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I assisted somebody with a problem in a chat session that went a lot further than just the question and I don't think my answer to the original question is all that great.

The OP went on and asked his friends in an unrelated (other SE site) chat room to up vote my answer, doubling the vote count in the process and I feel it's somehow undeserved if you look at the answer by itself. The OP probably wanted to reward me for the chat session rather than the quality of the answer.

Should I leave it at that or should a mod revert some of the votes.

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    Sometimes we get lots of votes for a basic answer and sometimes we write a masterpiece to have it languish. Overall I think things balance out. If it will make you feel better you should find a really hard unanswered question and figure out a great answer.
    – Erik
    Nov 17, 2015 at 0:17
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    Find something better to worry about. There are lots of things.
    – jwg
    Nov 18, 2015 at 1:13
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    Tom, your honesty is admirable. Since the advice is to just leave it alone (which I agree with), if you are still feeling a little guilty about the extra upvotes, I thought of two things in the spirit of @Erik 's suggestion that might help: 1) I can downvote your answer to help offset the extra upvotes. I'm willing to sacrifice the 1 point; 2) You can help offset the extra votes on a karmic level by upvoting this under-appreciated answer: dba.stackexchange.com/questions/119884/… :) I am mainly joking except the first sentence.
    – Solomon Rutzky
    Nov 18, 2015 at 1:39
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    @srutzky done & deserved ;)
    – Tom V
    Nov 18, 2015 at 6:45
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    Irony: meta-effect generates more votes... that said I'll avoid "pimping" outside DBA.SE in the future. IMO this site needs more voting overall though.
    – Mathieu Guindon
    Dec 1, 2015 at 20:12

3 Answers 3

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Should I leave it at that or should a mod revert some of the votes.

I think you should just leave it at that — and not just because mods can't revert votes or even tell who voted for you, also because:

  • there is no way of knowing how many of his friends voted
  • people vote one way or the other for all sorts of unguessable reasons on all answers, not just that one — the system works because despite all that, the averaging effect still improves the signal to noise ratio, not because all votes are "fair"
  • from the sound of things, you went above and beyond to help and no-one is likely to begrudge you the votes anyway

Thank you for contributing so well that someone thought it necessary to drum up extra votes for you — and enjoy your new privileges :)

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What Jack said.

Plus, if you really want to be clear, you could add a comment to your own post offering your theory for the surprising vote count. Possibly with a link to the chat you mentioned that may contain more useful information either way.

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    A link to the chat conversation sounds like a good idea so people can see how Tom got from A to B. I don't think speculation on why the vote count is high is really warranted though.
    – Erik
    Nov 17, 2015 at 0:20
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You could add a bounty to a question that has not received enough attention to relieve your "bad conscience".

It has the benefit of ...

... you get a better feeling.
... somebody garners more attention for his/her question.
... somebody might receive bounty for an answer that was otherwise not considered.

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