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Two users have been asking and answering each other's questions about two products in a stack developed as open source software by a company. Both users seem to work for this company.

Is this OK?

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    @Colin Just flag a random Q by one of the users with a custom mod flag and provide the information. You can't flag users, but the mods will read the description and act upon it.
    – Erik A
    Aug 2, 2018 at 9:27
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    I guess this would be a dupe of this and this (among others).
    – yivi
    Aug 2, 2018 at 9:37
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    @yivi, sort of, but in this case there are two users actively asking and answering each other's questions, thereby increasing each other's reputation. That's a whole new ball game. Aug 2, 2018 at 9:38
  • Not really. You just need to flag two users. Or just one of them and explain the situation in the message to the mod.
    – yivi
    Aug 2, 2018 at 9:39
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    And the other "new" thing about this question is that there's no blatant promotion of a particular product (tag). It's all in the guise of a purely technical question and answer about some feature. And as a result the product (tag) gets promoted. Aug 2, 2018 at 9:42
  • @Colin, I do not think that's new. That's handled in the second Q&A that I linked. Among other places.
    – yivi
    Aug 2, 2018 at 9:44
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    You could add this to the list of possible dupes. It depends on what exactly do you want to deal with.
    – yivi
    Aug 2, 2018 at 9:47
  • "Both users seem to work for this company." Have they disclosed their affiliation? That is the least they have to do (see questions on meta about "can I promote by own..."). Aug 2, 2018 at 10:33
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    They do in their profile. Not programmers, they are both technical writers. Looks to me they are seeding the site with FAQ. Lame questions, but the kind that users of their product are apt to ask. A mod needs to sort this out, flagging one of the questions is best. Aug 2, 2018 at 11:06
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    did they create this tag just for themselves to flood SO with documentation about their product? Aug 2, 2018 at 12:53
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    They(4) are the only active user on those 2 tag with a solid 80% of question and answers. Could we just ask for an enterprise accoutn and merge them all. I have no issue with faq on SO. But this is comedy "I have search xYZ Documentation and ..", SelfAnswer question are there for a reason. Aug 2, 2018 at 15:01
  • @DragandDrop There is no such thing as an enterprise account: shared accounts are explicitly not allowed on Stack Exchange.
    – Cœur
    Aug 3, 2018 at 1:14

4 Answers 4

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I seem to remember this being a common problem a few years ago, but this is the first instance I've heard about for a while. Personally, my stance has always been that if the Q&A are of high quality and potentially useful to others then I've no problem with them staying, even if they were clearly "faked" to a degree.

The problem with this approach though is that invariably the Q&A's aren't of good quality - they're often rushed, short, badly formatted, don't make any sense to anyone who doesn't understand the targetted product, containing links with little other surrounding information, etc. And if they're of this quality (as they almost certainly are in this situation), then I'd tend to DV / VTC, or flag them if they're particularly bad.

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    There is also the additional problem of this being done by multiple users voting/accepting each other answers. That's a voting ring, on top of possibly being spam.
    – yivi
    Aug 2, 2018 at 9:56
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    @yivi Yup, that's a related (but separate) problem. There's cases where it'll be picked up by SO's "revenge voting" style algorithm, but if it's spread across lots of accounts then it may not be. Aug 2, 2018 at 9:59
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    @yivi Multiple users voting/accepting each other's answers doesn't automatically make it a voting ring. If the voting/accepting happens because of the content, it's fine. If the posts are in a tag that almost nobody else is interested in, there isn't even anything unusual about it.
    – user743382
    Aug 2, 2018 at 10:13
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    To give the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they don't realise that questions can be self-answered, nor that seeding good-quality Q&A for a new thing is actually allowed.
    – OrangeDog
    Aug 2, 2018 at 10:40
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    @hvd from my personal experience this is not true. I was basically told that nobody in my company was allowed to answer each others' questions, even if they were good. Aug 2, 2018 at 10:40
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    @RichardLeMesurier Told by whom? I'd say rejecting good answers goes against SO's philosophy. Aug 2, 2018 at 11:17
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    @RichardLeMesurier I can see why that might be a company policy (if a company doesn't want to come across as flooding SO with fake Q&A's, since that doesn't look great.) AFAIK It's certainly not SO policy though. Aug 2, 2018 at 11:56
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    "don't make any sense to anyone who doesn't understand the targetted product" is an attribute that most questions have, and doesn't seem problematic to me. If you don't know anything about a product, why would you be reading detailed Q&A about it in the first place?
    – Mark Amery
    Aug 2, 2018 at 12:22
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    @ABoschman I had around 1000rep struck off my account a few years back for sockpuppeting or whatever the name is. The situation is we were working on BlackBerry mobile stuff, and had some very technical questions in the office. Often due to our research we would be answerring each others' questions. I forget exactly which mod it was, but once youve been accused of cheating there is no way (in reality) to actually respond. They say you can, but in reality you can't. True story, was a while back. You can see the blip on my rep graph back in 2015. Aug 2, 2018 at 14:40
  • @MichaelBerry It sure was SO policy, or at least was the policy of the mod involved. Aug 2, 2018 at 14:41
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    @RichardLeMesurier Ah my mistake then. Certainly not one I've heard from anywhere else though. Aug 2, 2018 at 17:39
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    @RichardLeMesurier There's a big difference between answering each others' questions and upvoting each others' posts. You don't get reputation from posting answers so the "extra" 1000 points must have come from serial upvoting.
    – JJJ
    Aug 2, 2018 at 21:08
  • Well 1k, is about 30 accepted/upvoted question. It could be pretty quick. Aug 3, 2018 at 6:16
9

This seems to be covered by the FAQ

How to not be a spammer

The community here tends to vote down overt self-promotion and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, that’s okay. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.

If they're good Q&A fine. But they must disclose (their) affiliation in (their) answers.

You are also within your rights to downvote/VTC if you feel they question(s) and/or answer(s) are not good quality.

Possibly point the people in question at this FAQ?

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  • "VTC if you feel they question(s) and/or answer(s) are not good quality." Just as a side remark. Low quality is not a CVR (close vote reason). Aug 2, 2018 at 14:33
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    ..anymore. It used to be. Probably when this was written it still was.
    – Liam
    Aug 2, 2018 at 14:40
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    This was written 2 hours ago.
    – Kevin B
    Aug 2, 2018 at 16:08
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    The quoted text should probably read "... disclose your affiliation in your questions and answers". As it stands it suggests that posting a question about your product without disclosing your affiliation with the product is OK. Aug 3, 2018 at 1:46
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One can suspect that these questions are not posed out of any need but rather as a mean to promote a certain (software) product. It's likely that other users will see promotional Q&A activity as kind of spam. See for example Is it OK to promote my own code by answering my own questions?.

We even once thought that posting a question to advertise your own software is not acceptable at all.

On the other hand, if the question is on topic (no close reason applies) and of sufficient quality (not downvote worthy) it might actually be useful for someone.

The least that should be included is that all users asking or answering questions about their own software must disclose their affiliation with that software directly in the contribution, so that others may form an educated opinion about it.

Finally, it might just be an attempt to quickly gain reputation by posing and answering and mutual upvoting of content they are familiar with.

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    "all users asking or answering questions about their own software must disclose their affiliation with that software" is a standard that's been rejected many times over (and rightly so, I think); see meta.stackoverflow.com/a/371756/1709587 for the latest example. Posters who are promoting a product need to disclose their affiliation, but there isn't (and shouldn't be) a requirement to mention your affiliation in every post about the product you ever make.
    – Mark Amery
    Aug 2, 2018 at 12:27
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    I agree with the disclosure suggestion
    – Hack-R
    Aug 2, 2018 at 12:39
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    @MarkAmery It seems to come down to the question if these cases are promotions of a product or not. I seems plausible that repeated asking and self-answering of software one is part of is likely intended as promotion of the software. Aug 2, 2018 at 13:57
  • @Trilarion, I don't think that's the right question. If the motivation is promotion, but they provide high-quality Q&A, what's the problem? [As it happens, I think the questions are awful.]
    – jpp
    Aug 2, 2018 at 14:29
4

Focus should be on Q&A quality. In unpopular tags, only a few people may have the expertise to answer questions. We should not assume intentions, even if the evidence, e.g. two people only ever accepting each others' answers, suggests bias.

Frankly, if a person asks a good question and it is answered best by their associate, there should be no problem with their answer being accepted. Even if it happens dozens of times.

In this case, the questions are undeniably poor. This needlessly pollutes SO's Q&A repository in a way which cannot easily be undone. That's an issue.

Undisclosed promotion, in my opinion, isn't the problem here.

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    I was about to upvote up until "Undisclosed promotion". You probably didn't mean it, the case at hand doesn't look like promotion. Undisclosed promotion is iffy at the very least and spam at worst.
    – Passer By
    Aug 2, 2018 at 15:05
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    @PasserBy, My point is, in this particular case it's not the issue. Because I don't see where they are promoting. I just see very bad Q&A.
    – jpp
    Aug 2, 2018 at 15:09
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    @FélixGagnon-Grenier, Counterexample: you can find people who promote their products by producing excellent Q&A. Is that bad? [Of course, it's not happening here.]
    – jpp
    Aug 2, 2018 at 15:11
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    Oh... er I misunderstood :) May I suggest "isn't the problem here."?
    – Passer By
    Aug 2, 2018 at 15:17

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