If multiple accounts are found that aid solely in some accounts reputation increasing and nothing else, those accounts will be suspended.
However, a situation where an active user with multiple active accounts (say twelve dozen because it makes him gross) could ask, answer and upvote all mutual content and live like 144 seperate accounts and no one would be the wiser.
If the content generated is of value, how could we ban this repfarmer?
We ban 143 of his accounts and add a warning to his last one remaining. He should have atleast one point of access, otherwise we'd just be cruel. That should be standard practice. And no, we musn't even transfer even a single rep point from an alt account that's deleted. We don't want to encourage even a shred of incentive in this matter.
If you want to be a healthy and respected member of this community, you should stick to one account and refrain from making any more without great deal of cause. If by chance you find yourself with multiple accounts (perhaps your OpenID didn't sync properly), then please do refrain from upvoting your own content on the same SE site.
It is unfair to those who play by the rules and work on answers everyday to steadily rise their reputation and standing within their community.
SE should be able to track how many accounts are coming from a single IP. Surely there is atleast one script running in the data centre logging that detail 24x7.
We don't have to worry to much about repfarming because of this. However, it is an issue we need clear policy for. We try to be a community that is googd to users who are good to us.
According to the faq page, the primary way to gain reputation is by posting good questions and useful answers. Votes on these posts cause you to gain (or sometimes lose) reputation. “Community wikis” do not generate any reputation.
You gain reputation when:
question is voted up: +5
answer is voted up: +10
answer is marked “accepted”: +15 (+2 to acceptor)
suggested edit is accepted: +2 (up to +1000 total per user)
bounty awarded to your answer: + full bounty amount
one of your answers is awarded a bounty automatically: + half of the bounty amount
site association bonus: +100 on each site (awarded a maximum of one time per site)
(!) You can earn a maximum of 200 reputation per day from the combination of upvotes, downvotes and suggested edits. But Bounty awards, accepted answers, and association bonuses are not subject to this daily reputation limit.
If you are an experienced Stack Exchange network user with 200 or more reputation on at least one site, you will receive a starting +100 reputation bonus to get you past basic new user restrictions. This will happen automatically on all current Stack Exchange sites where you have an account, and on any other Stack Exchange sites at the time you log in.
You lose reputation when:
- your question is voted down: −2
- your answer is voted down: −2
- you vote down an answer: −1
- you place a bounty on a question: − full bounty amount
- one of your posts receives 6 spam or offensive flags: −100
- All users start with one reputation point, and reputation can never drop below 1. Accepting your own answer does not increase your reputation. Deleted posts do not affect reputation, for voters, authors or anyone else involved, in most cases. If a user reverses a vote, the corresponding reputation loss or gain will be reversed as well. Vote reversal as a result of voting fraud will also return lost or gained reputation.
This system can be used by multiple accounts to unfairly gain point, offer paid services that we frown upon such as increasing and decreasing any user's rep. They can sock puppet eachother. Lots of problematicswe don't want here.
The mods have serious work when it comes to repfarmers. The first step is identification. The second, verification. The third, action. And finally, conformation that the threat does not persist.
Thank you.
