Stack Overflow (being one of the most highly gamified, and some would say overmoderated, communites around, though that is IMHO) has a feature whereby first questions or first answers posted by new users are subject to review by other users: Once you pass a certain reputation level, you can click your way through a review queue for such posts, selecting options such as “Looks OK” or leaving feedback or criticism.
Every now and then, when I find myself just having reviewed a post in that manner, the website will give me the following message: " Congratulations! This was only a test, designed to make sure you were paying attention. You passed." So apparently, the website is occasionally throwing fake posts at me.
I suppose the purpose behind this is to test if I blindly click “Looks OK” or select another option for a post which, in the system’s view, should not be considered OK. Is that correct, or is there something more sophisticated going on? What happens if I don’t pass such a test?
This seems like a question best answered on Stackexchange … where it has indeed been answered at length:
Passed audits count as a successful review towards the review badges. A failed audit does not count toward the badges, but does not decrement your progress either; it simply adds none.
I considered asking it on Stackexchange, but since the community there is, in my view, a bit adamant about its rules I figured I might get a more nuanced answer here (where lots of users are also active on SO).
Perfectly reasonable. I just searched the internet with the message you mentioned and one of the first results was that question on the “meta” stackexchange. And now we all know there’s a meta stackexchange.
Based on things I’ve seen on Meta, I believe that there is a temporary lockout if you get a certain number of the tests wrong, I think it may be 3 in a month, and that you lose review privileges for a month.
I’ve seen people who get annoyed by that because sometimes the test is wrong, since it seems to be automated. There will be the inevitable thread in Meta reporting such instances.
I don’t know more than that because I myself have never actually done the reviews. In fact, it was only upon looking it up that I realized that I actually qualify for the lowest level of review on a couple sites.