73

My aggressive tag editing has disturbed people before, but this is a new one.

Last week, a 1.5k rep user created a horribly generic tag name, so I nuked it. There was a brief back-and-forth in the comments on the question, now deleted. tl;dr: Dude, if you're gonna talk about search in Android, give it an Android-specific tag name.

Anyway, he declared he was done with the site over a simple tag naming dispute. It culminated in him creating three 500-rep bounties on three questions I'd answered, using the bounty reason to call me out... by copy/pasting his "I quit" message.

What?

So I flagged the bounties, and they were removed, but the user added them to different questions instead, this time without the calling out. Well, whatever. The questions they were added to were all worth getting up to date answers on anyway.

Except now the user has granted all the bounties to me. And then deleted his account.

I am profoundly uncomfortable with this. I get the feeling that I've been set up somehow, or that the user is going to go crying to SE that I'm a big bad man and that my account should be shut down because of uh I dunno maybe fraud or something and oh come on give me a break.

Should anything be done about this situation, or should I just enjoy 1.5k worth of ragequit rep?

  • 77
    Find some excellent answers and spread the wealth. Problem solved. – yannis Apr 5 '13 at 20:22
  • 3
    You have to see the moon shrink and grow three times. Then your problem is gone. – hakre Apr 5 '13 at 20:23
  • 81
    So basically, if we all start aggressively tag editing, we will gain tons of rep from all the pissed off users who ragequit? :P – Mysticial Apr 5 '13 at 20:24
  • 10
    I need to get me one of those users! :-D – Martijn Pieters Apr 5 '13 at 20:25
  • 51
    [wanders off to look for tags to edit] – user102937 Apr 5 '13 at 20:26
  • 11
    I find it hilarious that this was posted just before A Bounty Reputation Bug Possibly. I was totally expecting to find user1521536 there complaining about how their rep was "magically" bountied away to some random user named Charles. I was disappointed. – Servy Apr 5 '13 at 20:28
  • 6
    [off to find a high-rep user to piss off so he can bounty me all his rep...] – Mysticial Apr 5 '13 at 20:35
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    This... is probably the stupidest thing I've seen in Stack Exchange. Everyone in the whole site just got a little bit dumber for having read that. – Madara's Ghost Apr 5 '13 at 20:47
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    I've been going about this reputation thing all wrong...! – LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir Apr 5 '13 at 20:54
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    @BlahBlahGrabblesnackers Perhaps you should give all of your rep to me though bounties so that you can start over and do it right this time. I can edit some tags if you think it'll help. – Servy Apr 5 '13 at 20:54
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    The sheer weirdness of this situation aside, we're not gonna come after you for bounty fraud or anything. (I mean, fiiiiine, I guess I won't just delete your account, you bounty earner you.) – Adam Lear Apr 5 '13 at 20:58
  • 27
    Without commenting on the validity of the tag edits, you could use this as an opportunity to review how your aggressive (by your own words) tag editing impacts others on the site, and how you might adjust as a result (or not at all). – casperOne Apr 5 '13 at 20:59
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    @casperOne While I get where you're coming from, I think a case like this when the one party when to such extremes over such a silly dispute doesn't really help as a template for self reflection. However aggressive Charles' tag editing was, it's still just tag editing and nothing more. Don't really want people to be afraid to edit a couple of tags just in case the OP ragequits... – yannis Apr 5 '13 at 21:14
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    Look on the bright side -- you'll be dominating the week and month leaderboards for a little while :) +1500 – nneonneo Apr 5 '13 at 22:12
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    I think it's funny your meta account is getting all sorts of rep in a post talking about how you got rep for nothing. – enderland Apr 6 '13 at 1:09
49

I'm with Yannis -- If you're uncomfortable with this little bit of self-destructive philanthropy, donate the money reputation to charity other worthy questions/answers via the bounty system.


On a "being nice" note, you probably ought to have left an edit comment the second time explaining why the tag was a lousy one. The user would probably have been more accepting of it that way.
(where ought to and would probably are per this year's awesome April 1 RFC.)

  • 1
    To the second point, the OP already stated that they discussed it in comments, but that those comments have since been deleted by a mod (as is appropriate). – Servy Apr 5 '13 at 20:46
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    Charles did leave the following comment in response to being asked about it: @[User], the tag name is excessively generic and appears nowhere in this question. It does not seem relevant in the least. If search in Android is really a thing that needs to be classified, it should follow the same pattern as the other Android tags and be named android-search. That comment, and the others around it, were cleaned up. The wording could have been a little kinder there, but it does explain the reasoning behind the retagging. – Brad Larson Apr 5 '13 at 21:04
  • @Servy I was talking about the edit comments (I agree that question/answer comments are not the place to talk about tags - that's why we have Meta sites) - clarified that in the answer – voretaq7 Apr 5 '13 at 21:17
  • 3
    @Yannis It would be more fun for the rest of us if you were arguing with yourself. – voretaq7 Apr 5 '13 at 21:18
  • 1
    Yeah, I would have left an edit comment here if I'd expected the comments to be cleared. New tags containing words that don't appear in the question almost always get an edit comment. To be honest, I'd say that the majority of my tag nukes are for typos, thoughtos, bad searching, and other non-arbitrary all tags must die reasons. That or they're on the list of 32 tags that I keep an eye on to make sure they stay dead. Stupid friggin' server... – Charles Apr 5 '13 at 21:25
  • 1
    @voretaq7 Hm... – yannis Apr 5 '13 at 21:27
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    +1 for the RFC! I would never have found it otherwise. – nneonneo Apr 5 '13 at 21:59
  • @voretaq7 When rolling back an edit you cannot change the edit comment, and it was appropriate to use the rollback functionality here. – Servy Apr 8 '13 at 13:52
  • @Servy Hmm... I'm not sure if I consider that a bug in rollbacks or not... – voretaq7 Apr 8 '13 at 16:52
  • @voretaq7 It's not a bug, as that's the intended behavior. It's by-design. You might not find it desirable, but a bug would mean that it doesn't function as the designer intended it to function. – Servy Apr 8 '13 at 16:57
  • @Servy From a user's perspective a bug is any undesired behavior (even one stemming from a conscious design choice) - not being able to explain a rollback certainly seems undesirable to me, though I'm not sure if it's worth any effort to change that behavior. I may have some sympathy for the SE developers (since I was a code slinger myself once), but as a SE user I reserve the right to call things bugs if I think the behavior is undesirable. You're free to disagree. – voretaq7 Apr 8 '13 at 17:05
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    @voretaq7 From a user's perspective a bug is any undesired behavior False. Any undesirable behavior is just that, undesirable behavior. It's not a bug unless it goes against the intended design. Now an end user most likely doesn't care if something is a bug, or just a needed feature, so they often don't need to distinguish between a bug and a problem/issue/"undesirable behavior"/poor design/etc. That they don't care that it's not a bug doesn't make it a bug. – Servy Apr 8 '13 at 17:08
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    @Servy I'm not going to waste time debating semantics and user experience with you. You can call it what you want - bug, disparity of features, design choice, fluffy kitten - I think the behavior as it stands causes problems (as noted above), but frankly I don't care enough to spend any more time talking about it. If it pisses someone off on SF maybe I'll take more of an interest. – voretaq7 Apr 8 '13 at 17:14
28

I think you were right to raise this.

But, now that you have and everything's on record, just enjoy the free rep. Sounds like you earned it through having to put up with this idiot.

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