)

Shhh, we'll be inviting that person whom complains excessively about being suspended to tell of his tragedy and suffering.

forest

It's a human rights issue, it is!

Rob

4:35 AM

It's anti-dulce de leche

No Distraction Wizard

-245 and -350. Oh well, that's (a virtual) life

Of course that user...

(not surprising :)

Rob

@forest It's worse for me, I did some more checking and discovered that I lost twice as much as I thought. Geez!

Journeyman Geek

lol

@Rob it does hurt a bit

but 90 rep is a good day or two

Rob

Yup, lost 20 rep.

Journeyman Geek

@forest they have people whose only job is advertising... amazingly...

Rob

4:43 AM

You make 90+ for an answer.

Journeyman Geek

ya

Rob

4:58 AM

That user had 50+K before deletion.

Journeyman Geek

@Rob erm, that user is still around, on this chat on another username as @VoteDukakis ;p

So If you REALLY want to ask if its them, go ahead

Rob

;)

Journeyman Geek

5:26 AM

In unrelated news....

> Update (May 23, 2019): The affected 184 public network users have been notified via email.

Update to Security Incident [May 17, 2019]

Mary Ferguson on May 17, 2019

Terminating the unauthorized access to the system

Conducting an extensive and detailed audit of all logs and databases that we maintain, allowing us to trace the steps and actions that were taken

Remediating the original issues that allowed the unauthorized access and escalation, as well as any other potential vectors that we have found during the investigation

Issuing a public statement proactively

Engaging a third party forensics and incident response firm to assist us with both remediation and learnings …

If you were affected by the ~~hacking~~ security incident, you should have been notified

Apparently I am not important enough ;p

No Distraction Wizard

I didn't get the email... Yay? :'(

And the edit doesn't bump the RSS feed >_>

Journeyman Geek

ya

I came across it looking for something else ;p

forest

6:05 AM

Why cross out hacking? That's what it was.

@Rob Well at least I made like 500 from two HNQs in the last few days.

But I like complaining!

No Distraction Wizard

I like complaining about users who like to complain

Journeyman Geek

6:21 AM

@forest humour value mainly

Rob

6:54 AM

How aMuzing.

forest

7:51 AM

Ugh, the answer I flagged as being a nearly identical repost of a heavily downvoted answer didn't get deleted. A mod said it was ok to do this to "counter runaway downvotes". I thought this was quite clearly not acceptable. This pisses me off.

Especially when only once sentence is changed in the entire answer.

Town Hall Chat #8 - 27 September 2017

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