tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Bounty madness)

François G. Dorais comments on "Bounty madness" (22732)

François G. Dorais — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 17:58:06 -0700

I'm closing this since whatever happens next shouldn't happen here.

Will Jagy comments on "Bounty madness" (22731)

Will Jagy — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 17:48:45 -0700

@Gerhard, could you please email Scott M., who seems to know FJ, and can figure out something a bit more private? I continue to think that public argument, but in a stilted internet manner, is the least effective way to resolve disputes, and tends to blow up instead of calm down. If you do not have an address for Scott, I do.

grp comments on "Bounty madness" (22730)

grp — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 17:32:48 -0700

With the death of children occurring in this and other countries,
such matters as discussed here pale in comparison. Yet I struggle
to say what I mean and be accountable for it.

FJ, I also struggle with accepting your apology. While it shows signs
of being accountable, the previous history is too fresh in my mind,
and I at present need something more. If we are to put a good face
on things, let us say it is a first step.

In spite of your intentions and apology, I still have my concerns.
You deserve my apology for my placing the concerns here, but the
concerns are not gone. They would be strongly mitigated if you
put yourself in a (to me, more) visible position of accountability.
My offer of a moderated discussion about this stands, but I can
handle it better after another day to cool down.

I not only offer caution that your actions have unintended results,
I close with a similar reminder from months ago: I look forward
to your cooperative and positive contributions to the forum.

Quid: unless you are also FJ, I see no profit to either of us to
address your remarks.

Gerhard Paseman, 2013.06.29

quid comments on "Bounty madness" (22729)

quid — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 17:05:35 -0700

It is a *bit* difficult to reconstruct and also judge such things more than half a year after the fact.
If grp had such a problem with it, he might have brought it up then, not now. But let us leave this aside.

The point why it is not so different then the April 1st is that **then** FJ had *other* contributions (comments) on the post, and *in the process* changed the user-name. (Actually several times but the first time for, I think, unrelated reasons.)
What I now do not know is if FJ deleted all other comments *before* leaving the one as "Gerhard Paseman".
If this was not done this deletion, it should be clear to anybody there is something strange going on, since the displayname then would change *for all of them* looking odd in the exchange in which Gerhard Paseman was involved(!)

And, even if everything was deleted then it was still sort of clear Gerhard Paseman would see the imitation, which he actually did, after a short period of time, thus being able to clarify the situation.

It was at least decidedly not so that out-of-the-blue FJ posted something somewhere as "Gerhard Paseman" this I would find problematic.

Kevin Walker comments on "Bounty madness" (22728)

Kevin Walker — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 16:30:11 -0700

I have not been paying close attention to the original issue, but for what it's worth I agree with Michael Greinecker that impersonating another user, especially a non-anonymous user, is a serious offense. More serious (in my opinion) than ad hominem attacks or general impoliteness.

Michael Greinecker comments on "Bounty madness" (22727)

Michael Greinecker — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 15:52:25 -0700

@Scott: There were a lot of discussions about users using their real names because of the additional accountability it brings. The same accountability means that the actions of an impersonator can be tied to a real world person with actual reputation. For this reason impersonting a user, especially someone posting under their actual name, strikes me as a rather serious offense. That the impersonation has been done by an anonymous user makes it worse (I can of course not judge whether the ientity is known to moderators or not). The impersonated user did not consider the impersonation "mostly harmless".

Scott Carnahan comments on "Bounty madness" (22726)

Scott Carnahan — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 15:38:23 -0700

Michael Greinecker, you have made a strong claim about abuse of the system and grounds for suspension. Contrary to your assertion, neither is obvious to me. Could you can explain the reasoning behind your claim in some more detail?

Michael Greinecker comments on "Bounty madness" (22725)

Michael Greinecker — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 15:27:04 -0700

@quid: The explanation that i was a joke came a bit late- in what you linked, it was an april fools day joke revealed the next day. I also have the impression that GrP was less than amused. In this case, it is far from clear that any outsider could have understood the "joke".

quid comments on "Bounty madness" (22724)

quid — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 13:45:40 -0700

@Michael Greinecker: to me it is not at all obvious this is an "extreme form of abusing the system" if this were so extreme it would have been easy to take counter-measures software-wise (it seems however meanwhile some were taken, limiting the frequency of name-changes but a quite weak one). Also, it was as explained a joke, perhaps a bad joke or one that one should not do, but it was still a joke, as opposed to a serious attempt to impersonate somebody.
It is true that in grp's specific case there is more risk of actual confusion, using numerous accounts in parallel, but then this is somewhat counter the way an SE site is intended to work to begin with.

Moreover, these two meta-threads on meta.SO

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/174588/why-cant-i-change-my-name-to-jon-skeet

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/174451/jon-skeet-impersonators-running-rampant/

do not suggest that it is that obviously an extreme form of abusing the system and at least in the first case it seems clear the user was not suspended (in the others it is hard to tell but then it also it seems rather not).

It should be noted that the pseudo impersonation there went a lot further in some cases then just changing the displayname: there was picture, the about, even the age, the link, everything was copied.
Still people seemed to have mixed opinions if this is alright as a prank or not. (That it was April 1st is not that much of a game changer, in particular not as also in the case we discuss there was a specfic context that made displayname changes somewhat natural.)

---

@grp: Do you intend to acknowledge that you accused FJ or provide any other form of response to my question if what you said was or was not an accusation. You know, hit and run and all; tt's been almost a day for you to reply.

Michael Greinecker comments on "Bounty madness" (22723)

Michael Greinecker — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 04:46:50 -0700

"during which I changed my own username to Gerhard Paseman for comedic effect"

This is obviously an extreme form of abusing the system and grounds for suspension on pretty much any SE site.

quid comments on "Bounty madness" (22722)

quid — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 19:08:42 -0700

@grp: since you seem to be concerned the conversation does not progress quickly enough, for one thing, you accused FJ of "derisive comments" and "Inappropriate behaviour." (The original word slander feels too strong, but then tis was corrected and it is an accusation, or what else is this.) In addition I find it sort of odd you have an issue with the edit, which was clearly marked as such, thus not leaving your comment look strange. (If it were not marked I could see a potential problem as I think revisions are not directly, or at all, accessible here.)

grp comments on "Bounty madness" (22721)

grp — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:46:03 -0700

Redacted. See earlier post for more detail.

FJ comments on "Bounty madness" (22720)

FJ — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:48:55 -0700

Previous Remarks Redacted.

GRP, I appreciate you removing your remarks. With regards to the (long passed) specific incident, I hope you recognize that it was not done with any malice or ill-intent. I did not detect (at the time) any sense that you were upset. At the same time, let me admit that it was not entirely appropriate behavior, and let me also apologize to you.

quid comments on "Bounty madness" (22719)

quid — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 14:43:03 -0700

@grp: I have active recollection of this incident but unfortunantely did not see everyhing in full detail and thus did not get involved then (also this was the terrible time of the ABC question, so I really did not need additional involvement in anything). There might have been a misunderstanding at the root but you said "Clearly your notion of being insulted differs from my notion, and likely differs from commonly accepted notions as well." While it is completely clear that one can take what Larry Freeman wrote (in earlier versions) the wrong way and find it insulting or at least extremely annoying. The argument was not "not complete"; of course it was not spelled out in detail, but then the entire thing is sort of off-topic, and completely so if it was not clear based on the hint. Now, I think Larry Freeman actually wanted to be modest, but one can also take this very easily differently.

Perhaps an over-reaction, but perfectly understandable.

grp comments on "Bounty madness" (22718)

grp — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 14:19:53 -0700

I am upset. And I made a mistake.

I was mildly upset by Scott Morrison's characterization earlier in this thread
of "mostly harmless". I disagree with it and still do.

The mistake was to put some of my concerns here in tea. While I believe others
should be aware of them, I should have instead mailed Scott privately. I
apologize for that mistake.

The responses to that post have only increased the upset, and I admit
some responsibility for that. It may be better to have this tete-a-tete
elsewhere.

I do not intend to unwrite what I wrote. I have a copy available and am
willing to accommodate a moderated discussion about what I posted here earlier. I recommend Scott as moderator, if he is willing. I now think this is not the right place for the post.

Gerhard Paseman, 2013.06.29

quid comments on "Bounty madness" (22717)

quid — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:18:45 -0700

Just for the record, in general I do not find Frictionless Jellfish's action on MO inscrutable. In fact, most of the time they seem to make quite a bit of sense to me. Also, they left one of the in my opinion most to the point comments ever on meta (this meta). It might only look look strange, because in certain ways the site is so stange that normal behavior starts to look strange. :-)

Do not take this comment too seriosly either please. But in my opinion, (more) serious on the content, and (more) playful on the rest would be a good way to develop (alas it seems rather the opposite direction is taken).

Asaf Karagila comments on "Bounty madness" (22716)

Asaf Karagila — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:49:29 -0700

@Andy:

I never meant to suggest that there is some fowl play, but two points are to be considered:

While not the worst questions on the site, there are easily much much better questions which deserve at least the attention, if not answers which deserve the actual reputation.
Not everyone is as nice-playing as the MO community, and on other communities I can assure you that such cases of abuse can be found. Perhaps rarely, but it's definitely not unheard of.

Scott Morrison comments on "Bounty madness" (22715)

Scott Morrison — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:31:09 -0700

Mostly harmless.

Scott Morrison comments on "Bounty madness" (22714)

Scott Morrison — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:50:38 -0700

I happen to know Frictionless Jellyfish, and will enquire. I suspect, however, that his motivations will be at the same time inscrutable, and 'mostly harmless'.

The User comments on "Bounty madness" (22713)

The User — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:42:06 -0700

@Joseph van Name I do not doubt that. However, that is off-topic. I am sorry that I have started that.

josephvanname comments on "Bounty madness" (22712)

josephvanname — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:35:59 -0700

@The User. Yes. Frictionless Jellyfish seems to be acting a little strange or something. Maybe her account got hacked or something. And as a filter and lattice theory person myself, I would venture to say some of Porton's questions are pretty bad although I suppose that if you tried hard enough you can possibly find worse questions.

The User comments on "Bounty madness" (22711)

The User — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:08:14 -0700

Quoting Dev Null:

A suggestion/request/plea: If you want to dump reputation: vote for this answer and then either voters can flag it out of existence and/or I will ask the moderators to delete the account. You can (I think) also give bounties to yourself, which is perhaps a better way to dispose of excess points. (If you accept, I will also answer your other bounty questions.)

See previous answer. (This account to be deleted, feel free to flag as spam.)

He wants to loose his reputation? Frictionless Jellyfish? Are you reading this?

The User comments on "Bounty madness" (22710)

The User — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:02:26 -0700

@Joseph van Name. 300 with the new reputation system. However, I would not call Porton’s questions the “worst questions”. Sometimes his behaviour is inappropriate, I know him (not personally), but this does not make every of his filter-/lattice-theory questions into “worst questions on this site”. And your comparison is not quite accurate since it is not Porton who got the bounties.

@All It seems like that Frictionless Jellyfish has created a new account and he wanted to transfer reputation to this account (in MO 2.0 there is no longer the “+50 to sweeten the deal”, otherwise it would be clearly abusive generation of reputation). I have currently no opinion about that (it just seems strange), but I want to put it on the table. I think it is not the essential point that he chose these particular questions (that was probably just a joke). Now he has added bounties to questions he had answered himself.

josephvanname comments on "Bounty madness" (22709)

josephvanname — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:31:51 -0700

@Andy Putman. It seems like upvoting a question and putting a bounty on a ridiculous question are a bit different simply based on the sheer amount of points being rewarded. I mean giving 1500 points in bounty is like randomly upvoting the 150 worst questions on this site.

Andy Putman comments on "Bounty madness" (22708)

Andy Putman — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 13:17:45 -0700

@Asaf Karagila : I don't think Frictionless Jellyfish has any kind of quid pro quo with any of the people on the other side of his bounties. It appears to me like he just wants to randomly get rid of reputation. That doesn't strike me as being all that big of a deal. Pretty sure he is just joking around...

Asaf Karagila comments on "Bounty madness" (22707)

Asaf Karagila — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 13:01:19 -0700

...and that's why there are limits on bounties and how quick you can give the reputation.

It seems like this is a case of "reputation transfer", which is quite unfair (If you grant me this rhyme/and if not, then perhaps another time).

Andy Putman comments on "Bounty madness" (22706)

Andy Putman — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:44:11 -0700

You might want to post this to the new meta so that more people notice it (I think that not too many people are reading tea yet). For what it's worth, I think that offering bounties is like voting. People should be able to do it for whatever eccentric reasons they want. If Frictionless Jellyfish wants to give up 1500 rep for the lulz, then who are we to stop him?

Emil J comments on "Bounty madness" (22705)

Emil J — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:09:40 -0700

Half of our current “featured questions” list consists of three questions by a user well known for his peculiarity, whose combined total of -18 votes doesn’t leave any doubt that they are regarged as terrible by the community, and which already have satisfactory answers anyway. Each question was awarded a 500 bounty by Frictionless Jellyfish on the grounds that “one or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty”. Do we really want this?