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Project One Clarification

Right, I am starting this, because to my utter disappointment, I have been reading about people "manipulating" the voting.

I tried this out...It worked. So some of the bikes are receiving multiple votes from the same people, over and over.

My question is

Do you have to be logged in for a vote to be cast? (I seemed to be able to vote without being logged in, twice)
Can you vote more than once on the same bike? (I also managed to do this)
Can you vote daily on the same bike? (I haven't been able to confirm this)

From what I am reading, there are a number of people, voting over and over on the same bike and artificially bumping the votes up, are these getting counted?

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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101 comments

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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 24  19 x a million....It now looks even more of a fix

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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Ok so let me get this right. you have knocked my votes down to three hundred and something, and yet Micheal Downes remains on eighteen hundred and something.. BS!

Goodbye

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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It was pointed out days ago. No reply was ever given! As i said before, are we just meant to sit back and watch? I told people this morning on FB, not to waste their time voting because of all this. It's a shame because it was actually a fun competition.

And yes, i could point out two people that were boosting votes right from the word go

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Latest up from Trek UK twitter feed.

Quote:

So, some select individuals have been vote doping in the @roadcc Project One competition. WAVDA has caught you, & you are banned.

<<< Fine.

Quote:

We found the problem, and the culprit(s). Safe to say that the nefarious activity started over the weekend, not before.

<<< NOT fine. I started this thread on Friday and the cheating was going on days before I posted  14

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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Well thats good to hear

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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It has been noted and from my little knowledge, is being dealt with

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gregww1 replied to Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Gkam84 wrote:

It has been noted and from my little knowledge, is being dealt with

Saw that on twitter.

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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Someone is using a Bot by the way, which IS cheating

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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Well i have better things to do with my free time than sit and push a button all day. Any time over the next week that my finger goes near a keyboard, it'll be casting a vote for anything without Yellow flames!

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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It is open season, if I had a bike in, I'd employ ever single tactic, that I would describe as cheating now. can't beat them? Join them, then destroy them...

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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..... Well at least its a level field now i guess. The question was asked, no reply given. I for one will still look for votes (manly because its become quite fun), but i'm not just gonna sit back and watch people sail off in to the distance.
You are right Paul, these competitions are always about promotion above all else

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Gennysis | 10 years ago
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Define cheating.

This was always going to be a lucky dip followed by a popularity competition.

Given that one aim of the road.cc website is to maximise views, and the aim of the competition is to promote the trek project one service I'd say that the only people who will be bothered by what has been uncovered are the 24 finallists who don't win.

Road.cc and trek will only be looking at (& happy with) the number of hits.

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Yup, I knew there was information going around about cheating and this is why I started this thread, so maybe some rules could be confirmed about cheats would be chucked out....I guess not.

I know what I would be doing and who I would be contacting, but I do not want to cause ructions..

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orli replied to Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Gkam84 wrote:

I know what I would be doing and who I would be contacting, but I do not want to cause ructions..

Wow... maybe Dave can count the likes registered only by users with Road.cc accounts? Then again, maybe the sponsor doesn't care who gets the bike or how, or doesn't want to cause mayhem by stopping the bike competition now so maybe there won't be a rule against all this "extra" vote getting, but it's a shame. The winner should be the most 'liked' bike not the one that got the most votes. Well, maybe next time they'll limit it to registered users, but hell, then people could just as well create a bunch of new user accounts... too bad!  7

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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Yep bloody stupid! Noticed last night. Some idiot basically told people how to cheat. Nothing was done about it by anyone running the "competition", so what do you do?! It's a joke. Are you meant to just sit by and watch, after actually trying to get proper votes?.. Who Knows.

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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I have just looked....WISE UP, there is some amount of dodgyness going on.

Two bikes that were NO-WHERE are now over 2000 votes leading "that" bike by 5-600....

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Haven't even looked for a few days as I think the system is flaud

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gregww1 | 10 years ago
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Wow, some massive jumps in votes over the last few hours...quite a silly amount really.

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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I have just looked at the voting again, all integrity about this being a "competition" has been lost in my opinion.

It is now, who has people who can spend the day voting and who has the biggest social media presence.

Unlike the forum, you cannot remove your like for a bike either

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Stumps | 10 years ago
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Done  4

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Stumps | 10 years ago
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20thebear, which one is yours ? As we are both from the North East i will vote for yours mate.

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20thebear replied to Stumps | 10 years ago
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Mine is the one that is very similar to the leading design, but black not yellow and has 800 less votes.

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gregww1 replied to 20thebear | 10 years ago
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20thebear wrote:

Mine is the one that is very similar to the leading design, but black not yellow and has 800 less votes.

I detect just a smidge of cynicism in that reply, lol. Best of luck.

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GoingRoundInCycles | 10 years ago
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It is now blatantly obvious that repeat voting is going on from more than one candidate from the same computer. Even with the use of social media, let's say you have 500 followers, they are not all going to stop what they are doing at 10:30 - 11:30 pm to vote en masse and if they did, when you checked you would see big jumps in the votes rather than a steady trickle of 2-3 votes per minute just enough time for one voter to find another proxy reload the page and fire ....... then abruptly nothing overnight.

It is a shame that the contest has now become a computer skills competition but to be honest it was never a design one. I am delighted to have been shortlisted and a Top 10 finish would be great but I am sorely tempted to use my own considerable computer skills to award myself 10,001 votes on the last day of voting, just to highlight the level of farce.

Of course, should I not be disqualified, the bike would go to charity.

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Gregww1, That was my comment, I voted because it was a female. Sorry, if you don't follow me on twitter, you won't understand my goal for 2014 is to do lots of things for womens cycling, That also includes running the womens world cup in the fantasy game.

But I started this thread, because I am totally confused about the rules regarding what is and isn't allowed here. I know if my bike had gone through, I would have been all over social media to get votes, as it was going straight to a charity to do with as they wished. I would have been able to utilize their social media outlets aswell. Which in all likely hood would have given me a huge advantage.

Until things are a little clearer. I won't be voting for any more. I hate to stir things up, as has been pointed out on facebook. My name appears on the contributors list of Road.cc. So I don't want people thinking I am biased or know anything more than any of the rest.

I know none of the entrants at all and have no access to anything to do with the voting.

I am just a concerned user who sees what I thought might account to "cheating" and thought I might highlight the issue and see how it is being managed

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gregww1 replied to Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Gkam84 wrote:

Gregww1, That was my comment, I voted because it was a female. Sorry, if you don't follow me on twitter, you won't understand my goal for 2014 is to do lots of things for womens cycling, That also includes running the womens world cup in the fantasy game.

But I started this thread, because I am totally confused about the rules regarding what is and isn't allowed here. I know if my bike had gone through, I would have been all over social media to get votes, as it was going straight to a charity to do with as they wished. I would have been able to utilize their social media outlets aswell. Which in all likely hood would have given me a huge advantage.

Until things are a little clearer. I won't be voting for any more. I hate to stir things up, as has been pointed out on facebook. My name appears on the contributors list of Road.cc. So I don't want people thinking I am biased or know anything more than any of the rest.

I know none of the entrants at all and have no access to anything to do with the voting.

I am just a concerned user who sees what I thought might account to "cheating" and thought I might highlight the issue and see how it is being managed

Regarding the female thing, that's fine, I just didn't think it was a valid reason to choose one over the other, it smacks of a little discrimination, the polar opposite of what you are trying to achieve. No, I did not know about your goal, it is a commendable one and one I support as long as sight is not lost on equality rather than favouring one gender over another (which is unfortunately something that feminism seems to forget a lot of the time). Anyway, this is a post about bikes, not feminism.

Yes, I share your view on the "cheating" aspect, although we might slightly differ in our view of what is cheating and what isn't, unfortunately at the moment, without the clarification that you seek, it would appear that nothing is off limits.  7

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gregww1 | 10 years ago
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I've seen this before in other online competitions, and sadly it's a case of if you can't beat them join them. Yes, you can vote from multiple devices. Yes, you can vote daily. No, I'm not sure how and why, I'm not technical enough. But, the administrators of the competition should be able to monitor that and remove those votes if it was not allowed. If they can't do that, then unfortunately how can it possibly be policed?

Also, it's more of a case of popularity and how many friends you have these days and your ability to manipulate social networks to your advantage more than anything else. In fact, Dave kind of states as much in his spiel on the voting page, I quote "ceaselessly harangue your mates to vote for you". Well, that's great, if Justin Beiber had entered, he'd have instantly won.

A slightly fairer system would require voters to register and would not include the names on the entries. In my forum post about trying to persuade people to vote, I think the first reply included that the person voted for another bike because the designer "is female". WTF? What the hell has that got to do with it? I didn't realise it was a gender battle. I thought it was a contest between which was the nicest looking bike for the money (and that would include the components used, most of which you can't really see from the picture). Clearly I misread the brief, I should have changed my name and created a multi-coloured monstrosity so that it stood out.

So, what have I done to generate 'votes'? Well, I posted on the forum here to try to persuade folks who were undecided, it probably put them off, but never mind, I hope it amused some if nothing else. I've tweeted to my followers quite a bit and asked them to retweet, maybe 10 or so have. I've posted on Facebook daily and a few friends shared initially. As time goes on less and less are interested. In both of those cases I've stated that you can vote daily. I estimate I've probably generated 1/3rd of my votes by people voting again. I also have another tactic up my sleeve, which would be totally above board, but which hasn't worked...yet.

What haven't I done and what won't I do? Well, used a "proxy" to vote over and over again, I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. I haven't bought votes on a website, which I know you can do and have been beaten by someone in another competition in the past who did. I was tempted to offer my current bike in a draw if I won this bike to anyone who retweeted or shared my social media posts...and then I realised that I might be accused of bribery and subject to the bribery act 2010, not good.

So, with a week to go I've pretty much given up, turning my attention instead to upgrading some components on my current bike and looking forward to riding it again once these storms bugger off.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, as long as the winner wins fairly then I don't mind losing, unfortunately it is totally unclear what is fair and what isn't at the moment.

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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WOW WOW WOW, calm down Mr....

The first line was aimed at you, tweets, facebook and asking people to vote daily.

The other about proxies are just from what I have been reading about another person who has a bike in with a chance of winning...

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breezergood replied to Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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Gkam84 wrote:

WOW WOW WOW, calm down Mr....

The first line was aimed at you, tweets, facebook and asking people to vote daily.

The other about proxies are just from what I have been reading about another person who has a bike in with a chance of winning...

Yeah my bad. Miss read that completely

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breezergood | 10 years ago
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When and where exactly have i done this??
I'm using nothing more than various forms of social media and very good friends to get votes. At absolutely no point what so ever, have i done what you've just said.
tbh, It sounds nothing more than a propaganda tactic you're using to eliminate the competition.

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