Hi GarenT
It certainly feels from your question that you believe some of the kudos that the user has received are unwarranted or perhaps there is something underhand going on. Is that correct?
A couple of things I have noticed in situations like this.
- Education: Does it appear that everyone else is understanding how kudos are used? Does there need to be a little more reinforcement of the 'quality deserves kudos' philosophy? It might not be a bad time to write a post/thread on good Kudos etiquette (don't single out any users, but you can use it as a reinforcement of good practice. It may also draw some users into using kudos who haven't before)
- People follow friends: It's pretty common that there are colleagues/community users that you follow regularly. I don't know if we have data to support this, but my theory is that you will probably see a slightly higher mutual kudo exchange in these groups - courtesy, loyalty and encouragement all playing a factor.
- Abuse does happen: On the rare occasion, my last Comm Mgr and I spotted an instance similar to this, where we saw an unusually high number of kudos from one user to another - when we looked into it, we found that the IPs were identical and that a user had a 2nd profile, really who's sole purpose was to kudo himself! A couple of polite but firm DMs to that user pointing out that you know what's up, should put a stop to that. If not, then you could look at your abuse policies and look at harsher action.
I think you need to look at this case by case and factor all the variables. If the user is adding value and answering questions and contributing, then perhaps he has a fan and this is behaviour that is okay. If there is something underhand, then it is worth some investigation - part of best practice is having strong policies that you can enforce if you spot abuse.
Let me know if that helps!
