WDTPRS and the “Blogger’s Choice Award” for 2008

Something odd is happening at the "Blogger’s Choice Award" for 2008

A reader alerted me to what happened when the link on the left side bar to the "Blogger’s choice award" page for WDTPRS was clicked. 

 

A little before the voting for 2007 was ended, the people who run this award site expunged well over 100 votes from WDTPRS.  Also, all the nice comments that people had made after voting are gone as well. 

Either someone at Blogger’s Choice Awards doesn’t like this blog (which is unlikely), or WDTPRS was zeroed down because someone was voting multiple times from the same i.p. address.   That is cheating.  Who would want to win anything that way?

Now … a couple days ago, WDTPRS was well in the lead in the 2008 voting.  Now, the old entry is gone, and the entry for WDTPRS that is there and active is much farther down the list with many fewer votes.  This appears to be a brand new nomination.  

I am thinking that the old entry in use for the award was probably "banned" because, again, someone was doing WDTPRS a disservice by cheating.

Folks… why do that?  I do appreciate your support, but please, if you vote for WDTPRS, just vote once!

Someone probably cost WDTPRS a spot in the top three for 2007.

So, WDTPRS has again started from zero.

If you haven’t not recently voted, I would appreciate your support, but please abide by the rules and just vote once, from one registration.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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18 Comments

  1. fr william says:

    AFAICS, the same has happened to all the other entries too. No explanation appears to be forthcoming, but it looks like the whole thing’s been a complete shambles. I don’t think WDTPRS has been treated any differently from the others – the highest entry at the moment has just 21 votes, while a few days ago there were a whole bunch well into three figures. But it would be nice if the organisers could put up some information telling us what on earth is going on.

  2. I checked the website and found this …

    “Welcome to the Blogger’s Choice Awards! Voting for 2007 has ended. The winners will be revealed at PostieCon during a special BCA VIP Party at Tao Las Vegas on Nov. 10. View the 2007 nominees here. Also, the 2008 contest is already underway. Vote now to determine next year’s winners.”

    It looks like ClosedCafeteria is in the top 3 for 2007. People voting for WDTPRS are actually voting for 2008.

  3. Chris: So, people who voted for the 2007 award, can vote for 2008… but only once, please.

  4. JustDave says:

    It only allowed me to vote once, but then again, I did not try to find another way to vote again. It would have been nice if the blog organizers explained the reduction of votes.

    It does not help their credibility much for them to do that.

    This blog should have been in the top 3. Next year it will be. I am sure of it.
    Dave

  5. Michael Beaupre says:

    Fr. Z,

    I know that I’ve voted and I also have a roommate who is on the same router (and therefore has the same IP) who reads your blog. I don’t know if he voted or not, but situations like this could account for some votes being detected as cheating.

  6. GCC Catholic says:

    Fr. Z,

    At my previous college, we had a proxy server. If my understanding of it was correct, the IP address visible from the outside would have been identical for anything coming out of the campus. That has the potential to be a huge problem in a situation like this.

  7. Other Paul says:

    1. You need to have a Blogger account to vote. So one would think that they would be concerned about multiple votes from the same account, not the same IP address. As GCC Catholic pointed out, one campus (with perhaps tens of thousands of students) can share a single IP address that the Internet sees. This is absolutely commonplace today and I would think that duplicate IP’s in the voting would be likewise commonplace and should not in any way invalidate a vote. Duplicate accounts – yes, duplicate IP’s – no.

    2. Any coder worth his salt could easily weed out the duplicates (IP addresses or accounts) during the voting process itself.

  8. How odd, I just signed into the Blogger’s Choice Awards and although I had voted for many blogs when I first signed up back in the summer, my profile says I have not voted for any blogs at all.
    I don’t know what is going on, but I think the BCA has goobered everything up and has been trying to fix too many problems that this contest is no longer fair. I’d say if you voted in the past, sign in and see if your votes still exist. Very odd though.

  9. Other Paul: Your point about proxy servers is a good one. I am pretty sure that there are any number of seminarians and students who work behind a proxy. It would be to bad if students in such a situation were “disenfranchised”, so to speak.

  10. Actually, it looks like everything in the best religion blog category has been reset. As of this posting, Fr. Z. is now #1.

  11. Brian says:

    Has anyone thought of the possibility that this was a rival blog’s doing, to open up a lead spot? There’s nothing to stop someone from cheating on a different blog and getting their vote count reduced to zero, as well.

  12. Brian: possibility that this was a rival blog’s doing, to open up a lead spot

    How awful.

  13. RBrown says:

    Sometimes there is sabotage by anti-religious people. A few years ago I wrote an article in a Catholic publication and had an email address affixed to it. I received some good questions and comments, but there were also some emails containing viruses.

    It surprised me.

  14. RBrown: That happens to me all the time, every day.

  15. GreatLakesCatholic says:

    A few days ago I noticed there were two nominations for WDTPRS, with slight variations: one was nominated as “WDTPRSblog” (this one had the most votes by far) and the other as “WDTPRS.com”. Maybe this is the reason for the’do over’?

    I quite sure voting twice isn’t possible. If it is possible, each person can double check by looking at their list of what they’ve already voted on, which is provided. It shows all their votes, however I don’t know if it shows the dates of the votes.

  16. GreatLakesCatholic says:

    A few days ago I noticed there were two nominations for WDTPRS, with slight variations: one was nominated as \”WDTPRSblog\” (this one had the most votes by far) and the other as \”WDTPRS.com\”. Maybe this is the reason for the\’do over\’?

    I quite sure voting twice isn\’t possible. If it is possible, each person can double check by looking at their list of what they\’ve already voted on, which is provided. It shows all their votes, however I don\’t know if it shows the dates of the votes.

  17. RBrown says:

    A few days ago I noticed there were two nominations for WDTPRS, with slight variations: one was nominated as “WDTPRSblog” (this one had the most votes by far) and the other as “WDTPRS.com”. Maybe this is the reason for the’do over’
    Comment by GreatLakesCatholic

    Shades of Ole Joe Kennedy. When JFK first ran for Congress, he was opposed by a man named Joe Russo. Fearing the strength of the Italian vote, Joe Kennedy hired another man named Joe Russo to run for the same office. And so there were two Joe Russo’s on the ballot.

  18. Other Paul says:

    RBrown: “A few years ago I wrote an article in a Catholic publication and had an email address affixed to it. I received some good questions and comments, but there were also some emails containing viruses.”

    Most people who put their email address on a webpage go through certain lengths to obscure said address. By obscure I mean make it understandable by a person but not by a program, as spammers have for years used programs to scan webpages for email addresses. So there may have been no malicious intent by an individual other than the greed and avarice of the ever-resourceful spammer.

Comments are closed.