Hi Erik
{Open Quote}
the consequenses will probably just be that we stop all voting, and remove the "most wanted" list. Better to remove a thing that annoys people, then leaving it there to annoy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
{Close Quote}
Believe me that this would be a very wise decision, at least until you have studied the art of Polling, and learning from this conundrum Erik. I admit that I had had in mind all probable possibilities concerning that malicious down voting pattern.
Your Website was not out of suspicion as being paid for this, sorry, but it kicked in as soon as 5000 votes were deleted for whatever reason because this is the first incident in the history of polling that the judge admits manipulating the votes.
Listen up dear Erik, now I have no doubt that you (“To The Game”) is innocent.
I am a retired professor and technology consultant with a Ph. D. in Neurological-molecular-biochemistry, and I am a hardware/ firmware/ software Wizard too and I have decided to give you some very valuable advice therefore please listen.
It is a very wrong decision to found a SPAM filter based on the number of votes per hour because hackers (whom I fight relentlessly) have demonstrated very high intelligence and would never fall to such a simple filter. The statistical pattern of a hacker’s attack is usually in bursts of communications that never exceeds 9 to 11 minutes with an average of 10 minutes per attack. This includes “Hackers’ probing” and Trojan-Incubation if you are aware of those terms. I learned those things when I was the responsible of the university IT club and I also was instructing on programming logistics and some languages.
Take note of some dreadful psychological triggers Erik.
When you display continuously a list of results with a game on top of that list, you psychologically trigger a contest rather than a poll. If your intentions were setting a contest then you should never touch those results because fans can take care of themselves. However, if your intentions were a fair poll, then you should never announce partial results in the way you did but a better method was to isolate the poll results completely until the voting period expires. This brings us to yet another mistake, because you never set a Voting period for such a poll. Can you imagine inviting the people of a nation to vote for elections without telling them when shall the elected take control? “A most wanted game!” On which date exactly would that be valid? It is that date on which you announce the results of the poll to keep it fair and less aggravating.
On the other hand, rating a game is a completely different subject than wanting a game; think about it.
I may judge a game as an excellent game even though it is not of my favourite type, and I may want a game so badly even though I do not think that it is the best game out there. A most wanted game is the game that gets the highest number of votes which you just deleted. To give this information to the press, you need to prove that that game was most wanted, and you cannot accomplish this task by 50 votes because that would be laughable at best.
Rift Runner reached over 6000 votes, indicating that SPAM or not, it had the highest attention and a very dedicated fan base, which speaks for itself as being most wanted. What you did to that poll was a perfect screw-up.
Now look at this poll proposition:
How badly do you want this game?
1- I need it NOW.
2- I can wait.
3- I do not intend to buy this game.
Accordingly, you can build fantastic statistics by declaring the number of fans who would buy the game immediately on its release, and those who would eventually buy it and finally those who are not interested.
This should reflect realistic data concerning the most wanted game regardless of its quality.
I can go on but that should do for now.
So go ahead and delete that very bad experiment of yours because it just creates enemies you do not wish to have.
![[Linked Image]](http://hemetis.freeyellow.com/GrinDance.gif)
____
