Troll voter?

[sfhypno]

It looks like someone has gone through and voted '1' on a lot of the site's files in the past couple of days. There are suddenly a lot of files rated as '1' and many files seem to be rated lower than they have been before. Is this just my imagination?

[sarnoga]

Hey sfhypno,

It looks like someone has gone through and voted '1' on a lot of the site's files in the past couple of days. There are suddenly a lot of files rated as '1' and many files seem to be rated lower than they have been before. Is this just my imagination?

No I do not think it is your imagination. I am not sure it is a troll voter either. I noticed the difference in rating on Sunday. I try to keep track of the comments, ratings and number of downloads on my files. Lately I have been doing it about once a week. So I was able to check the numbers for my files against what they were the Sunday before. What I found I considered to be very strange.

I currently have 54 posted files. 1 is a pay file and can only be rated by someone with access to the file. Normally the ratings on my files only change slowly. The previous week I had 4 files that had a change in rating and a total of 7 votes cast among those files. That is not counting brand new files the week they are posted.

The week before I had 8 files change rating with a total of 9 votes cast. Some weeks there are only 3 or 4 votes cast. This last Sunday, compared to the Sunday before, 53 of my 54 files changed ratings. The only one that didn't change it's rating is my 1 pay file that can only be changed by someone with access to it.

That in itself was odd enough. But I have doubts about it being a "Voting Troll." Of my 53 files that changed ratings, 25 are rated lower and 28 are rated higher, that is if I counted correctly. That's not all, there is more. 53 of the files changed ratings but only 17 additional votes had been cast.

That to me is the strangest part. I know someone can change thier vote after it is cast. They can move it down or move it up unless it is already at one end or the other. All in all it seems, if not strange, at least unusual. I can think of several possible explanations.

1. A whole bunch of people were suddenly overcome with a desire to rate files.

2. Someone who has been using these files for some time now and had already rated some of the files with their first impression kept careful notes and finally had the time to go back and vote on all the files they had not and revised thier votes on all the files they had already voted on.

3. Some voting troll came along and randomly voted for files, some up and some down without regard to if they had voted for those files in the past.


4. Something is broken in the ratings system and it just happened by itself.


Anyway, I don't know what caused it, I only know what I see. And no, you are not imagining it.

Regards,

Sarnoga.

[MN_FriendlyGuy]

No, sfhypno. It wasn't your imagination.

Although I don't track file-ratings closely, It seemed odd to me that all my recordings simultaneoulsy took a hit sometime this week.

[zapnosis]

I do track file ratings fairly closely. I've had ups and downs this week and votes changed, this is after several weeks of no changes at all. *Shrug* Curious, but who knows? It's just numbers after all. :D

[sfhypno]

Thanks, everyone, for confirming that I haven't lost my mind. One troll isn't going to ruin anything for us, but it's still annoying! :roll:

[DKaiser]

It's mainly annoying for people who didn't have many votes on their files, thus making their files look bad just from one troll. Wasn't a very thorough one, though, only two of my files got 1'd.

[slutinmyhead]

This makes me feel better. I thought people just hated my new files.