How To Vote in the First British iPhone Giveaway
Most of you reading this are aware that the first British iPhone giveaway has been beset with problems with unscrupulous online voting.
Basically, because Comment Karma, the voting system used, allowed either positive or negative votes to be made for each entry, it was possible to vote down entries as they were made.
It meant that at one stage, the ‘winning entry’ was technically the least liked TV show suggested.
To catch up on events as they unfolded, here’s a summary. You can also read all the daily updates by clicking on the iPhone tag.
The situation has now been remedied by modifying the voting system to only allow positive votes. All votes previously entered have been reset to 0 to level the playing field for everyone.
This post is to clarify the current situation with voting in the iPhone giveaway now that only positive voting is allowed.
Anyone that has entered the giveaway will know that you cannot vote for your own entry. The ‘thumbs up’ button is disabled and appears greyed out.
This is fair and standard practice online; you cannot digg articles you submit to Digg, for example.
Most online voting systems prevent voting ‘fraud’ by checking each vote cast against the IP address of the computer used by the person casting it.
The system used in the iPhone giveaway is no different.
This means you can only vote once for a comment. The next time you attempt to vote, the ‘thumbs up’ button appears greyed out.
Those of you reporting seeing multiple greyed out buttons would have previously voted for those comments.
If you were voting comments down, I guess this is where (comment) karma comes back to haunt you.
Unfortunately, this means that those of you that previously voted positively for a comment will not be able to vote for it again using the same computer now that all votes have been reset to 0.
Now, before you all cry foul, I know exactly how many comments had positive votes before the system was reset and the names of the people that made those comments.
There was a grand total of 3 comments with positive votes and one of them was mine, which clearly isn’t in the running.
The highest number of votes was 7 and I suspect a couple of those votes were applied to test the system as the first patch was applied on Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning.
So … the vast majority of votes cast in the iPhone giveaway before for yesterday afternoon’s system reset were negative.
Therefore, hardly anyone in the competition has been seriously disadvantaged by the resetting of votes to 0.
Now, I know some of you might disagree and so, in the interest of fairness, I have decided that the best way to proceed would be to consider extending the deadline of the competition yet again to give everyone that previously voted positively an opportunity to vote again from a different computer.
On a personal note, moderating this iPhone giveaway has taken a considerable amount of my time this week and I don’t really want to extend it any further.
However, I am going to let you make the decision.
I invite you to vote in the comments I’ve left below.
Those in favour of ending the competition at midnight tonight, say so by voting.
Those in favour of extending the competition deadline till midnight next Friday, say so, by the same.
You have until 12 noon today (12:00 GMT) to make your wishes known.
Photo credit: www.yawp.com
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