I recently got the site association bonus, which is a nice reward for my contributions on SO so far, and "top 0.89% this week" note appeared in my profile. I clicked there, and was interested who was top 1 of the week. I noticed a user (without pointing to anyone specific) that was a member for just few months who got a lot more than 200 points in one week. I was curious: how he/she did it?

And I found that after giving many answers with little reputation gain for most of his/her membership, user became active few days ago, answered several questions, accepted some answer, edited a post, and on the same day someone serial-voted his/her answers (including the previous ones) to get him/her above the threshold. The votes were reversed the next day, and now again his/her answers sit mostly at zero, but he/she is left with more than extra 100 points for... What?

I could ask, isn't it suspicious? After all, how probable do you think it is that it is just a coincidence? ;) But that is not my question. The question is about non-reversibility of site association bonus.

Related questions and answers:

  • A quite similar question was already asked, and is here, but as of today no answer is provided: Should the association bonus be reversed if it was obtained by serial voting?

    In one of the comments:


  • There is also a question about a bronze badge reversal, given here: Why is the Mortarboard badge not removed after serial upvoting reversal?

    The answer says:


  • There's also a question on meta about it: Why does this user have association bonus

    With the answer stating:

    Note that once you've gained the association bonus on any network account, you keep it forever and it continues applying to all future accounts even if none of your current accounts qualify anymore.

  • The answer to Can a Stack Exchange association bonus be lost? states that:

    No. It's awarded once per site if you've ever had more than 200 reputation on any of your profiles, with the assumption that you understand the basics well enough to skip most of the initial restrictions. You can't lose this status, nor can you gain it twice.

    There are few more questions about this issue with answers along the lines: "once you get association bonus, you keep it under all circumstances".

My question(s) and food for thought:

Is this really OK to let things like these be?

Is it OK to get a site association bonus even when roughly 1 (i.e. one) other member of Stack Overflow community thinks you should get it?

When I see a user with more than 100 points, I think "OK, the community seems to find their posts useful". But if out of those 100-something points, 100 are from a not-properly-earned site association bonus, what is the point in that?

Those first 100 points allow you to do things - I've experienced it myself during my almost 1 year on SO. As I got more points, I had time to learn how to use those privileges properly. Do you think it's beneficial for the community if someone who shouldn't, suddenly can (depending upon when he or she got the suspicious +100 bonus):

  • (125) vote down
  • (100) edit community wiki
  • (100) create chat rooms
  • (75) set bounties
  • (50) comment everywhere
  • (20) talk in chat
  • (15) flag posts
  • (15) vote up
  • (10) act without new user restrictions
  • (10) create wiki posts
  • (5) participate in meta
  • 9
    I don't think the moral "should this happen" argument is terribly relevant here. It's just 100 points, and it can happen only once per user. But it might be an angle for misuse (creating sock puppet accounts, upvoting them and earning them 100 points) – Pekka May 30 '16 at 6:50
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    @Pekka웃 let's see, 1) as pointed here bonus stays even if it was obtained with voting fraud, 2) it recovers if account is deleted and then recreated again, 3) regular user never can tell if it's suspicious because it can be obtained in hidden communities. This makes it an ideal tool for trolls and voting fraudsters doesn't it (especially if they are smart enough to delete troublesome accounts before bumping into suspension) – gnat May 30 '16 at 7:40
  • 4
    ...would be interesting to see stats (network wide) how often bonus is assigned out of thin air, ie when none of linked accounts had 200 rep. I am sure not the first to notice its potential for fraud and trolling, the only question is how widely it is known and used – gnat May 30 '16 at 7:46
  • 3
    I've caught a whiff of this fraud smell a few times, yes:( – Martin James May 30 '16 at 9:02
  • 7
    I really think the frequency of it should be looked into. I mean it IS a big concern in terms of impact. If it only happened a handful of times.... Then meh – Patrice May 30 '16 at 14:00
  • 3
    100 points is more a sign of having put in a bare minimum of effort than it is a sign of a particularly valuable account. If you intend to stay around, 100 points will quickly become insignificant, and the best way to make up the difference is by contributing — earning 100 points just takes a little effort, and it's satisfying. TBH I'm surprised that the association bonus even counts towards the leaderboards, it makes the weekly board pretty silly. In any case, "101" next to a username means exactly the same as "1" to me. – hobbs May 31 '16 at 2:52
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    I have seen people with <200 rep putting bounties on crap questions with downvotes which should have been closed ideally. They are not interested in responding to feedback either. And I wondered if they have earned 200 so rep by positive contribution, aren't their questions worth putting bounty supposed to have some quality? won't they respond? So this makes me wonder... make few puppets - upote an account - get the association bonus which won't be reversed - put bounty on crap question... rinse and repeat... is that possible? – T J May 31 '16 at 8:54
  • An additional argument to those listed by @Pekka웃 is that it also doesn't clear you to post on protected questions, etc. as they require 10 rep on that site. – GalacticCowboy May 31 '16 at 15:53
  • 1
    @TJ I wonder if you can generate a rep fountain somehow this way. If you can slosh 200 rep from account A_0 through A_N , you can generate an unlimited number of accounts with 100 rep each. These can each generate bounties for 50 rep (or more) grante an account of your choice. Such accounts need not be "terminal" ones, as any such account can pass on rep at 500 rep increments -- the reputation becomes fungible. – Yakk - Adam Nevraumont May 31 '16 at 16:02
  • 1
    @Yakk, I hope it is a bit harder then that, as you need to do it without being detected by anyone. – Ian Ringrose May 31 '16 at 17:07
  • 2
    found a cross-site dupe at MSE: Shouldn't the association bonus acquired via serial upvoting be reversed? – gnat Jun 1 '16 at 15:33
  • 1
    hi @mbdevpl. This may sound like a rhetorical question, but, Why are you so concerned about this? Again I don't mean that in a rude way; it just seems strange that anyone could possibly even notice or care about points on SO's site you know? What I mean is, were you "scammed" in some way yourself; are you thinking of starting your own QA-site and you're wondering about the dynamics, or ? You have made a remarkable academic-level analysis of the user in question's actions, so I'm just wondering how we (or someone) can best assist you or answer your concerns/issue??? – Fattie Jun 1 '16 at 16:36
  • @JoeBlow "This makes it an ideal tool for trolls and voting fraudsters" sounds like a solid reason to be concerned doesn't it – gnat Jun 1 '16 at 18:10
  • ...such an inflated curiosity about reasons for concern makes one wonder if there could be some... hidden reasons for someone to worry seeing this issue brought to discussion – gnat Jun 1 '16 at 22:06
  • Just so you know @mbdevpl the maximum reputation one can gain in a week (not considering the association bonus or bounties) is 1400 rep, so 200 is hardly remarkable in comparison. – TylerH Jun 2 '16 at 5:44

The “association bonus” concept is very questionable these days given the number of Stack Exchange sites. I think it should be replaced with a “network wide” privilege set that you gain on all sides, if you have over 200 rep on any site.

This would take programming effort and not be a quick fix, but would remove complexity from understanding the system.

In the mean time I think the rule for getting the association bonus should be charged to

“have had over 200 rep on a site for at least the last 14 days.

  • 4
    Why 14 days? That seems like a long time; long enough that keen new users wanting to explore SE and earn rewards for their effort would get impatient. Maybe 4 or 5 days is enough to guard against repeat serial-voting? – Peter Cordes May 31 '16 at 16:16
  • 1
    But that should be a limited set of the base privileges on all sites. E.g. I would not be able to handle close-votes (let alone cast them) on world-building, even though I enjoy reading the questions, but I have had that privilege on SO for a few years. – simbabque May 31 '16 at 16:28
  • 2
    @PeterCordes If I understand it well, 14 days was just an example and would not be too much time. The real question is: how much time is needed to guard against a serial voting? In a SE site with few moderators, maybe 14 days is not enough. – EMBarbosa May 31 '16 at 16:40
  • 1
    @EMBarbosa: That's a good question (which I'm sure I could answer with a quick search if I wasn't lazy). IDK what defends against re-doing serial voting every day after it's rolled back by the auto-detection script every day. I guess at some point human intervention by moderators. – Peter Cordes May 31 '16 at 16:41
  • 5
    I disagree. Can't downvote until 125 rep, the 100 rep bonus is a big help to reach that. If there wasn't the bonus I would get mad not being able to downvote crap. – Oriol May 31 '16 at 16:43
  • 2
    @Oriol, who says the rules can't be "over 200 rep on any side AND over 25 rep on the side you wish to down-vote on." – Ian Ringrose May 31 '16 at 17:03
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    the best solution would be to assign the association bonus after the subroutine that reverses serial upvotes has run., as mentioned in question. Because some user can gain 200 rep in n-days and some would take n-weeks to reach the mark. – Sandeep Jun 1 '16 at 5:20
  • 1
    Agree. Also, I have also seen the "association bonus" being used to "boost" rep in the SE flair (create accounts in every site in SE and you'll get to few K rep without doing much). So, all you need to do is earn 200 rep on one site! IMO, the "association bonus" idea might have made sense when there were few sites (under 10) but not anymore. – P.P. Jun 1 '16 at 16:37

As I understand it, the site association bonus is just there to power a user through the extremely tedious time before they can really do anything on a site (really, you can't even comment or vote up sub-100, which is just crippling). The understanding is that the user now knows how to use the SE network well enough to be productive, so let's just let him be productive.

I would argue that, by committing serial voting fraud specifically the get the association bonus, the user has demonstrated his ability to use the system. No, he is not using it properly, but if you know enough to abuse the system then you know enough to use it for its intended purpose, and there are lots of 'regular' users who have accumulated >100 rep who still don't.

So it's fine the way it is.

  • 33
    And I would argue that if someone did deliberately commit voting fraud, we don't want them using any privileges, and may not want them on the site at all. Whereas if they are innocent of deliberate fraud, as in many such cases, they have shown no particular system skill at all. – Nathan Tuggy Jun 1 '16 at 0:56
  • @NathanTuggy: Sheesh... "voting fraud" makes it sound like you think they should get sentenced to prison for this. They just have a friend upvoting them for Internet Points. Heck, how do you even know it's unjustified? Maybe their answers really are good enough to merit an upvote, and they just don't get the attention they deserve for whatever reason? Maybe they actually are making a net positive contribution to the site, and the voting is something you can ignore? People here put way too much emphasis on voting and not enough on whether the contributions are useful... – user541686 Jun 1 '16 at 5:39
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    @Mehrdad: I specifically made a distinction between innocent mistakes and deliberate subversion of the system in my comment. No sane site wishes to retain those who make a habit of subverting that site's basic moderation systems. Since the script doesn't decide guilt, we have to assume we don't know, but, as I pointed out, either way the same conclusion applies: they should not get the association bonus, because either a) they cheated or b) they got it mistakenly without earning it the usual way. Those rep points weren't really theirs, that's why the script takes them away! – Nathan Tuggy Jun 1 '16 at 5:45
  • 3
    The problem is that the +100 rep can be used for a bounty, that then opens up other "voting fraud" options..... – Ian Ringrose Jun 1 '16 at 8:12
  • @mehrdad but...... But..... The value of your contributions is measured by what exactly? VOTING. it's not emphasis that people put wrongly. It's how the system was designed -_-. And if the only way you can get upvotes is to shoot the link to friends and ask them tk do it... I'd argue your post might not be that good – Patrice Jun 1 '16 at 16:33

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