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There have been three occasions now when I've received a bunch of suspicious upvotes, and so far (edit: all five occasions), the system's failed to catch it.

The first time, I was literally sitting astonished at my computer screen watching about 5 upvotes roll in on 5 separate posts within the span of three minutes. The second and third times, I wasn't present at the moment I received them, but it was a large (well, large compared to my usual) number of upvotes within at least the same two minutes (I suspect nearly simultaneously) and all on separate posts (and let me mention that a lot of the posts were old enough that I wouldn't expect any votes on them). The third time was right about now, and it was the same as the second. They're still occuring, one-by-one, as I write this. Fourth time recently occurred. Fifth as well. This feels wrong, guys!

Serially Upvoted Achievement Log

Now, I value my reputation as much as the next user (that is to say, a tad too much), but I understand why serial upvoting is a problem.

All three instances were long enough ago that the voting fraud detection script (hereby referred to as "nofair.exe") has already run, and no reversal has occurred. I suppose this means that the votes didn't trigger the script. I find it hard to believe that simply by random chance these reputation changes were done by different users.

Here's the images of my reputation tab (which I guess you could just look up from my profile, but I'll make it easy for you guys):

Apr 2

Apr 15

Apr 17

(All images taken April 17th, 2019, which is today)

Apr 21

(Fourth time)

May 25

(Fifth time)

I suppose it could also be the fault of nofair.exe. Though the algorithm isn't publicly known, it's probably a pretty comprehensive one, and I'm not sure what could have fooled it if serial upvoting did occur.

Does anyone know what's going on here?

(or have any ideas/wisdom)?

Also, to get a picture of how likely the random chance of simultaneous upvotes is for me, I've probably never had more than three posts get an upvote within 15 minutes of each other. And I don't even have that many posts (207, and the site has ~16,000 questions and ~42,000 answers), being somewhat new, so there aren't that many ways to even find my posts escept through the user profile.

And if you're reading this and you've been doing this, please read the link I provided above. If you wish to reward me for exemplary posts, or for some other (legitimate) reason boost my reputation, use the bounty system instead, though I promise I won't get mad if you don't :)

But please, don't just go to my user profile and upvote every post I've ever made. That impacts the value of the whole voting system.

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  • 4
    Mods should be able to analyze the voting pattern applied to your posts, and if they find something suspicious, they can escalate it to CM to invalidate the votes.
    – Andrew T.
    Commented Apr 18, 2019 at 4:33
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    There does seem to be some irregularities, but mod tools only go so far. I'm going to try and ping a CM to investigate further.
    – Dom Mod
    Commented Apr 18, 2019 at 14:49
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    On several occasions I've looked into user histories and looked at their highest voted questions and/or answers and then voted up on several of them in a short amount of time. It could just be normal behavior by someone like me. I'd hate to think that my upvoting spurts would be reversed by the system.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Commented Apr 18, 2019 at 15:31
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    No, you aren't being serially upvoted. If the detector isn't triggered, it is not considered serial voting at all.
    – user53472
    Commented Apr 22, 2019 at 3:27
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    @MaikaSakuranomiya -- that isn't true; the system does not always detect serial voting.
    – user39614
    Commented Apr 22, 2019 at 7:07
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    Thank you for your help, @Dom Any word from the CMs? It's still occurring...
    – user45266
    Commented Apr 23, 2019 at 5:31
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    as I am paranoic I fear that one does the opposite as Todd and goes through my history vozing me down ;) (joke!) no, it happens to me that I look up some answers of the same user as I want to understand his language and thinking and his stile of explaining. So it seems logical to me that others do the same and if they vote this phenomenon could be explained.
    – Albrecht Hügli
    Commented Apr 27, 2019 at 5:20
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    @AlbrechtHügli Good point. One possible issue with that theory would be that the upvotes were so quick, it seems that the user wouldn't have much time to decide on each individual post whether it was worthy of the vote, but it's certainly possible.
    – user45266
    Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 1:51

2 Answers 2

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Right coming from reading a question about tonality I‘ve got an idea how it could happen that many answers can be voted up in such a short time that you think „one couldn‘t read it so quickly!“

I first read the comments and answers and suddenly I found they are so great I‘m going to vote them up. And I was remembered to the phenomena you are describing here.

So I had to post my experience here.

(Now I want to continue my reading...)

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Former Music: Practice and Theory user Yubin-chan (née Maika Sakuranomiya) has claimed responsibility for all the instances of serial upvoting on my account.

The votes, obviously, have already been reverted (to the tune of -590 rep, amusingly), as the user is deleted on this site. Here's a comment from that user on another unrelated SE site:

Korean.Meta.SE confession

I still don't know why nofair.exe didn't catch it, though.

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