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I just checked on the profile of the Community user and saw that its avatar was wearing hats. Fine, he should be allowed to do so. But I checked that he was having 2 hats for voting on questions and answers, one for voting on apps and the other for 250 votes in 7 days. But the Community user's profile page does not include the task of voting on answers.

Then what happened?

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    $\begingroup$ Also see the section about the Community user in meta.stackexchange.com/questions/245122/… $\endgroup$
    – balpha StaffMod
    Dec 16, 2015 at 12:59
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    $\begingroup$ Tackling the important questions I see :) $\endgroup$
    – Najib Idrissi
    Dec 16, 2015 at 14:23
  • $\begingroup$ If you opt out of the hat thingie it's not a problem anymore. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Dec 16, 2015 at 16:30
  • $\begingroup$ Didn't this same thing happen last year? $\endgroup$
    – Robert Soupe
    Dec 21, 2015 at 4:06
  • $\begingroup$ @RobertSoupe Maybe. But I wasn't around then. $\endgroup$
    – SchrodingersCat
    Dec 21, 2015 at 13:47

2 Answers 2

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So I guess you are talking about the Vote Early, Vote Often and Wireless hats, whose descriptions say, respectively

  • cast a total of 250 votes on any seven consecutive UTC days

  • vote on ten questions or answers using the Android or iOS app

One thing to keep in mind is that Community has not earned either of these hats on math.se, but on other sites. Here are some facts that might clarify how Community could earn these hats.

  • When a user is deleted, some of their activity is transferred to the Community user. This activity may include voting. So it is possible that a user who had voted 10 times via an app had deleted their account, and their voting information was transferred to Community. (Not saying that this did happen, but it is a possible explanation.)
  • Casting a spam or rude/offensive or very-low-quality flag also incurs an automatic downvote from the Community user. So a lot of flags of these sorts means a lot of downvotes from Community. (I note that Super User, where the Community user has earned the Vote Early, Vote Often hat, does see a lot of spam on a daily basis.)
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  • $\begingroup$ "One thing to keep in mind is that Community has not either of these hats on math.se, but on other sites." It does have the hats on this site. But indeed it does not have it on every site; for example on MESE (a low volume site) it has no hats so far. Thus, your main point seems valid. $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Dec 16, 2015 at 10:48
  • $\begingroup$ @quid: meant to say "earned". Fixed now. $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Dec 16, 2015 at 10:50
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks. Sorry, I thought in error it actually got the hat on this site too. The reason being that it has no hats on MESE so I inferred all hats visible are from the site. But it seems that once there is one hat on the site, then all are shown. $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Dec 16, 2015 at 10:57
  • $\begingroup$ @ArthurFischer As per the first bullet. say if that happened, and the user had won a hat for that, then after deletion of account, will the hat get transferred to the Community? Is that what you wanted to say? $\endgroup$
    – SchrodingersCat
    Dec 16, 2015 at 11:04
  • $\begingroup$ @Aniket It's not the hat, but the voting information that's transferred. If after this Community satisfies the criteria for the hat, she'd get it. (It's also possible that a few users who had voted via apps had their accounts deleted, and voting information transferred to Community, but none individually had the Wireless hat. But after the vote transfers Community satisfied the criteria of the hat and was given it. But vote preservation is generally restricted to users who have voted a lot.) $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Dec 16, 2015 at 11:08
  • $\begingroup$ @ArthurFischer Okay. now tell me this. According to this link, math.stackexchange.com/help/user-was-removed ,.. When a user deletes the account, all his votes are removed except a certain case. Then why does the Community get his votes? $\endgroup$
    – SchrodingersCat
    Dec 16, 2015 at 11:16
  • $\begingroup$ @Aniket Essentially because the way the system is set up votes have to have been cast by someone. But that's a somewhat technical point that is beyond the scope of this question/answer. $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Dec 16, 2015 at 13:29
  • $\begingroup$ @Артур Фишер : Почему вы пишете ваши имя и фамилия по-русски ? $\endgroup$
    – Georges Elencwajg
    Jan 1, 2016 at 21:05
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The Community user has very many votes attached, see https://math.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community?tab=topactivity

A reason for this is that certain normal votes will be transferred to the Community user, mainly, to keep certain counts balanced in case of deletions.

Another, and perhaps more relevant to this, is that certain flags will cause an automatic down-vote.

I cannot know what actually happened. In fact I find it a bit confusing that Community user has hats, I mean it has no badges (on most sites) why would it have hats? But given it has hats at all, the more specific fact that it has hats for voting seems natural to me.

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  • $\begingroup$ Community does have badges. On exactly one site. (Although that site's a little different from all the others.) $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Dec 16, 2015 at 10:49
  • $\begingroup$ very many votes attached. Indeed, this is more than twice the number of votes of the user that casted the most votes on MSE. Amusingly, thank to your link I also discovered that the community user offered for more than 62k rep of bounties. $\endgroup$
    – Surb
    Dec 16, 2015 at 10:50
  • $\begingroup$ @ArthurFischer that detailed escaped me. $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Dec 16, 2015 at 10:50

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