[Feedbback] Smurf account abuse

ratcharmer·3/11/2014, 3:58:41 PM·3 votes·2,843 views

Hi,

I've mentioned this a couple of times before, but I think it needs it's own thread.

On the community beta (and GD as well, but it has less impact there) a person can easily abuse their smurf accounts to gain extra votes. Since upvotes are so important for thread visibility in the beta this is actually a pretty major issue.

I can't confirm (can't see who it was voting) but I've seen several cases where I strongly suspect this happened. There's been a bunch of threads I've seen that started fairly possitive (4 or 5 upvotes) that then got 5 or 6 downvotes within 15 minutes of one another.

13 Comments

Bob LLama3/11/2014, 4:22:21 PM4 votes

Hey ratcharmer,

I hear your concerns about people using smurf accounts to sandbag voting. And it might be an issue right now, but that will be less and less possible to do as the community grows. Again, we've been in almost stealth-mode beta for a little while, but as we begin ramping up and more and more people begin to participate, you'd need an increasing number of smurf accounts to do that. Like hundreds of them.

MackleDoge3/11/2014, 4:10:48 PM1 votes

Smurf abuse is an issue, but you also have to account for things like standard differences of opinion, people changing their mind about a post when more detail or discussion happens, or having a few people see it early then a bunch of people see it later. When a thread gets more upvotes people are more likely to look at it and then cast their vote, which can lead to swings like you described. People also are less likely to view threads they don't like the title or premise of to start with, but then want to downvote it if they see it start getting upvotes.

JackAqua3/11/2014, 4:22:39 PM1 votes

I usually upvote seriously written threads, that are downvoted but not commented upon, regardless of my opinion on the thread.
If you downvote at least have the courtesy to write why.
I haven't seen the problem you've mentioned yet, but don't you have to be level 5 to upvote ? Seems awfully tedious to make an account and level it up to level 5 just for a stupid upvote. I don't want you to call names, but do tell in which sub-community and at about what time this might've happened :P I'll try figuring it out from there myself.

Haschelz3/12/2014, 5:27:36 AM1 votes

rofl