Somebody is gaming the post voting

[Buck]

Let’s be real honest that there is a whole lot of stuff that is said on these forums that would get one fired from ANY employer if they were said to a coworker. Somehow part of the attraction of the internet is being able to say things that would never be said in person - and that is the obvious danger.
Obviously there are many people on this forum who are very intelligent and have a pretty grasp of their lives… but we all have our vulnerabilities and unfortunately they become glaringly obvious on a place like an online forum where people say things they would never say to anyone face to face.
My comments are targeted much more at BEHAVIOR than PEOPLE. I had no particular person in mind when I wrote what I wrote.
But let’s be very clear that there is a competitiveness and intention to wound and maim people on this forum that is truly breathtaking.
People who play by the sword shouldn’t be surprised when they are wounded by the sword – even the sword which they attempt to use to wound others. Far too many people in life are happy to sling guns around but are surprised when a bullet or two comes in their direction.
It would be far better and more enjoyable if people here could be comfortable contributing their own thoughts and quit playing games of one-ups-manship with others.
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People who use the post voting system as a tool of measuring their competitiveness with others or as a means to win at someone else’s expense represent the worst, not the best of what this boar?d is or can be. It is not realistic to engage in inappropriate behavior and not expect to be called out on it.
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It is to people who practice that type of behavior that my message was addressed. And that is a pretty small minority of the participants of this forum.

Oh I agree, you made it very clear.

 

[eolesen]

Yesterday morning, the forums had an upgrade, and one of the features of that upgrade was to expose who had voted up a particular post.... here's an example:

Lo and behold, you can imagine my shock and awe as I found a whole bunch of posts from WT which had the following footer:

In a previous job, I'd done a lot of programming to extract information from the web. One application in particular was targeted at grabbing stock prices from BigCharts.com (yes, this was a long time ago), and another was doing pattern matching within a group of webpages.

I'd already noticed WT's reputation score fluctuating out of proportion to his posts for some time, as indicated in the beginning of the thread.

So for fun, I modified my BigChartSnooper to become WorldSnooper. Sure enough, it showed jumps of 10 and 20 votes within a short timeframe, and pretty much daily. It more or less validated that there was indeed a haystack worth exploring.

Yesterday's short-lived upgrade to the forums simply confirmed what I'd suspected -- WT had been voting up his own posts.

I've posted a few more details over in another thread (http://airlineforums...128#entry897896), but the short story is that WT was indeed gaming the system to increase his reputation score.

To be fair, I've held off on commenting about it further, hoping WT would be man enough to fess up.

Since he hasn't, I will use his own words to describe his opinion of people who were using the post voting system to placate their own self-esteem:

....we have a relatively few mental and emotional midgets who are incapable of even grasping the issues facing the industry... yet said midgets are more interested in checking on other people’s popularity scores and clicking other people’s red buttons in some twisted attempt to bolster their own self-worth

Apparently, WT is one of the mental midgets (or widgets) that he's attacking, as he clicked up his own posts ~1044 times, and even created a second profile to add another ~683 times.

it seems like the issue is a far bigger structural problem - of which playing with little green and red buttons on a website does nothing to solve.

I agree. Voting on posts does nothing to solve the problems at any airline.

Yet, WT appears to have invested a few minutes each day playing with those red & green buttons.

If you figure a weighted average of 5 seconds per button click (adding in some time to sign-out and sign-in as the alter-ego Spectator), that comes out to around 141 minutes over the last six months (since Spectator was created in October).

Meanwhile the midgets who can't contribute anything constructive to the conversation keep playing with red and green buttons in a fleeting attempt to boost their shattered self-esteems.

WT, you voted up your posts 1727 times, and you're telling other people they have shattered self-esteem?

People who play by the sword shouldn’t be surprised when they are wounded by the sword – even the sword which they attempt to use to wound others....

....People who use the post voting system as a tool of measuring their competitiveness with others or as a means to win at someone else’s expense represent the worst, not the best of what this board is or can be. It is not realistic to engage in inappropriate behavior and not expect to be called out on it.

So there you have it.... straight from WT's own mouth....

WT not only used, but abused the voting system as a mean to "win".

While he never stated he wasn't actively "defending his reputation" by voting his own posts up, his comments above give the appearance he didn't really care what others thought about his writing, when apparently the exact opposite was true. He cared very much, to the point of engaging in 1727 mouse clicks to try and improve his standing here...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It is not realistic to engage in inappropriate behavior, and not expect to be called out on it."

WT, you've been officially called out.

The forum admins seem to have also taken notice --- as of last night, they took out the identifier of who had voted a post up, and it's also no longer possible to vote for yourself, which I'd say is a fair outcome given the gaming that was going on.

My apologies for going off on a tangent from normal discussion here, but when I first called attention to this several weeks back, WT went on the offensive. He decided it was more appropriate to call me out and attack my honor when he'd been caught abusing the system. And worse, he continued to engage in the same activity.

I've got news for you, WT. Honor is all about the actions you take when nobody else is watching.

 

[FWAAA]

A certain narrowbody Airbus pilot was doing the same thing. I didn't compile numbers, but perusing the thread he created to catalog each and every news article mentioning both "US Airways" and "American," I noticed last week that nearly every post by that certain pilot had two positive votes. Yesterday, during the full transparency period, it was revealed that each of those posts was voted up by that certain pilot and a no-content alter-ego. I can understand WT doing that, but a real-life airline pilot?

 

[Buck]

Eric, are you and WT one in the same?

 

[eolesen]

Could it be that WT is really an A320 narrowbody captain, and they have a serious case of multiple-avatar disorder?...

 

[BigMac]

Obviously someone has issues if they give a flip about their own "likes" from a forum. Hell, I don't give a flip if anyone likes me in real life...lol. E, thanks for investigating and calling out this wacko.

 

[MCI transplant]

Could it be that WT is really an A320 narrowbody captain, and they have a serious case of multiple-avatar disorder?...

e--- I'm starting to think you have why too much time on your hands!!

 

[eolesen]

MCI, never piss off a programmer, especially one who likes solving puzzles and searching for needles where there may not appear to be a haystack....

All told, I spent maybe 20 or 30 minutes doing the legwork, which was probably 20 minutes too long.

 

[Frank Szabo]

e--- I'm starting to think you have why too much time on your hands!!

I don't understand what the issue is, honestly. I don't need to catch someone being a dummy to think such - waste of time to worry.

 

[delldude]

Yesterday morning, the forums had an upgrade, and one of the features of that upgrade was to expose who had voted up a particular post.... here's an example:

Lo and behold, you can imagine my shock and awe as I found a whole bunch of posts from WT which had the following footer:

In a previous job, I'd done a lot of programming to extract information from the web. One application in particular was targeted at grabbing stock prices from BigCharts.com (yes, this was a long time ago), and another was doing pattern matching within a group of webpages.

I'd already noticed WT's reputation score fluctuating out of proportion to his posts for some time, as indicated in the beginning of the thread.

So for fun, I modified my BigChartSnooper to become WorldSnooper. Sure enough, it showed jumps of 10 and 20 votes within a short timeframe, and pretty much daily. It more or less validated that there was indeed a haystack worth exploring.

Yesterday's short-lived upgrade to the forums simply confirmed what I'd suspected -- WT had been voting up his own posts.

I've posted a few more details over in another thread (http://airlineforums...128#entry897896), but the short story is that WT was indeed gaming the system to increase his reputation score.

To be fair, I've held off on commenting about it further, hoping WT would be man enough to fess up.

Since he hasn't, I will use his own words to describe his opinion of people who were using the post voting system to placate their own self-esteem:



Apparently, WT is one of the mental midgets (or widgets) that he's attacking, as he clicked up his own posts ~1044 times, and even created a second profile to add another ~683 times.



I agree. Voting on posts does nothing to solve the problems at any airline.

Yet, WT appears to have invested a few minutes each day playing with those red & green buttons.

If you figure a weighted average of 5 seconds per button click (adding in some time to sign-out and sign-in as the alter-ego Spectator), that comes out to around 141 minutes over the last six months (since Spectator was created in October).



WT, you voted up your posts 1727 times, and you're telling other people they have shattered self-esteem?



So there you have it.... straight from WT's own mouth....

WT not only used, but abused the voting system as a mean to "win".

While he never stated he wasn't actively "defending his reputation" by voting his own posts up, his comments above give the appearance he didn't really care what others thought about his writing, when apparently the exact opposite was true. He cared very much, to the point of engaging in 1727 mouse clicks to try and improve his standing here...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It is not realistic to engage in inappropriate behavior, and not expect to be called out on it."

WT, you've been officially called out.

The forum admins seem to have also taken notice --- as of last night, they took out the identifier of who had voted a post up, and it's also no longer possible to vote for yourself, which I'd say is a fair outcome given the gaming that was going on.

My apologies for going off on a tangent from normal discussion here, but when I first called attention to this several weeks back, WT went on the offensive. He decided it was more appropriate to call me out and attack my honor when he'd been caught abusing the system. And worse, he continued to engage in the same activity.

I've got news for you, WT. Honor is all about the actions you take when nobody else is watching.

I thought zeroing out everybodies 'rep' and eliminating the ability to give ones self rep would be a good idea.

 

[Frank Szabo]

MCI, never piss off a programmer, especially one who likes solving puzzles and searching for needles where there may not appear to be a haystack....

All told, I spent maybe 20 or 30 minutes doing the legwork, which was probably 20 minutes too long.

Fortran IV, then VS-77 and 95 later on were my tickets to fun and games - good for numbers but very people unfriendly until 95.

 

[Mach85ER]

I guess I'm too stupid or drunk or here just a few seconds between disreputable livestock mating sites, but where is the "like" button? I really need to improve my street cred, so I need the "like" myself button.

 

[eolesen]

I don't understand what the issue is, honestly. I don't need to catch someone being a dummy to think such - waste of time to worry.

Sorry, it's my management training -- always have your ducks in a row before calling someone in for a chat...

A certain narrowbody Airbus pilot was doing the same thing. I didn't compile numbers, but perusing the thread he created to catalog each and every news article mentioning both "US Airways" and "American," I noticed last week that nearly every post by that certain pilot had two positive votes. Yesterday, during the full transparency period, it was revealed that each of those posts was voted up by that certain pilot and a no-content alter-ego. I can understand WT doing that, but a real-life airline pilot?

Why, yes he was.... but not to the degree that WT was doing, at least under his public user ID:

Total             85
2293-usa320pilot  44
2948-700uw         5
723-luvthe9        4
20642-eastus1	   4

Just to be clear, I have no problem with a second profile being used by someone when their identities are known. The identity of the narrowbody pilot example above is well known by the company. On this site, I know some of the moderators have/had multiple profiles. I used one occasionally when I was still in management at AA, since there was always the threat of retribution and CorpComm knew who I was.

So for anonymity, I have no issues with it. It's the same reason I have two Twitter accounts, two blogs, and two Facebook accounts... As WT's mentioned a few times, a Google search can be damning if you're a little too public.

But once you start using that profile to prop up your public profile, it's no more credible than the phone-in callers on an infomercial, or hotels/restaurants creating fake reviews on TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon, etc.

 

[BigMac]

Several forums have an IP tracker. I know there are IP ghoster programs that inhibit tracking. BUT wouldn't it have been easier to track an IP as to how many aliases the individual in question has?

 

[TWU informer]

Ding Ding
End of Round Two, please return to your corners.

And all over some stupid rating system that everyone knows is flawed and can be manipulated.
Great minds sometimes succumb to stupid beliefs.