|   Help Choose the Race Report Contest Grand Prize Winnner! | gregg
Nov 4, 2003 8:59 AM | | The season is over, but you can still have some fun and relive some of the highlights of the 24 Hours of Adrenalin season!
Help us choose the Grand Prize Winners of the Photo Contest and Race Report Contest.
You can vote here:
http://www.mtbr.com/races/2003_adrenalin/contest.shtml
Thanks for your help!
-g |
| Ballot stuffing | There's a rat in the house
Nov 8, 2003 2:39 PM | | Looks like this contest is bogus. From 8pm last night to 8am this morning over 3000 votes were posted, primarily for the Dinerman story. There's no way 3000 different people voted for him overnight. It looks like ballot stuffing to me.
Hopefully Trilife will rectify the situation. |
| Ballot stuffing | Han Solo
Nov 12, 2003 4:16 PM | | it's true, people are receiving multiple votes.
they've figured out how to turn off their cookies,
or they're programers and have written scripts to endlessly
submit votes, or they have the advantage of an office network.
let trilife decide!
this is a botched poll. |
| Ballot stuffing | emily
Nov 17, 2003 12:25 AM | | I too have noticed, as I am sure most others have by now, that the contest has become not who has the best race report, but rather who can a) forward the link to the most people, b) figure out a way to vote multiple times from the same computer, and most significantly, c) write a program to repeatedly submit votes or hack into the system. I am the first to admit that I emailed the link to some family and friends in hopes that they would vote for my report. And when a couple of my high school students found out about the contest through the teacher who teaches next door to me, they quickly figured out how to vote multiple times from the same computer. They explained that the process was quite simple (making me feel very computer illiterate), but time consuming as you have to somehow erase cookies after each time that you vote. If they were able to figure it out so easily, I am sure many other people were as well. Also, while a couple of my students were sitting at the computer at lunch a couple days after the contest had begun, monitoring my progress (or lack thereof) and telling other students about the contest, they noticed that several hundred votes were submitted for one of the other stories (the one either in first or second place at the time) in just a few minutes. As this seems impossible to accomplish even if voting multiple times from the same computer, they were convinced that someone had written a program to repeatedly submit votes or had hacked into the system somehow. After spending their whole lunch period rallying other students to go to the site and vote and getting so excited when they had seen my percentage increase, they were quite disappointed when only minutes later, my percentage decreased and another guy's increased significantly. "How could your percentage go down, Miss D, after we spent all that time getting people to vote for you?" (I had to give them a quick lesson on how percentages work. . . . that if one person's percentage increases, another's must decrease.) Hoping that someone hadn't really written a program to submit votes, making it virtually impossible for anyone else to win, I told them that perhaps a few hundred people just happened to vote for that person all at the same time. However, I then noticed, as did the couple of other people who wrote in about the "ballot stuffing," that a few thousand votes were submitted for the Dinerman story within just an hour or two the Friday night before last (as I was up all night doing work on my computer).
I don't have a solution to the problem nor do I envy Trilife (or MtbReview or whoever is in charge of this contest) whose job it is to find one job. Maybe the lights should just go to the person who can write the best computer program to submit votes; after all, that is probably no easy task. Or maybe Trilife could use a similar process for determining the winner to the one that was used last time when they were selecting the winners for each individual race. Anyone have any ideas? |
| re: Help Choose the Race Report Contest Grand Prize Winnner! | 24 hr riderrrr
Nov 17, 2003 6:17 AM | | I'd like to hear what Trilife has to say about this whole fiasco. They have yet to say anything. I have no problem with people emailing links to others so they can vote, because in most cases people will browse the rest of the site and possibly check out some of the advertisers....which is what the whole drive of these thing are anyways. They probably would even read the stories and look at the photo's which may help convince people they'd like to try a 24 hour race which is what Trilife wants.
So the problem isn't emailing the link to people, it is the stuffing by either programs or a few of the same people constantly submitting vote after vote (you don't even need to erase the cookies which takes time, you can just set your browser security to high which automatically deletes cookies).
Since the contest is obviously tainted, perhaps Trilife should just put the author's of the stories in a hat and draw one for the winner of the lights. It seem like the only fair method at this point.
Trilife, we'd all like to hear your comments. |
| re: Help Choose the Race Report Contest Grand Prize Winnner! | jobiker
Nov 17, 2003 9:28 AM | | It is also interesting to note the number of views (679) and replies (zero) that the Dinerman story has received relative to the number of votes (4,210), especially compared to some of the other reports.
Perhaps Trilife should go back to choosing the winner as they did last time...read the essays and choose themselves, or ask for a group of volunteers to read the reports and select a winner. |
| LET THE INDIVIDUAL WINNERS OR TRILIFE DECIDE | dp
Nov 17, 2003 10:02 AM | | due to the cuurent voting dilema,
(plese read emily's reply post on "Ballot Stuffing"),
i suggest we let us, the individual winners decide.
or like jobiker suggested let trilife or a controlled volunteer group vote.
thanx,
dp |
| re: Help Choose the Race Report Contest Grand Prize Winnner! | 24 Hours of Adrenalin
Nov 17, 2003 10:52 AM | | Well...who knew that such a fun contest could turn into such a scandal?? It's unfortunate that it had to end this way, but I'm sure everyone agrees that the Photo and Race Report Contests were a lot of fun all season long! With improved security, they will definitely be back for next season.
As for declaring a winner for the 2003 contest, it is clear that there has been tampering with the voting process, so the poll results will not be used. Instead a crack team of Trilife staff members will pour through the stories and declare a winner (so much for democracy, huh?). Given the circumstances, it is the fairest way to go.
Thank you again to everyone who submitted an essay or photo throughout the season, and congratulations again to all of the grand prize qualifiers. I also want to send my condolences to the hacker(s) who must have spent hours inputting all those thousands of votes. Now they don't even count!!
Cheers,
Matt Goulin
Marketing Manager
24 Hours of Adrenalin |
| re: Help Choose the Race Report Contest Grand Prize Winnner! | DDinerman
Nov 18, 2003 2:50 PM | | The infamous "Dinerman" here,
I just have to say, I agree with stopping the vote and thought the whole vote format was a bit crazy anyway. Especially for such a great prize. I figured I didn't even stand a chance!
For the record I only voted once. Only asked my friends (many of whom mountain bike or have taken an interest in my mountain biking) to vote once and am fairly embarrased at how many votes I actually got through obviously foul play. I am, believe it or not, a very honest person -- with a ridiculous guilt complex at that. Obviously some of my friends (or many as it seems) got overly enthusiatic about this. Although I have to laugh at the idea put out by some previous posters that they are computer hackers who created some elaborate program to rig this. But hey, what do I know. I certainly didn't expect 4,000 votes.
So I'm relieved it will be decided in a fairer way. I just hope I haven't been effectively put out of the running by everyone singling me out as THE RAT. I think quite a few of us had multiple votes judging my how fast things went back and forth in the beginning.
So sorry for my role in all this. Hopefully some people actually did like my story. But I imagine that number is more around 30. |
| re: Help Choose the Race Report Contest Grand Prize Winnner! | dipalma
Nov 19, 2003 8:20 PM | | Good luck choosing a winner since there appear to be several legitamate candidates.
I respect that emily and dinerman have responded to this issue by name. In retrospect they both realize they may have received mulitple votes per person.
Trilife:
Please be willing to stand up and choose from one of the 4 essays that showed votes. Each of the 4 that show percentages, had more votes individually then the entire photo contest put together until ealier in the this week.
If anyone cares I voted for Dinerman and did it only once. |
| Who is the Grand Prize winner? | Just wonderin'
Nov 24, 2003 9:14 AM | | So, who won the contest? |
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