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There is a particular user in the tags I follow that keeps making micro edits (tags only) to questions they answered themselves in the past. The revisions are clearly aimed at drawing new attention to their answers. Revisions on questions they didn't answer are almost absent. Some questions have already been tag-edited multiple times by them.

I once had a discussion with this user, explaining that they kept polluting the front page at the expense of questions that deserved proper attention. That made it stop for a while.

Now, since a couple of weeks, this user is frequently making these tag edits again.

I think this is unacceptable. If three or four others users would do the same thing the front page in my tag would render utterly useless, making this a typical Tragedy of the Commons problem, i.e. one person consuming a common resource without breaking any rule, but nevertheless damaging the community.

I think this should stop. But I'd like to check here if my feeling is right. What is the consensus here?

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    IMO it should be punished
    – 0___________
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 19:35
  • 42
    I'd flag for moderator attention (on one of the posts and link to several others). Judging the case is impossible without seeing the edits, but I don't think it is a good idea to link to them here on meta.
    – BDL
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 20:00
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    How do you know it’s to draw attention? It makes sense they would only edit posts they’ve answered, since they’d be familiar with the question and content, likely much more so than questions they didn’t answer. That seems natural.
    – user438383
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 20:13
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    @user438383 it makes sense that if someone makes trivial and/or unnecessary edits to posts where they participated, then it is likely they do so for the purpose of bumping the post which is heavily frowned upon. Of course, without evidence presented we cannot say for sure, but if Gert believes they noticed a pattern of abuse of the privilege, they are well in their right to mod flag and make their case. The rest depends on whether it actually looks like abuse to the handling mod.
    – Oleg Valter is with Ukraine
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 20:17
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    @user438383 Yes, of course I've been thinking about that aspect. But most edits are rather useless, like adding a far less specific tag that could apply to hundreds of questions in the more specific tag.
    – Gert Arnold
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 20:18
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    There's also a chance that they are adding tags to gain score in those tags, working for tag badges. That would still be abusive in most cases, of course. You can check their activity in their profile to see if they keep adding the same tag to multiple questions, and whether they are tracking a corresponding tag badge.
    – Andras Deak -- Слава Україні
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 23:23
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    @AndrasDeak how can you tell between an user trying to gain points in a tag and one trying to correctly tag questions? Unless the tag doesn't apply to said questions (in which case the edits should be reverted), they must have some knowledge about the tag they're "trying to game". Also, I thought we had to assume good intent in here.
    – Kaiido
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 6:39
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    @HereticMonkey That's quite a different case, isn't it?
    – Gert Arnold
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 7:44
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    @Kaiido The main "proof" for me is that the tag edits generally don't serve any purpose in providing questions with better tags. They try to find a tag that's just not yet there but that's implied by the other tags. When I edit tags I always do it when there clearly is a more applicable tag (like a specific version of some technology) and I can do that for many questions in my tag, even the ones I even never intend to answer. I think if they'd care for question quality they'd at least do also that.
    – Gert Arnold
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 7:57
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    "The revisions are clearly aimed at drawing new attention to their answers." You'll have to make a specific example. It might for example just be that the user is involved in updating the tag and tag wiki itself and then update their old posts accordingly - which would be fine. Adding some random vague tag (like "strings", "arrays" etc) to old posts would be highly questionable however.
    – Lundin
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 8:50
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    When an answer of mine upvoted (and I haven't seen it recently), I revisit that answer to see if anything needs to be fixed (typos, broken links, new knowledge), and I sometimes will also fix issues with other answers and the question itself, including updating tags if that makes sense. Without specific examples, it is hard to guess at the actual problem or intent, but I think assuming bad intent is not good. It seem to me that the main problem is that you are annoyed that 'pollute' your tag page, so maybe you should switch your sort to "Newest" instead of "Active".
    – Mark Rotteveel
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 8:55
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    @GertArnold you are clearly talking about a particular case, we can't as we don't see it. Andras was implying that they could use these tag edits in an attempt to game the tag-badges. To do so they must add a tag in which they are already proficient, so your particular case of "a tag that's just not yet there but that's implied by the other tags" seems improbable for this goal. Now I can also see how one could only have the time to dig the posts where they did participate in. Once again I don't see a general rule to throw out any such tag edit based on just these facts.
    – Kaiido
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 9:05
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    @MarkRotteveel In my discussion with this user I mentioned the intent I assumed and at least they didn't contradict that. Also, I see multiple questions where they edited tags for the fourth time in one year or so. Of course they can change their mind, but that often? Anyway, a moderator will look into it now and I'll settle with whichever outcome and stop worrying about it.
    – Gert Arnold
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 11:17
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    Perhaps in the minutest of specifics. They are both situations where someone is editing a question in hopes of getting their answer seen. The meta-answer is the same; mod-flag and move on.
    – Heretic Monkey
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 19:43
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    @SteveBennett considering the questions are old, and have already been answered, the relevant audience is made of people that reach the question from search engines, and those people rarely use specific tags. For those questions, editing the tags only spams the tag feed pages for people that actively use SO and want to help .
    – Cristik
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 8:00

1 Answer 1

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If someone is making edits just to bump their posts, then it is certainly an abuse of their editing privilege. We have an established way of dealing with this kind of behavior - custom flagging one of the posts for moderator attention and explaining in detail (well, as much detail as the dialog allows), with examples, why you believe there is abuse happening.

Let the mods deal with the rest - if there is sufficient evidence that the behavior is unacceptable, they will take action as appropriate.

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    @GertArnold You could also include a link to this meta question in your flag, if you want to provide even more details.
    – Sylvester is on codidact.com
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 20:43

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