10

Proposal: App Stores

A user has submitted twice to the proposal. It's clearly the same user, or the avatar would be different.

screenshot

I don't think it is allowed to do that, even though the user doesn't increase the commitment percentage, but increases the number of committers.

  • 4
    The duplicate appears to have been inadvertent. I merged the two accounts. – Robert Cartaino♦ Dec 29 '11 at 15:17
  • 2
    @RobertCartaino there are others in other proposals too. It would be good to have an efficient way of alerting you to them. – Verbeia Jan 1 '12 at 20:06
17

I have seen this a couple of times on other proposals and do not suspect foul play. It would be pretty dumb to try to boost commitment numbers artificially by registering twice with the same email address (note that the avatar is the same).

What has happened is that the person initially committed as an unregistered user, and didn't link properly to their existing Stack Exchange account. He then unintentionally committed again when he came back when logged in. If the person had been active on Area 51 before committing to this proposal, it might raise suspicion. But in this case it is the only Area 51 commitment he has.

In the other cases I have seen, the commitment with only 51 points disappeared after a while. I am not sure why this one has lingered. It might be most effective to get in touch with the user and show him how to merge the accounts.

It would be useful if there was an automatic process merging unregistered users to accounts of registered users with the same email address.

EDIT The iisue of doubled follows or commits occurring when a registered user on another StackExchange site comes to Area 51 for the first time is actually a pervasive one. See, for example "Matt" and the numbered user immediately below him on the Computer Science Education proposal.

  • I didn't mean the user did that on purpose (it doesn't help the proposal becoming a beta site faster); still, there should not be two accounts for the same user, in a proposal. – kiamlaluno Dec 27 '11 at 22:04
  • I know you weren't but the other answerer brought it up. – Verbeia Dec 27 '11 at 22:10
  • This exact thing just happened to me on the Animal Health and Behavior proposal. I was not logged into area 51 yet, clicked that I wanted to follow it, it asked for my email, and created something like "user48433" (not the exact number) as my account name. But my gravatar showed up. Then when I actually logged in using my OpenID, it created a second registration. – MarkS Jan 6 '12 at 16:04
-3

This is something which normally goes onto the meta site or should be addressed with flagging. If you suspect foul play, then it is best to seek assistance from meta.stackexchange.com (as area 51 does not have a meta site, meta.stackexchange.com is where these issues are generally raised), or with flagging which will bring the issue to the moderator's attention.

Because there do not seem to be "flag" links by committers, then bringing it up at meta would be prudent.

  • 1
    This very site is the meta site for Area 51. That is why there is area51-meta. – kiamlaluno Dec 27 '11 at 19:51
  • 1
    See this answer from Robert Cartaino: "Meta.SO is not for questions about Area 51." – kiamlaluno Dec 27 '11 at 20:03
  • @kiamlaluno That is a major failure in this site's design: every other SE site has a "meta" link at the top of the page. – cwallenpoole Dec 27 '11 at 20:24
  • There is also on Area 51; it just happens to be "discussion" instead of "meta." The reason is that this site is normally used to discuss about proposals, and then for reporting bugs, or other issues specific for Area 51; for example, if you are requesting to have a link that in the search page allows you to see the advanced search tricks on Area 51, you should request it on this very site, not on MSO. – kiamlaluno Dec 27 '11 at 20:30
  • I mean "discuss," not "discussion." – kiamlaluno Dec 27 '11 at 20:42

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