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So, I've been slowly working my way toward the Electorate badge, and have been paying extra attention to up- and down-voting on questions because of it. One place I found a bunch of good questions to upvote is in my own answers! Apparently I've been pretty terrible about upvoting questions that I've answered and would like to fix this.

However, I'm nervous about going through and handing out ~100 upvotes because I'm not sure whether the system will flag it as an unusual pattern or undo it, as it does with serial voting. Is mass-upvoting in this case something to worry about, or can I go ahead and upvote away?

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    $\begingroup$ Good job! You're not alone in the practice of creating wonderful answers and then not upvoting the question itself. If the query is worthwhile answering, then it's worthy of your upvote! $\endgroup$
    – elemtilas
    Aug 25, 2019 at 20:53
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    $\begingroup$ Working your way toward a badge is an egregious reason to adjust your behavior. I answer a lot of knee-jerk questions... those don't get upvotes. Consistency is key, and I doubt your ability to apply it retroactively. You should continue to vote while avoiding irregularities such as this. $\endgroup$
    – Mazura
    Aug 28, 2019 at 0:15
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    $\begingroup$ @Mazura Um. I think the badges are specifically designed to encourage adjustments in behavior, because they're an extra incentive to do something good. I'd always understood badge-hunting to be a noble tradition on StackExchange in general, not just WB. $\endgroup$
    – Dubukay
    Aug 28, 2019 at 0:34
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    $\begingroup$ Tenacious is the only badge I respect (5 accepted answers, with a score of zero). You literally have to get nothing in return to get it. That's noble. If your badge was for answering 100 Qs, go nuts. You only have 90 answers, so I guess w/e. But are you going to quit when you get to 65 and the badge shows up? I have 570 on DiY; retroactively applying anything would be a farce. Where's the nobility in arbitrarily UVing 100 of those? - Just be consistent. $\endgroup$
    – Mazura
    Aug 28, 2019 at 0:49
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    $\begingroup$ Chasing badges is fine up until the point it violates the sanctity of the only currency SE has. $\endgroup$
    – Mazura
    Aug 28, 2019 at 0:53
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    $\begingroup$ @Mazura I think you've misunderstood my motive. You're correct that I'm planning to go back and upvote all ~90 questions I've answered, but I'm not doing this because I feel like arbitrarily handing out upvotes. I could claim the badge in about a week by randomly upvoting the first 40 questions on the main page. But I'm not going to. I'm upvoting questions I've answered because I thought they were interesting enough to deserve an answer, and thus an upvote. I just didn't remember to give them the upvote in the excitement of contributing an answer, so I'm "remembering" to so so now. $\endgroup$
    – Dubukay
    Aug 28, 2019 at 1:40
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    $\begingroup$ I've also used badges to change my behavior on the site and I see nothing wrong with it (because, as you point out, the badges are there to encourage and reward certain behaviors or outcomes of behaviors). As long as the upvotes are sincere and they aren't all for one person or rapid-fire, you should be okay. If any of your votes are reversed, it can be annoying but you won't be "in trouble" unless there are other problems. This happened to me once and I got reassurance about it. NOTE also that downvotes also count towards these badges. So vote however you feel is right. $\endgroup$
    – Cyn
    Aug 29, 2019 at 17:31

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I'm pretty sure that what you have in mind is just fine.

What the system does look out for, though, is a large number of votes given to the same user. Such voting can be reversed, either automatically or manually (by a Stack Exchange employee, after review).

Unless you have primarily answered questions by one or a few users, that shouldn't be a problem. The general rule is: vote for the content, not for the user.

If you're uncertain, just make sure to read through and vote on the other answers to those questions as well; that should put you well below the threshold for serial voting even if you do have a favorite user whose questions you always answer. There's even a silver badge to encourage such voting, Sportsmanship:

Up vote 100 answers on questions where an answer of yours has a positive score.

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