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https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma

Two Questions:

  1. How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?
  2. Does their history of asking non-constructive questions put them at risk of getting banned?

UPDATE

This user is suspended again for their activity.

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    Related question about a Goma clone. Amazed he's still around: he stopped cloning himself in August.
    – user8
    Apr 14, 2012 at 7:12
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    It became apparent that the automatic question ban didn't work (probably because he got away for far too long), so I suspended him (again). Furthermore I didn't like the fact people where down voting him en masse, getting a permanent "serial voter" stain on their records. I have complete faith that the community will help if he decides to come back with sock accounts, the only thing anyone needs to do is close crap questions as early as possible, guide the OP on how to improve them, and if the questions are actually improved, re-open. /cc: @Walter.
    – yannis
    May 3, 2012 at 14:32
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    Uau, suspended till 2017! I found a nice touch at Fitness.SE: "I am getting fat every month and I just still at home." :P
    – brasofilo
    Jul 7, 2013 at 19:14

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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mordor goma macro

The mods are privy to certain statistics about users that others do not have. Goma is an unusual case of somebody who goes above and beyond to continue spamming Programmers with garbage.

He has used over 50 unique IP's most of them behind proxy servers located in Saudi Arabia. He has opened multiple SE accounts with numerous unique email addresses. Previous attempts at notification and suspension have simply resulted in him changing IP and email address.

He leaves a pretty reliable pattern though, almost always IP address that originates in Saudi Arabia among other tells. His questions are easy to spot too.

I believe we keep this account open and merge duplicates into it so that we have a single consistent record of his activities for study and future consideration. This is why he has posted so many questions -- because many of them were on duplicate accounts that we had merged into Goma.

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    Holy cow! Thanks maple_shaft!
    – Jim G.
    Apr 12, 2012 at 11:55
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    @JimG. He just came out of yet another suspension and posted 4 crap questions in two days. I'm only sorry we didn't caught the one soon enough and someone wasted their time answering.
    – yannis
    Apr 12, 2012 at 12:27
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    There is no way I cannot upvote this with that image.
    – Nicole
    Apr 13, 2012 at 4:04
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    To add to maple_shaft's execellent answer... many, many attempts were made by mods and other members of the community to improve the quality of questions produced. All attempts fell on deaf ears. The best course of action at this point is for the community to use their down votes, votes to close and to flag for moderator attention as often as the quality merits. Perhaps if his questions fail to get answered he'll get bored and find another sandbox to go play in.
    – Walter
    Apr 13, 2012 at 12:34
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    @Walter That is the real elephant in the room though. You can put a juicy steak on the ground and punish your dog everytime he goes for the steak. Sooner or later you will turn your back and that dog will eat the steak, despite whatever punishment you dish out. It is in the dogs nature. Goma is much the same way. We can punish him and make it difficult for him sure but as long as people keep answering his terrible questions he is going to keep taking the abuse because we can't watch him 24/7.
    – maple_shaft Mod
    Apr 13, 2012 at 15:40
  • just found a hilarious comment posted almost a year ago - in Aug 2011: "Goma has allegedly been suspended for months, yet he has posted 20 questions in the last couple of weeks - 19 of which have been closed for being off-topic, non-constructive, duplicates, etc..."
    – gnat
    Apr 26, 2012 at 7:17
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    @maple_shaft - I do agree with your analogy and have taken some time to see what kind of output he has produced since coming off of suspension... Call me optimistic, but we far out number him and I do think we (collectively) CAN watch him 24/7. The handful of questions he asked in the past week+ were closed within minutes of asking and heavily downvoted. That's a significant improvement compared to the time before and during his suspension.
    – Walter
    Apr 28, 2012 at 13:19
  • @Walter I know right! :) It makes me proud of the community here and reminds me that all the vocal critics out there are still the minority. Thanks for your input.
    – maple_shaft Mod
    Apr 30, 2012 at 12:00
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A word of caution, based on an advice given in comments in another question:

...just don't go on a down voting spree..., last time he made it into Meta three people started downvoting everything and they were caught by the serial voting script.

It ain't that easy...

https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg

...not that I suggest to stop downvoting bad questions, just when you do that, better make sure that it works as you intended.

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    +1: I think I was one of those serial downvoters. Just trying to make stackexchange a better place! :)
    – Jim G.
    Apr 28, 2012 at 11:57
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    @JimG. - I would still encourage you to review his questions and down vote as you see fit. Just keep it to under a handful a day...
    – Walter
    Apr 28, 2012 at 13:06
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    @Walter under a handful may be too much. :( Today reputation for the user shows +8 reversal - as far as I understand this accounts for max 4 votes reversed. I failed to find more details but if the script goes as far as to reversing votes on questions that are 1) recent and 2) closed and 3) downvoted by others, this kind of puts the idea of self-healing community into jeopardy. I am going to keep an eye on that, will appeal to moderators / SE team if it turns out that it's the case
    – gnat
    Apr 29, 2012 at 10:01
-2

By submitting content that was upvoted by the community of users who ostensibly run the site.

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    No, not really. What actually happened is that the community went at great lengths improving his questions when he first showed up, almost every up vote he got he owes to the silent work of others. However he showed no appreciation or intention to learn and improve, and at this point he's just a spammer. Also worth noting that he has more than 250 deleted extremely down voted questions (by the community of users who ostensibly run the site), if I undelete those his reputation will drop significantly, I won't count but it could be as low as 1.
    – yannis
    May 1, 2012 at 14:45
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    I would disagree a bit with that... I looked through some of the questions he got the most rep from and there were only minor edits such as spelling or grammar
    – Rachel
    May 3, 2012 at 16:36

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