Stack Overflow's rules for bounties [0] discourage promotional bounties but do not state that bounties cannot be given to the same user or on the basis of the user as opposed to a user's answers.
Stack Overflow failed to enunciate their own rules (or - let's be honest - imagined new rules after the fact), blamed you for breaking non-existent rules, sent you an obviously mostly copy/paste suspension notice (the bit about secondary accounts seems bizarre and non sequitur), and gas-lit you with the imaginary claim that you cannot vote on a post you already voted on which for whatever reason hadn't been logged.
FWIW also a high-rep SO user and had to create a burner account in case there's retribution. We shouldn't have to hide ourselves just to talk sanely.
SO is right to try to protect the bounty system from unintended uses, but not to make rules up on the fly and enforce them heavy-handedly and retrospectively, suspending someone for breaking non-existent rules.
Stack Overflow should make rules for bounties and make them crystal clear and unsuspend you. Can they admit they're wrong - will they do this? Of course not.
Posts should be voted on based on the content in the post rather than the person who wrote it. Voting for specific people, whether you know them or not, can negatively impact our ranking system. Here are some examples of common cases that should be avoided:
- Repeatedly upvoting several of a user's posts to say "thanks" for one great answer.
- Repeatedly upvoting posts created by people you know because you know them – often friends, family, or coworkers.
- Targeting a specific user with votes for any other reason.
In cases where voting patterns appear to be targeted, the votes are likely to be reversed, either by automatic systems or manually following an investigation by the staff, which will cause a loss of reputation earned from these votes.
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The rules around abuse of the voting system are by necessity somewhat fuzzy, you can't enumerate all the possible cases clearly. And bounties are even more fuzzy as they can be similarily abused, but users still have a lot of freedom in deciding how to use them.
Usually misuse of bounties would likely just result in the mods warning the user and undoing the bounties, exactly because this is an area where the rules are not necessarily clear to users and the boundaries are somewhat fuzzy. But Evan Carroll certainly knows how the system works and is a user with a very extensive history on SO. Suspensions and especially suspension lengths are heavily influenced by previous behaviour. A year-long suspension means this is at least the third suspension for that user according to the guidelines given to mods for suspension lengths.
Just to be clear though, if I find a user because they gave a great answer to my question and then I look at their other answers, *am I allowed to upvote them on the basis that they are great answers?*
Edit: Just adding so no one reads anything into my post, I have not read any of the SO posts in question and this was more of a question to trigger thought about what appears to be a poorly reasoned application of a policy.
For whatever it's worth, I've done that before and haven't noticed them being undone. But then, neither did the auhtor of the article so who knows.
What I find glossed over is that the article quotes Stackexchange saying that the author would have gotten the same demotion anyway, just that now someone opened their profile and was like "oh hey an unhandled flag, wonder what that's about" and looked into it. The system being quick for once doesn't make it retribution in my mind, which is the conclusion they draw. If they'd say "probably the punishment was worse because of the context at that point", I could have followed the logic because it doesn't say anywhere how they got to 1 year demotion (it's not a ban, another exaggeration afaik: they can use the site like anyone else just without reputation/karma privileges, is what it says at least), which seems like a lot for what they did, but that's not the argument made
I wouldn't worry about it. It's generally not something that gets noticed.
This probably got noticed because it set off some automatic warning that caused someone to look into it.
Three 500 rep bounties awarded to a single user in two minutes to answers that were from 2015 is a bit unusual. Users can only offer 3 bounties at a time and the maximum value for each is 500 rep.
Opening the December 10th and 11th sections shows 1590 reputation was removed - that's 1500 for bounties and 9 upvotes, some on the same posts. Three of the votes on the 10th were within the same minute with one two minutes later - that's not much time to actually judge the quality of the posts.
Additionally, just reading the answers, they don't seem to be particularly good answers - certainly not worthy of huge bounties.
Considering the age of the posts (2015), quality of the answers (low), and the rapidity of voting (high)... well...
>(or - let's be honest - imagined new rules after the fact)
StackOverflow has been sending that exact email ("the motivation for doing so needs to be anchored in the merits of the post, not the person who wrote it") for at least nine years. It's not a new policy.
A warning would have been absolutely sufficient, at most a very short term ban but given there was no harm being done currently and the rules weren't even clear no ban is justified.
I am aware of vote fraud and it's ok that SO warns/suspends if one engages in it. In this case it arguably does. However it needs to be a proportionate response to the action, and not done as retaliation.
I'm also a fairly high reputation SO contributor (in current rankings top 150).
This specific user has a very long history on SO and the rest of the network. You have to assume that this history might have played a part in the decision to suspend instead of only warning.
1 year suspensions are not handed out for first offenses. The guidelines for mods are to give escalating suspensions for 7/30/365 days, so this is most likely at least the third suspension for this user.
This case could be different. Do you know he was suspended before? It makes sense that they'd want to ban him for a year if this is retribution. It all checks out. The email doesn't mention a previous ban which I'd expect to be mentioned if it was a factor.
Stack Overflow failed to enunciate their own rules (or - let's be honest - imagined new rules after the fact), blamed you for breaking non-existent rules, sent you an obviously mostly copy/paste suspension notice (the bit about secondary accounts seems bizarre and non sequitur), and gas-lit you with the imaginary claim that you cannot vote on a post you already voted on which for whatever reason hadn't been logged.
FWIW also a high-rep SO user and had to create a burner account in case there's retribution. We shouldn't have to hide ourselves just to talk sanely.
SO is right to try to protect the bounty system from unintended uses, but not to make rules up on the fly and enforce them heavy-handedly and retrospectively, suspending someone for breaking non-existent rules.
Stack Overflow should make rules for bounties and make them crystal clear and unsuspend you. Can they admit they're wrong - will they do this? Of course not.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/help/bounty#:~:text=Users%20may%20....