I've seen a pattern emerging these past few months, several users that have been gaining an unusually large number of recognitions points. Compared to their activity, number of answers they get and the kind of points earned by other contributors to these forums.
I'll name names to let you see what's going on. First is
Ajith R Nair . 76 answers, 231 posts, 3141 points earned. About 300% more than normal. Another is
Doug___ , 102, 376, 3987. Yet another is
A.m.a.L , a 5 medal contributor with 460 less answers than an MSFT employee (Xun Ye) with about the same number of points.
When I browse their threads, I think I see a pattern. Almost every post they made has "Helpful votes". Most typically 3 or 4. Bland and unhelpful posts too. Somebody is consistently clicking the "Vote As Helpful" link on their posts.
It is hard to avoid assuming that the "Vote As Helpful" features is being used for purposes other than intended. Something ought to be done about this, it is very unfair to contributors that work on their recognition to be something representative and meaningful to the community.
Stackoverflow.com had the exact same problem, they came up with a good fix for it. They ran a query on their dbase that correlated the originator of a vote to the recipient of the vote. Patterns emerged, the same person always upvoting the posts of a certain poster, sometimes hundreds of times. They deducted the earned points.
Please put something similar in place. Also consider traceability. Or just stop awarding points for Helpful.
Hans Passant.
