Apology for manipulating ratings of my webteases

[cactusman]

I am sorry to say that I have deceived all of you by manipulating the ratings of my webteases.

What I did was two things. The first was that I started to write long, sometimes very long webteases. I got some good feedback for these. But then I realized that the length of a webtease has a positive correlation with its rating, since (as has been observed by Evals in http://www.milovana.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5197) many readers who find themselves bored or otherwise not liking the webtease will tend to stop before the end of a very long tease and thus not rate it.

That first thing may be harmless, but the second thing I did was not. I noticed that although I cannot rate my own teases when logged in, I can rate them if I'm not logged in. So I did that. In fact, I did that a lot. While this site blocks the same IP address from rating a tease twice in a short period of time, when I have been away on a trip or have some other opportunity to use a new IP address, I have taken to obsessively rating (very highly) my own webteases.

I have been so obsessed with this that I have manipulated the ratings of my webteases to the extent that they are currently the top 6 webteases on the site in terms of ratings. For this I now sincerely apologize to all the other authors of fine webteases. I have told seraph0x about this in private, and now tell you all publicly about it. I realize that the ratings of my teases will suffer and justifiably so, as I'm sure many of you will be mad at me. I would be happy if seraph0x found some way to delete or undo these faked ratings.

I promise I will stop manipulating the ratings of my teases from now on. I am sorry for what I've done and feel like I've become addicted to all of this, so am glad to stop. My sincere apologies.

[cactusman]

I for one, would like to applaud your honesty, in coming out into the open with this. It takes a brave person to openly admit that they've deceived another.

I think the thing to keep in mind here, is that in the end, it's just a webtease. Yeah, the ratings are great, and the TOTM award is cool too, but in the end, it doesn't really affect our real lives much ... so yeah, while there's bound to be a few authors out there that might take issue with this, in the scheme of things, I'd say it's a small issue.

Now, as to the TOTM ... I assume you've not manipulated this, correct?

You are right of course, it's just a webtease. I feel like I have become addicted to all of this, and it's become an obsession with me, and I hope this will help me stop feeling that way.

About the TOTM voting, unfortunately, no that's not correct. First, I have certainly voted for my own webteases in the voting. Second I have posted a few notes on orgasmdenial.com asking for votes for teases that were noted there. And third and worst, I obtained a second login here and used that to vote a second time for my teases.

But that hasn't been very successful in winning, except last month, when there was a 1 vote difference between winning and second place. So for March 2010 one could say that it was my second vote with this other login that made the difference.

Yes, I've been that obsessed with it. I am especially sorry for this. I've asked seprah0x to delete this second login and promise not to do this again. But probably the TOTM award for March should be taken away.

[seraph0x]

You did the right thing by coming forward. In the future I'll probably start doing checks by looking for statistical anomalies. Those checks would have easily caught cactusman and I'm sure he's not the only one voting for himself.

So an official warning: If you are voting for yourself (more than 1-3 votes) or have in the past, you have about 2-3 weeks to come forward. If we catch you cheating and you haven't come forward we will immediately remove all ratings from your teases, disqualify you from any TOTMs you've taken part in and depending on the extent of the activity also delete your account.

We can't prevent people from voting for themselves, but we make it a very, very risky proposition.

As for cactusman: I'm busy at the moment, but in a few weeks I'll track down and remove all illegitimate votes. I'll also look very closely at the TOTM votes themselves. Assuming that his TOTM winning teases would have qualified and won without any cheating, he'll get to keep the award. However, if that is not the case, the tease in question will be disqualified and the TOTM will go to the runner-up for that month.

There is also a proposal to change voting policy so that users can rate a tease right after launching it: Vote/comment here

[whacker44]

I think the cheater should not be allowed an orgasm for the rest of the year, and if he cums in his sleep..we all get to whack his butt once each with a cane....LOL

[ballsfull]

The irony of all this is: they are REALLY good teases..... They'd have been rated highly (I'm pretty sure) regardless....

Generally a little too long for my taste (who has time to read, much less write, 400 pages?? Yikes!!), but still, great story-lines and pictures...

Barry

[secretstroker]

your a BAD BAD boy... lock that dick up for 2 weeks and don't look at any porn !

[cactusman]

The irony of all this is: they are REALLY good teases..... They'd have been rated highly (I'm pretty sure) regardless....

Generally a little too long for my taste (who has time to read, much less write, 400 pages?? Yikes!!), but still, great story-lines and pictures...

Thank you for the kind words. I think the amount of time I spent on these webteases is another indication of how obsessed I've been with them and the whole scene.

That said, I understand the comments from others that I should be punished in various ways...

[Human]

As a pure curiosity, cactusman, why did you come forward with the confession to seraph ?

[green]

Very brave decision cactusman :).

I never thought on cheating votes on Milovana, though I did on other places, for good reasons.
There are techniques which cannot be detected, if its only the cookies that are logged and the IP adress(Maybe also some http headers).

If a useraccount was required to vote, it's still possible to vote icognito, but would require some preparations beforehand.

What I'm trying to say is, that you can't really prevent cheating, and that I appreciate catusmans decision to clear things up.

And also even though I have to admit that I didnt completely read all of your teases ( they're oh soo long ; D ).. I did enjoy them, and do believe that they deserve a quite high rating.

~green~

[Lady X]

What you did, by writing this was hard.

Not that it really matters, but.....as for Me.........forgiven...forgotten *soft smile*

*warm hugs*

[Qwert]

I dont care much about it becouse it is just webteases and for me all that voting stuff is not important.

You did bad thing anyway but you have guts to reveal it so I don't blame you. We all makes mistakes.

As a punishment you must write some more high quality teases.

[seraph0x]

There are techniques which cannot be detected, if its only the cookies that are logged and the IP adress(Maybe also some http headers).

We already block a single IP address from voting more than once within a certain time limit. What I'm proposing is statistical analysis, it's how they catch tax evaders. Statistical data has a certain predictable randomness. Our users use certain browsers, they use the site at certain times, they vote on a certain number of teases and read a certain number of pages beforehand, they use a certain Internet providers, a certain number of them are registered a certain number aren't. If there is an anomaly against any of those parameters, it'll show up in the data.

So if somebody votes say, 20 times and they spread it out over the whole day and they use different Internet providers from different countries for each vote, they use different browsers, they browse around the site a little first, they make sure some of the votes are made with registered accounts some aren't, they change their browser language and their operating system from vote to vote. Even if they do all that we'd still be able to notice the anomaly if they haven't used the right ratio of different browsers for example. Once you have a certain amount of data, these anomalies become statistically significant, proving foul play. Then you look for links between the fake votes and the author and if you can match anything... you've got your cheater.

Of course all this is time consuming and after all the TOTMs are just a little token of appreciation from our community, I doubt one would get much satisfaction from them if one didn't win honestly. Cactusman said he didn't feel good about the whole thing at all, which I'm guessing is why he decided to come clean.

But hey, all I'm saying is: I do occasionally get bored on weekends and cheaters leave a digital footprint. Just thought they should know that - in the interest of fair play.

[cactusman]

As a pure curiosity, cactusman, why did you come forward with the confession to seraph ?

Because I realized I was being obsessional and getting overly addicted to making my teases be highly ranked, and I realized that I was hurting the community by being dishonest about it.

In essence, I'm wanting to break my addiction to manipulating the ratings of my webteases. I could see that it was counterproductive from every single point of view (my time, the community, my sense of well being, etc.). Even so I kind of backed into it, first trying to tell seraph0x in my own pig-headed way about how the rating system is insecure, and as part of that confessing what I had done. So it's really not that brave, I'm just being a bit more rational about it. But now I realize that confessing is the first step in breaking my addiction to this manipulation process.

I think I'm just the kind of person that craves attention, even, it seems, attention that I manufacture for myself. It sounds completely irrational, and it is...

Again, my sincere apologies to everyone.

[Nwah]

If Seraph0x hadn't gotten bored one weekend, Milovana might never have been created. And then where would we all be?

Probably busy getting awards for Bestseller in Erotic Literature

[Evals]

Interesting. Yeah, the post which turned into topic and poll by seraph0x, had been my only speculation as to how your teases rated so consistently high without mentioning any names. Anyways, to me a rating on my tease means a lot as far as community perception, reaction, quality, etc. A lot of people say forget about the ratings, write for yourself, that's what it's all about. I think that's partly true and I do that... but even more so I like to write for others and having an interest in the rating is just a small reflection of that. But manipulating it would kind of defeat the purpose when you carry that mindset.

Generally, I think most people do write teases for their own personal enjoyment. However, that's not what I'm talking about. When you publish it, are you publishing it more for yourself or for the people that read it? I think most people publish for the community. The attention you can get from writing nice teases is great, but when the scale balances towards that side too much, towards caring about ratings and TOTM nominations for the attention that's when you can be in trouble.

Just my suggestion, to maybe help you overcome your problems is to remember who it is you're publishing for... the community, not yourself. Don't use the ratings to bring attention to yourself, but use it as a reflection of how the tease was received by your readers.

Blahblahblah my rambling.