Questions tagged [sock-puppets]
A sockpuppet is an extra account created in addition to the user's normal account, especially those created for the purposes of abusing the system.
115 questions
-22 votes
1 answer
287 views
How many times has StackExchange wrongly suspended someone for sockpuppet?
How many innocent users have StackExchange “wrongly accused and suspended for having sockpuppets”, but then “recovered with all the previous reputation and badges”? Are there other cases than ...
-9 votes
1 answer
320 views
Will a user still be punished if their historical bad behaviour/sock-puppeting is later discovered? [duplicate]
Imagine a user has two accounts on the same site. But after a while, they remove one of the accounts. I don't know if it's still discoverable that a user once had a second account on a site but if the ...
- 707
2 votes
0 answers
122 views
Are sock puppet comment and Meta votes retracted?
A user used sock puppets to self-upvote, self-bounty, and self-accept answers they'd ask questions on. It is unknown whether this included voting on Meta posts or on comments. Only one sock was ...
- 4,033
3 votes
0 answers
94 views
Are sock puppet answer accepts retracted? [duplicate]
A user used sock puppets to ask questions and answer with main account, then accept own answers, even if there's other answers, including ones that outscore it significantly. Self-upvotes were ...
- 4,033
7 votes
0 answers
110 views
Are sock puppet bounties retracted?
A user used sock puppets to grant self bounties. The user's self-upvotes were retracted, and so were bounty rep gains, but the bounties remain visible on answers, and continue to inflate their worth. ...
- 4,033
-12 votes
4 answers
212 views
Is it allowed to start a bounty for your unanswered question using an alt account?
Let's say a user has 2 accounts. The main account has asked a question which is unanswered. Now, is it allowed for the user to start a bounty on that question using the 2nd account given the following ...
- 9
5 votes
1 answer
191 views
Does "sock-puppet" always carry the meaning of abusive, non-main accounts? Is there such thing as a "benign sock-puppet"? [duplicate]
Does "sock-puppet" always carry the meaning of abusive, non-main accounts? Is there such thing as a "benign sock-puppet"? The source of my confusion is that the post "What are ...
starballMod
- 36.9k
-14 votes
1 answer
211 views
For rule-following sock puppets, is there a "guaranteed" way to request they be merged into a puppeteer account?
Background I am musing on the idea of carrying out an elaborate joke where I create a puppeteer account named "Dio" and then create a rule-following sock puppet, using it to add value to the ...
anon
-13 votes
2 answers
381 views
How does Stack Exchange know that two accounts belong to the same person? [closed]
A related question (How do stackexchange sites know that two usernames correspond to the same person?) says it's because the email addresses are the same. But in my case, the accounts were identified ...
user697531
10 votes
2 answers
294 views
Is it okay to flag blatant spam using two accounts?
I understand that using two or more accounts to vote on the same post (or interact with it in almost any way) is against the rules. That being said, what if I encounter a blatant spam/scam post that ...
- 15.5k
-13 votes
2 answers
377 views
Questions about merging sock puppet accounts
Recently I created two accounts, and I must admit, I use them to sock puppet (not on meta), but now I want to merge them, because it's really hard to live with this lie, and I have several questions: ...
user1040018
18 votes
1 answer
417 views
Are Philippe and Rosie doppelgängers?
Looking at the profile of Sara Chipps ♦ (our Director of community), something struck me as odd. She has recently posted, amongst others, two posts welcoming the latest additions to the CM team, ...
- 36.3k
3 votes
0 answers
128 views
Are mods allowed to use secondary account(s) to cast non-decisive votes? [duplicate]
(Motivated by this, now falsely dupe-closed question.) Mods can not cast non-decisive votes. Sometimes they would like to. Sometimes they would like to talk with users so that the diamond does not ...
- 6,439
-4 votes
1 answer
194 views
Accidentally upvoting an answer written by a main account while using a sockpuppet?
Let's say I have a main account that I've "retired" from and have created a new account to start afresh. Now say I was looking up an answer to a question and unknowingly stumbled upon an ...
- 142
3 votes
1 answer
262 views
Can sock puppets be used to curate more content? [duplicate]
From a single account, one is rate-limited in how many votes can be cast per day (depending on privilege level for some vote types). Similarly, there is a rate-limit on how many reviews can be ...
- 1,969