Please do NOT vote for me!
I was a little suspicious during the second round of the iBlog Cup that something funny was going on. Others were too. We wanted to give the benefit of the doubt over this, but there is simply no way that I can believe the results of this thing any more at this point.
This guy is padding the votes on these competitions to make them appear closer than they really are. There really isn’t any other believable conclusion to draw. I’m very upset that I had all of you going over there and participating in what now amounts to a sham. Sure it wasn’t a big deal to start with, just a little diversion, but an unfair, unreal one as it turns out.
What makes it worse is that for all I know Chris actually won the competition between him and I and for that matter Carl may have actually won too. Chris is an aquaintence of mine from BolgCatalog. He is an exceptionally bright blogger with a lot of great ideas. The ad block (the big empty one that says advertise here) is from his site, blaged.com and you can actually go there and get a one day ad on this site for free. You can pay for longer durations, but one day equals free. This was his idea, and I think it’s a good one.
To think that the only reason I might still be in this competition is because a dishonest traffic seeking webscammaster’s script flipped a bunch of votes to my blog at just the right time literally makes me sick. And it makes me sick that I made such a big deal out of this.
Those who won themes in the first two rounds will get their themes. I will enjoy making their themes for them because it means something good has been salvaged from something bad. I like that.
I’m, discontinuing this contest, however, as I can’t stand continuing something tied to this kind of behavior.
I still intend to give away TWO MORE THEMES though. I will come up with a new contest to do so. And I will let you know what I come up with.
I apologize that this turned out this way, and I will make it up to those of you who got behind me on it.
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January 15th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
This confirms the image of you that has formed in my head at BlogCatalog. You’re a straight shooter.
I would be interested in hearing more about why a contest owner would do such a thing. Just to generate interest and traffic? One thing that was never clear to me: Who was holding the competition in the first place? Was it new? Had there been others?
January 15th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
I try to be that, Mark. And for a guy like me you’ve just paid about the highest compliment I can imagine.
The traffic, Mark. If the thing is close, the “contestants are going to be more likely to really do what they can to throw more traffic at it. If you think you have it in the bag or you think there is no way you can win, you probably won’t try so hard to send traffic to it.
I don’t know the owner, though he does have a BC account. It was a fairly new site, and this was the fourth “contest” he ran.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Like I said before - I had my suspicions in the first two rounds when I went in there and it seemed like all the sites were tied, but this round is what really gave it away - when a blog with relatively no traffic had just as many votes in one day as he had in the entire first leg of the competition was a dead giveaway.
Even if someone else had put their support behind them, I do not see this as being viable.
You did the right thing Dane. I did still however send an email to the site owner expressing my opinions earlier today…
January 15th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Straight to the point Dane we have both said it right through all the rounds about the contest. Were both winners and its their losss. Save the themes as I have something simular coming up that won’t be a cheat site and I will whack you in the ComVote contest I am running on mattnutts when I finish it today.
As Mark said it just goes to prove what sort of person you are.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Amazing the lengths people will go to
January 16th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Thanks for the heads up. You just made me withdrew from iblogcup. I just sent them an email.
Cheers!
January 16th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Good for you. It’s always good to see a person right a wrong and point out things like this.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:40 am
Fair play to you for highlighting this. I still don’t get why they would do it but whatever, at least some bloggers are honest.
January 16th, 2008 at 6:14 am
For the record sham or not I did not mind going over there to cast my vote for you in the previous rounds.
I look forward to the contest you come up with!
January 16th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Thanks guys. I appreciate the comments.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Dane–
Had my suspicions about this site also. As a relatively new site, iblogcup seems to be geared toward building site visits. My site was nominated, and so I figgered I’d play along and see where it goes. As for the recent jump in votes for TackyRaccoons.com, I’d attribute it to the widgit I added last weekend, as I haven’t advertised the nomination of TackyRaccoons.com, and wasn’t “ho-ing” for votes.
As a nominee, I’d axed my 500-800 regular readers to vote for the underdog site in all cases other than mine, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other nominees did it as well… This skews the votes somewhat with the hope that the weaker nominee of the pair wins, giving one’s own site a slight edge. Politics!
Until the iblogcup coughs up some kind of prize, it’ll prolly stay as an oddity.
Cordially,
Bunk Strutts
TackyRaccoons
January 17th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Dane,
Let me present my side of story, please. I would also like to apologise to everyone who feels he has been cheated.
Just to make things clear - there is someone out there who obviously has too much time and wrote this equalling program, just to show me that my proxy block system doesn’t work. I knew that I cannot block all proxy voting, but I did as much as I could to prevent this behaviour. It all started in the beginning of January. I added some more IPs belonging to Anonymous Web Proxy Sites and it seemed that this behaviour stopped. But unfortunatelly it started all over again. Obviously he found another Free Web Proxy that allows him to do that.
Why would someone do that? The answer is simple. I made a mistake in the early days of competition when I disqualified a few blogs where obvious proxy voting was involved. Some people just couldn’t stand this as it seems (see blog post and comments of “First Disqualifications”).
The safest solution would be to start bothering people with usernames and password, but that was one of the few things I wanted to avoid when I was starting this page.
If anyone has any useful suggestions how to stop this behaviour, please let me know.
Regards,
Greg
iBlogCup.com
January 17th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Recode to include a mixture of IP checksums and cookies to vote. Easy captchas may also work, nothing too fancy though because it may turn people off.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:36 am
I think a captcha would be the best first line. I’m willing to bet the math plugin for WordPress comments could be adapted with relatively little effort.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:30 am
It is definitely a shame that things had to turn out that way. To be honest, it wasn’t really much of a competition anyway, expect for you and maybe Carl. As always, we appreciate your honest and sincere take on things Dane!
Jeff
January 18th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Thanks for your ideas. I will work on captcha over the weekend so that we can see if this solution works until the end of this month and we can start a fair Blog Cup next month.
What do you suggest for next month’s IBC? I was thinking of inviting the same 32 blogs from this month (as an apology to them) and joining them with 32 nominated blogs from waiting list. We will have to squeeze the dates as there would be an additional round, but I think it could go through.
Thanks again!
January 18th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Greg,
I will let the blog up bloggers speak for themselves, however, if it were me, I would not want to be in it again. You caused trouble with a few bloggers’ readers and you should know very well - you don’t mess with the readers…
If you knew this was going on, you should have taken a more proactive stance or at least disclosed it.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:16 am
thanks a lot for your opinion,
my friend
May 5th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Thanks for the heads up. I just withdrew from iblogcup.
…Just sent them an email.
-Jeff
May 15th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Do not vote for You? Strange request though but sure why not..Hahah..anyway I have been having a good time at your blog, kind of like addicted..
May 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
As you wish, no votes for you but a lot of support..