Voting for yourself through new accounts. My suspicions.
Since I've started playing around in the contests adding this and that, I see people with an outstanding number of votes, but a pitiful amount of page views. I get the suspicion that said people are creating new accounts and voting for themselves. How do I come about this you ask? I can't say for sure, but when I see someones page who has a ton of feedback from peoples accounts that were created within the contest period, it seems a little fishy. I think that the person enters said instructable, makes more accounts, and while he's going to vote for himself, leaves some nice feedback to try and incourage others to vote. Because when I see a page full of feedback from accounts created in the last 4 days, I get a little paranoid.
So seriously people, DO NOT DO THIS, don't go and vote for yourself. It's not cool, and nobody likes when people do it. It messes with contests and peoples instructables who honestly would have won, may not because some jerk gives himself votes through his accounts.
Let me know what you guys think, and lets try to figure out a way of keeping this from happening, because I don't want it ruining a perfectly good contest.
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Most of the time, those "new members" don't come back again.
Personally, I don't understand why some peoples feel the need to absolutely win ...
Maybe I should feel sorry for them ? Maybe their life is so unfair that they want a revenge ? Or are they so much used to be winners that they're afraid to lose and fail ? I don't know ...
I just don't participate to contests anymore : Even when you're aware you have no chance to win, there is no fun when you compete against a Marion Jones.
100 views, 40 ratings and 25 votes, wouldn't win a prize based on those numbers. Judges can pick out the obvious fakes. I think they might still give it a prize though it if is really great, and fits the contest perfectly.
Maybe the author of the Instructable didn't even know about the cheating. It could have been:
1. That weird boy at school who always carries a bottle of Listerine, and stares at you "When she wins, I'll tell her I did it. She'll give me a hug, and I can smell her hair."
2. An overzealous fan "It has to win, there was a Jonas Brothers poster in one of the photos!"
3. Your little brother "I'll hide the prize under my bed, and tell him the dog buried it in the woods."
4. Your Dad "The little monster cried for a week last time, and I had to buy him the Arduino Duemilanove. I'm not going to let that happen again."
5. Your Wife "If he wins, he will play with his prize, and I can finally check my email."
In the Halloween contest I had the highest number of votes, most views, and highest rating (plasmana had a higher rating but unfortunately he isn't in the US), but I didn't win either of the Grand Prizes.
It was pretty obvious I didn't rig it. The views came from at least 20 different countries, I'd guess the votes and ratings were also scattered pretty widely. The comments are obviously real; they are really short, and my replies are way too long - that's solid proof right there.
I legitimately had higher numbers than the Grand Prize winners, but I fit the Food Category best, so that's where they placed me. It was the right decision (darn it) made by real people not numbers.
I also have a theory that ratings and votes can differ, because of the kind of audience the Instructable attracts. Examples:
1. DIY project - audience: older woodworkers = low rating ratio, low votes, fewer comments; because they want to build the project first, then rate, vote, and tell you how much better theirs turned out.
2. Knex project - audience: teen boys = high rating ratio, high number of votes, and hundreds of comments; because they always have an opinion, and you can't shut them up.
JUST KIDDING - it's obviously hard to shut me up and I'm over 40, and what are you reading? My opinion.
I do think sometimes they might rate and vote just because it looks cool, and they really have fun sharing jokes and ideas (like me).
The ratings per view ratio on 3 of my Instructables:
Make Your Own Soda: 17,222 views / 9 ratings = .0005% ratings per view.
Gummi Legos: 84,420 views / 80 ratings = .0947%
Finger Loop Braids: 29,183 views / 18 ratings = .0617%
Gummi Legos - Young Tech audience - higher ratio, higher votes
Making Soda - Parents - lower ratio, lower votes
Just my theories.
Keep entering the contests. If you have the best Instructable for that contest you will probably come out on top, no matter what the ratings and votes are.
I don't envy Fungus Amungus dealing with all of these statistics. I think they are fun but have no idea how you would come to a solid conclusion from them.
Nor do we want it to ruin the fact we even have contests. I mean, I have a heap of things I want to post, contests or no, but it sure helps to get more instructables out there in the fray. :-)