Why not to cheat?
Here on Answers our mission is to share knowledge and advice within the community in an environment that respects the Community Guidelines. Recently we’ve seen a rise in point gaming, along with ongoing complaints about cheaters and users creating multiple accounts, and have decided to remind users that this type of abuse is taken seriously by Yahoo! Answers and is against the Community Guidelines.
What is considered cheating?
- Posting and answering your own content by creating multiple accounts for the sole purpose of earning points.
- Soliciting others to increase points.
- Copying another user’s content and pasting it as your own.
Our point system rewards community members for sharing and questions and answers, the above items violate the Community Guidelines and lowers the integrity of the site. Misusing Answers hurts the community members.
When people use Answers to cheat or to point game, it lowers the quality of the site and defeats the knowledge-sharing purpose of the site. By sticking to the guidelines and reporting abuse, we can all make Yahoo! Answers an informative and enjoyable place to be.
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im a good boy
About time too!
“By sticking to the guidelines and reporting abuse, we can all make Yahoo! Answers an informative and enjoyable place to be.”
It seems that we are not all on the same page as to what abuse is.
Having someone report every one of my questions seconds after they post is abusive in my mind.
I am not the only one to experience this. Often, when I try to answer a question, it’s been deleted before I’m able to post my response.
It’s not the askers who need to have restrictions. It’s the reporters. It’s the chronic and malicious reporters who make the environment unsafe and unpleasant.
this reminds me of the people who get excited about being the first one to comment on something, even though the comment is just “first!”. come on, there should be a legal limit for sheer pointessness in our lives.answers points mean nothing, are worth nothing. whenever i see someone has spent their precious time amassing thousands of points i know this a person i would never want to meet.
Recently? LOLLLLL! Been reporting this stuff over a year and all you do is take away all my TR rating!
I have had a variation of this. The chemistry questions I answered 5 days ago were all marked with 2 votes for no best answer. So were some of the math questions. Exactly 2 each time. I have a feeling that I cannot protect myself from this kind of trolling.
Any suggestions?
Thank you very much for posting this! I hope it will make a difference in the abusers of the answers community.
My pet peeve is people who answer a question “I don’t know” or worse yet, “idk”. That’s a cheat that no one should put up with.
Don’t you think improper and fraudulent reporting are part of this problem?
Finally the Yahoo people say something, I really hope they crack down on trolls too!
Thankfully something is being done finally.
I’ve given this further consideration.
Isn’t it point gaming when someone cheats others out of their points by reporting them unneccessarily?
Isn’t that cheating?
What about other non-US users who attempt to cheat and stuff like that? It’s not fair that these people point-game.
There is a Spanish user who earns 45k points a week with multiple accounts. He asks himself a lot of repetitive questions. He cheats with a lot of points just by giving himself a lot of Best Answers.
If you care so much about the way that this site is used, then make a better effort to combat the ever increasing trolls that have taken over most sections and posting AND REPORTING questions that also bring the value of this site down.
Also take the time to review EACH and EVERY Violation AND Appeal before handing out Violations left and right.
Thank you!
If you would take the report button away from level one accounts, it would do a lot to cut down on the puppetry; and probably save you guys a lot of time in reviewing appeals. There is just no way that every single question in a whole category is a violation of the terms of service. That’s the content I came here to see. These attacks are frustrating from a user perspective, and pretty easy for you guys to prevent, so please do.
Yes gaming is annoying, but can you convince me you have the resources to do more than just make threats?
Perhaps, this site needs to be more resourceful. Most of Best of Answers are just horrific since some answers are chosen in the wrong way. Like around 50% of ‘em.
Even, people who use the rating system in the wrong way must not be trusted since they don’t know what they are even doing.
Well, what is Yahoo! Answers? It’s the site where people share knowledge and helpful opinions to other.
TL DR all the Y!A community guidelines and the answers for each questions… If the troll attacks happen to the top answerer who passes “Mythical Million”, then Y!A must deal with this.
Remind me of targeting Rebecca Black.
Whoops. I didn’t make any sense for the second comment. Ignore the “TL DR all the Y!A community guidelines and the answers for each questions…”
If the troll attacks happen to the top answerer who passes “Mythical Million”, then Y!A must deal with this. This is not how the site goes. We must find the way to stop the trolls from doing this. Most trolls in the sections are just terrorists who take down the first questions page of the category.
Report ‘em or AVOID them since trolls are ridiculous.
Y!A is a precious space, because it gives freely the opportunity to share. The reality is, that it only can be used out of the capacity of the users and that unfortunately is not enough to use the given space effectively. The given point system and the voting for ‘best answer’ invites people to play and to anipulate. Gaining points and becoming a ‘top contributor’ or at least going above others, becomes the goal and not the sharing or the quality of questions and answers. It becomes a competition in a game and so all tricks are used, – the most clever player wins.
We can observe all this. Answers are getting the ‘best answer’ not because they are the best, but because they get the most votes.
Voter don’t even read other answers, the same as when people answer questions, they don’t read other answers. Why there are so many absolutely silly answers? Because they get their points anyway. If the asker gives the ‘best answer’ then often it is not the best, but just an answer that confirms ones own view. etc. Wanting to fight against gamblers by reporting their tricks, only gives the opportunity to use this tool for more manipulation.
I must say, that I’m tired of all this. It is clear that the administration of Y!A, even doing their best, is not able to control all the gambler. So it seems not to be possible to avoid that the level of quality goes down more and more. This happens every where, like
before with the Newsgroups, that were destroyed by spamers and gamblers.
The only solution I can see, is to drop the point system and the voting. Or at least there should be the option, that who answers can decide not to receive points for ones answer and also ones best answer.
I only could try to further the quality of Y!A with my q&a, without looking for any award, but when my answers are not being noticed among all the silliness and being bothered by trolls, then of course I come to the moment of questioning the sense of my presence here…
BeiYin
I amazed. I do like to get the points solely because it is a recognition that at least SOMEONE values the answer.
I like the positive votes in the same way.
And positive comments by the asker.
Without any form of feedback how could a contributor learn to improve the quality of their answers?
And why would they bother.
Yes, there are trolls etc. And one day they may destroy the whole site. But concentrating on these is counterproductive. They are simply petty annoyances.
Keep trying to enhance the positive aspects of the site and it will have a sound future.
I remember back in the day when points gamers first appeared and we went to war against them. It was the first real problem on Answers once it came out of Beta and the bugs got ironed out. It’s nice to see that the malware and spam problem are at such a lull that we can focus on these kind of problems again.
*applauds the people help fighting malware and spam*
*boos points gamers*
I freely share what I know, and like it when others do as well. It bothers me when I’ve had someone report my answers but fortunately when I’ve appealed answers has agreed with me.
I appeal because my answer may help someone that may or may not have been the person asking. I do not appeal for points as I see no value in them.
If answers were to remove all my points, I would still help others when I can.
One feature that would help, is before someone is allowed to post a question, the database is automatically searched for the same or very similar questions then presented to the person before proceeding to submit the question.
My answers in Computers and Internet>Software are reported every time I mention 2 specific free video converters that I use. Yet, when I did a survey of all the open questions in the catagory that would require an answer about video converters, other converters were mentioned obviously without being reported.
It’s very disheartening to have to appeal these answer reports. The risk of being reported takes the fun out of answering.
You forgot the most common point gaming cheat, which is even specifically listed in the CGs: Answering dozens if not hundreds of Qs with non answers such as “first, …, IDK, dk, fjklkji, etc” for the sole purpose of earning points.
I just got a no vote on a good answer, noticed everyone else but one person also got a no vote… Now I know why. I use to consider no votes and try to figure out what I did wrong so I wouldn’t make the same mistake next time. . But, I don’t care anymore, because votes are meaningless. It’s just a game to some people. Read BeiYin’s comments above, couldn’t have been said any better than that.
I’ve never seen the point in the “points” system anyway, to me this site isn’t about gaining points, I just come here to ask questions, find answers, and help others find the answers to their questions. I have fun here but I’m not in the least bit interested in gaining points.
I am often surprised to see the huge number of best answers and also huge points some people get. Sometimes it appears they are not humans but robots. Good , someone is pointing this impossible thing now.
The whole idea of “voting” is community-driven, and is relied on unnecessarily.
ASKERS! WAKE UP! It’s your job to check the answers and pick one that works!
And report answerers who use sock puppets to get points. These guys need to get a life.
I’m a believer in sticking to the guidelines but sometimes people ask or answer questions that makes it iffy as to whether they are sticking to them. It would benefit all of the Answers clientel if you could fine tune the criteria for what we can report. Some of the worst stuff on here is the ‘slams’ that users say but there really isn’t a good criteria as to what you can report and I’m sure no one wants to report and then get in trouble for doing it. Please make it crystal clear what can be reported, for example, ‘any sort of abusive slander or bad language including language that uses #@*** as symbols to finish swear words would be a very good one to put since it is still bad language. Thanks.
I have quite a lot of points, but I don’t cheat at all; I just answer a lot of questions and get a lot of Bests. I hate it when people vote me down or report my answers when there’s nothing actually wrong with them…Maybe that’s a problem that should be looked at more closely. Removing the vote up/vote down buttons and disallowing those under 1k points from reporting would be great ways to dissuade people from being such jerks on Y!A.
Dear Yahoo, sort it so people can’t choose their own as best answer. That would be a nice place to start…
I’m also someone else with quite a lot of points, but I don’t cheat at all; I just answer a lot of questions and get a lot of Bests. They system works in some categories.
I’ve noticed recently people posting silly questions and they have negative points for the week. “What is your favorite sex position?” “Are you bored?” Stuff like that. I’d like to know if it is OK to flag these for violations since I think it is a violation of TOS, this is not a bulletin board.
Only one time I wrote a very sensible response on the subject of incest, and someone flagged my answer down. I contensted the flagging, and my answer was reinstated; and I suggest people who are abusing the flagging system be reported. I think the peole who review contested flagging are outsourced to India, and they do a great job.
Wouldn’t voting for our own answers be considered cheating? If so, why do yahoo answers allow us to do that? I have voted for other people’s answers on questions I have answered but if I think my answer is the best, I will vote for it. Not everyone is like me though, if they are cheats, they will vote for their own answer even if they know there are answers that are better than theirs. Take this option away from us, we shouldn’t be able to vote for our own answers.
Yes let us break the cycle. It’s a two way thing. At least it should be. You have the power to break the cycle.
sooooo…..is anybody going to do anything about it? I noticed one guy who’s #10 in the movies section has 98% best answers. Are people like this going to finally get banned? I say ban their IP’s
I use this site for the quality of answers and questions. For the most part it’s still a great site. Recently I noticed my answers being reported for no apparent reason. What’s up with that?
creating multiple accounts???that’s too much work haha
I am not sure how serious you are really taking this.
The abuse is rampant in the Politics section.
u need to see the wrestling section
Points have no value anyway, sick of point gamers.
Creating multiple accounts for such illegitimate purposes is called sock puppetry on Wikipedia.
I agree with Sarah. It’s sad to see that people with good answers are either getting voted down, reported, or both. I agree that getting rid of the vote up/vote down buttons, and not allowing people under a certain number of points to report would be one way to combat cheating.
I agree that the points-based reward system for Best Answer is largely irrelevant.
One way that would make it easier for contributors to police those who are engaged in point gaming is to force Q&A sharing by all Yahoo! Answers participants.
This all counts for nought until such time as Yahoo put a little more effort into policing answers. When answers are deleted for the most minor or even theoretical infraction (or indeed, no discernible reason at all) on the one hand hand but blatant slurs, insults and/or slanders remain one the site even after being reported there can be no sense of justice.
There’s only one effective way of improving Answers, and that is not in the hands of the user base: it is effective policing by Yahoo. If they don’t want to pay for that they shouldn’t be running the service.
Good for you guys.
Now, when are you going to start cracking down on the tens of thousands of posts such as “Am I pregnant?”, or “What should I name my car?” or practically the other 90% of questions that do not meet the criteria of sharing knowledge?
Seems like there’s should be a complaint about people getting points for answering questions that shouldn’t even be on YA to start with.
I just started coming to Yahoo! Answers recently and was really enjoying helping people with answers to things I know about. I had noticed some curiosities, however, and was getting more and more irritated by getting a “thumb’s down” on answers that are not some sort of an opinion but rather a factual, correct answer to a question. Now I know that, as usual, some people have to play games and cheat or something ( I don’t know what they are hoping to accomplish) to “win”.
Weirdos.
I’d like to add the relentless use of copying and pasting the same answers to harass and defame a certain group of people just because they don’t agree with others opinions on this site, other than that I’ve had a GREAT experience with Y!A, I met my boyfriend of 2 years on this site Rock and Pop section, and we are now living together
I don’t know if you guys have noticed it yet, but please pay attention to this problem: people vote their own answers as best answers, and if nobody else votes, that answer becomes best answer regardless of whether it answers a question or not.
Too bad Yahoo doesn’t do anything about the all the people who don’t follow the guidelines. And how come they’re called “guidelines” instead of rules?
I haven’t even gotten started yet. I visited lots of categories and I found the P&S category was the most useless. The Top Answerer is the biggest point gamer in all of Yahoo! but Yahoo! allows him to continue with his point gaming. A friend of mine whom still has the email ask him how he does it and the reply tells of finding unanswered questions, answering then going back and going back to vote for his own answers and goes into great detail about it. Why would the site allow you to vote for your own answer to begin with completely foolish! So Y!A knows this and lets this continue.
kudos to the mouse in the karate robes for telling us this
i didnt even know that it’s possible, well at least you are showing that you are working so you deserve to be paid and have salary
yahoo needs to look at the reported answer or question before saying it violates something if theres nothing wrong with it then dont remove it.
Sooooo… maybe it’s just me and I don’t understand. What exactly do we need the points for anyway? It’s not like we can trade them in.
I say get rid of the points and you get rid of a lot of these problems.
I personally answer questions not for the points, but rather because I think I can help. I still would answer if I did not get anything for it.
Can my points be used towards Sky Miles? If not, what?
I’ve been coming across questions that *do not have* report abuse links. I suspect this is an application failure. This makes it difficult to report violations, so some users are getting a pass on their chatting or point gaming. I’m not in enough categories to see bad reporting, but I am sure that it does occur, because some people are just basically here to electronically play with themselves.
It’s impossible to lower the “quality” of the site. There is none.
I have repeatedly reported users that consistently get the same number of votes for their answers, but nothing seems to be done about it.
I know that it will require some effort from the administration staff, but surely when a user is reported for suspected cheating, it shouldn’t be too difficult to check user IDs and IP addresses of whoever votes for any particular answer? If it’s always the same IDs votong for one person’s answers, then that must be some form of cheating.
I don’t believe that it can be a coincidence that one particular user always get 6 votes, and another always gets 3 votes.
i don’t understand why anyone would be point-gaming, I son’t see a point. its not like the points are worth money.
(if the points are worth money then OMG I’m an idiot)
I agree about eliminating the reporting feature for anyone under 1,000 points. Or even put the voting privileges up to 1,000 points. This would eliminate Trolls who finally get booted then simply create a new ID and go about their merry Troll way.
I’ve only been a member since end of August. In order for someone cheat by copying or re-wording your answer. Have to where the only your answer is showing, until it has submitted then show all the answers. Also, I’ve noticed some will edit their answer, with negative comments on my answer.
If you think the point gamers and spammers are losers, aren’t you rule sticklers even bigger losers? I mean, does it really matter if 10 people have answered your question with ‘idk’?