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Is it wrong if (hypothetically) person A asks person B to look at some of person A's best answers, hoping that person B will notice their quality and upvote them.

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    "Hey, user B, upvote my answer(s). Plzkthxbai!"
    – iglvzx
    Jan 2, 2012 at 4:31
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    I would say that it is unethical to ask someone to look at and potentially upvote your answers, your answers should be good enough that they stand on their own without you pushing the community to get upvotes. The only time I would consider it right to ask someone else to review your answers would be if you were asking an equivalent of "Am I right in saying this?" or similar regarding your answer, i.e. either you are unsure of a point in your answer or are asking for clarification from someone who may know more in that field.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Jan 2, 2012 at 16:27

1 Answer 1

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It's not wrong to ask for review or guidance per se. For example, when I started out here, I didn't know much about OS X or Unix, and by the time, I learned more and more. I would have loved for knowledgeable users to review my answers and give constructive criticism.

However, that is not equal to asking for upvotes. It doesn't work anyway. Note that the system regularly checks voting behavior. Serial upvotes (that are due to person A upvoting person B's post in a short amount of time) can be removed by the system when it does its checks on a daily basis.

No matter what you do:

  • Don't pester people into checking out your latest answers. If they happen to see them, they will.
  • Don't expect them to mass-upvote you. If they think your posts are good, you will get upvotes.
  • Even if they do, don't expect these votes to last. This system was never meant to be a 1:1 "social network" type of thing. Votes should be cast by anybody.

After all, it's about maintaining good quality, so when you want people to "review" your posts, always strive for:

  • getting good critique
  • having your posts edited for quality
  • and not just getting upvotes

If you have any particular requests and want feedback on some posts of yours, I'd post them in our chatroom.

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  • Do you know more about this "up vote protection"?
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Jan 2, 2012 at 10:37
  • No idea. I remember some that stayed. Maybe it's also a cross-voting thing that measures the correlation of votes cast between A ↔ B (which would make sense to prevent sock puppets).
    – slhck
    Jan 2, 2012 at 10:56
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    Is it the same criteria as down vote protection?
    – soandos
    Jan 2, 2012 at 13:17
  • @soandos Probably not, but only the devs would know ;)
    – slhck
    Jan 2, 2012 at 14:51
  • At lunch in my (high) school, I've been introducing a few friends to SE, more specifically SU. Occasionally I let some of them know about an answer that I worked "extra hard on", that I thought was really good, but hadn't received much attention, as the question wasn't that great. My friends would never upvote because they know me, or because I'm asking them to, but because the answer is a good one (once opening a link, he checks and reads over the answer before deciding if he should vote). If he looks at some of my answers in-a-row, would that raise a flag anywhere? (BTW, excellent answer.)
    – wizlog
    Jan 2, 2012 at 17:14
  • Is there a difference between user B using a link to the answer vs. the link to the question?
    – wizlog
    Jan 2, 2012 at 17:15
  • @wizlog > If he looks at some of my answers in-a-row, would that raise a flag anywhere? – just looking, no. Upvoting? Probably not. Unless it's really a lot. That being said, of course it's encouraged to even share your answer (for example to your friends on Facebook). If they happen to have a SU account with voting privilege, so be it. It shouldn't be too many votes in too little time. That might become suspicious.
    – slhck
    Jan 2, 2012 at 21:23
  • @slhck Now I understand, thanks slhck.
    – wizlog
    Jan 2, 2012 at 21:57

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