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I just failed a "First Posts" review audit for this question. It showed up as written by a user with 40 something reputation.

After a series of awful questions, I thought to myself that finally a question looks proper and seems to make sense – until the end, where the asker presents his four questions and follows that up with

Will be starting bounty for this question.Expecting some serious answers.

Blockquote, missing space and all. I was torn between wanting to point out (in a comment) that it's a little weird to promise a bounty before they can even do that (probably should have smelled the audit there...) and advising to split the questions up into separate ones, as seems to be the consensus.

I decided to go with the latter one and wrote a comment to that end, just to learn that I've failed the audit on this "high quality post". A few questions arose (yes, I see the irony):

  • Where or how can I dispute this? I'm not the first to wonder about that, but I fail to find an answer.
  • How is this post "high quality"? Yes, it's not horrible, but it's not a shining example either:
    • Odd formatting of the "bounty promise"
    • The promise itself
    • Multiple questions?
    • "TIA" and "expecting serious answers" fluff
  • Does somebody read my actual comment, or just fail me because I wrote one? (I'm pretty sure it's the latter.) What if I had written "You can't really promise a bounty quite yet", would I have failed as well?

All in all, I don't think this should be an audit question.

PS. Hmm, there is a tag. Might this be the way to complain about them, I wonder?

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  • I think it's natural to want to edit the post. Did you click on it and fail the audit?
    – nhahtdh
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 8:16
  • @nhahtdh I left a comment saying "This should really be split up into multiple questions" and failed the audit.
    – Benjamin W.
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 8:16
  • 6
    The failure is because you left any comment. Contents are not read at all by the audit system. (The fact that comments fail known-good audits at all, ever, has been questioned hotly in the past.)
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 8:21
  • 4
    @NathanTuggy I'm questioning it hotly as well, especially in this almost "honeypotesque" setup! ;)
    – Benjamin W.
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 8:23
  • 2
    I've edited the question, by the way. One or two downvotes would be enough to take it out of audit eligibility.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 8:29
  • 6
    Audits just check if you are paying attention. When you see a "first post" that promises a bounty and don't realize that it does not ever makes sense for a first-poster to have enough rep to know about or award a bounty then, maybe, you are not paying enough attention.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 9:05
  • 7
    @HansPassant I would also have failed the audit if I would have tried to remove the corresponding bit promising the bounty...
    – Benjamin W.
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 9:12
  • 2
    @BenjaminW. wait, is editing an audit fail for known-good posts? Good thing I haven't been reviewing for ages, then.
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 17:36
  • @JanDvorak Editing always auto fails, I think. meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/262919/…
    – jpmc26
    Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 17:55
  • 5
    @HansPassant Honestly, the only way to be "paying attention" enough for audits it to be opening the question every time and spotting the audit because of the false info in the review queue. This is because you can't edit or comment or whatever to pass. I feel like something is wrong with the system if 1) You have to spot audits to pass them, and 2) You have to always open another tab for every review to review well.
    – jpmc26
    Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 17:57
  • 4
    @jpmc26 In this case, I feel it's extra mean because even if I had been aware that it's an audit, I would have thought the correct way would be to edit the post, given all its shortcomings.
    – Benjamin W.
    Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 18:00
  • 8
    @HansPassant When I am in the review queue I want to focus on doing good reviews. I am not focused on finding hidden clues that the question is an audit and that I should apply a completely different set of secret nonsensical rules for how to handle it. I strongly oppose the idea that a user who misses these clues (however obvious they may seem) are not paying attention. On the contrary, they are paying attention to the right things, not the wrong things.
    – Anders
    Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 20:38
  • The review audit process overall appears to be very broken.
    – wogsland
    Commented Jan 2, 2016 at 17:27

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