As it seems, there is no sign of life in the second Aniblog Tourney as the organizers try to procure a secure voting system. From the mess caused by ballot stuffing, I have my doubts on whether or not they will ever recover. With that, I like to share my thoughts on why these tactics undermines the whole tournament. (Image Source)
If you seen the drama involving CSW over vote manipulation, it exposes a hole in the voting system. Since the Aniblog Tourney is a WordPress.com hosted blog, their options are very limited when it comes to poll creation. It’s because WordPress.com only supports Polldaddy and nothing else. This is a poor choice since anyone can rig a poll to his or her favor. If you search for “polldaddy hacking” on Google, you will find ways to exploit the system without getting caught. Unfortunately, paid accounts can only see the voters’ IP addresses and therefore, it’s impossible to detect if the person cheated or not. However, this is not the only way to cheat since in some instances, people asked outsiders like friends and coworkers to vote in the polls when they aren’t in the blogosphere. I will explain these two methods separately.
Botting and use of Tor/Proxies – The use of these tools is nothing new as anyone with enough computer skills can program an automated program and set up proxies/Tor to obtain new IPs. As shown in Novajinx’s epic war against Kuriousity which both sides used automated systems cast votes and switch to a different IP address, it shows the true weakness of open polling. Since most polling systems cannot extinguish legit and fake votes from this method, a participant can easily lose the race in the last minute.
Ballot Stuffing – Clearly, the use of Tor and Proxies are not the only way to cheat. There are a few instances in the first and second tournament of participants asking their friends and coworkers to vote for them. Although it might look legit, it’s not because these people are probably not a fan of anime or participate in the fandom and just voting as a favor. Not only that, people can simply vote again on a smartphone or a VPN since they have their own IP address, thus making the vote completely legit.
My Solution
The only way the Aniblog Tournament will ever give a fair chance to everyone is to copy the approach that the Anime Blog Awards or Anime Power Rankings. Essentially, take the voting out of the public hands and have a panel or group of participants review and vote for the blogs while showcasing them in the event. That way, good blogs will receive some kind of recognition while the others receive feedback to improve. Although some might call this “circle jerking”, it’s impossible to completely secure an open voting system since cheaters will constantly find a way around it. To make it worse, the big boys will always benefit in the current format since they have a lot of readership. Even though I admit that the drama is amusing at times, this kind of stuff is not healthy for the blogosphere. At this rate, they may as well scrap the second tournament and redo it on a new host with a completely different approach.
Update: It seems that the Aniblog Tourney finally got a new polling system that addresses the first issue with a help of a fellow programmer. Hopefully, we won’t see instances of using Tor and proxies in the next round. However, the second factor still leaves a lot to be desired.
Agreed, at this point I don’t even see a reason to take the Tourney seriously.
There’s just no way to tell if a blog actually garnered all the support it appeared to have. And even then, from comments posted on the polls, a lof the votes didn’t seem to come down to content, but rather page layouts and designs (which isn’t really the purpose, in my opinion).
I like your idea of having a panel instead of open polling, takes the power away from potential cheaters and puts it in an open setting where objective values decide the winner. (Ideally, of course)
Like I have mentioned before, it’s rather silly to base the vote on design alone, although bad web design can impact the readability of the content. The main issue is of the open voting system as it might encourage behaviors just to win a silly popularity contest rather than readers basing their choice on the content, leading to more drama. It’s probably best to start the whole thing over and send the ballots to the participants (including people who write for a specific blog) themselves and have them decide or go back to doing things the Anime Blog Awards like I mentioned.
But yeah, the ABT lost all credibility at this point, especially when they have to delay the whole thing over ballot stuffing, which should have been fixed a long time ago. Mismanagement at it’s greatest.
When the dates for the matches were announced, I was looking forward to my match that was originally scheduled a few days from now…but alas, now it doesn’t look like I’ll be having a part in this tourney anytime soon, if at all. It is too bad that these online polls are so easy to manipulate. I know my server (Yahoo!) has some kind of poll thing, or a survey tool at least. Not sure if it’s any more secure than Polldaddy. Maybe the “voting by private e-mail” method would be the only way to eliminate manipulation. It would be more work for the people having to sort through the e-mail votes and it would indeed be more “circle jerking” since it would decrease the diversity of voters – but it is a viable method. Hopefully the Tourney site will update soon with some news of what’s going on.
Apparently some people take it too seriously, thus drifting it away from its original intension. To make it worse, there were at least three instances of ballot stuffing and botting in three matches in the second round compared to the first. That is bad in my opinion.
Yeah, email has it’s advantages as it’s harder to manipulate. Also another possibility is to forcing people to register before voting. From there, it’s easier to keep track who voted and if there is any cheating. Still, people can cheat the system by registering multiple accounts under different IPs. Even so, finding an effective solution to the problem is going to be difficult.
I would just rather have registered bloggers vote, and nobody else. I’m only interested in peer review, not a popularity contest that anyone can manipulate.
That would work as well with the same benefits mentioned in the earlier comments. However, it will limit the diversity by a little bit unless other writers who contribute to a Team Anime Blogs or ones that have multiple authors are allowed to participate in the voting as well. Either way, restricting the vote would be good for the event as it will place less importance on popularity and basing the vote more on the general content since bloggers always knows better. Also, outsiders could still check out the blogs that get promoted in a specific day.
But I agree. Blogs would benefit more if they received constructive criticism rather than x beating y. Winning in a popularity contest doesn’t always mean that they are better than the one that got defeated. Also on the positive side, less needless drama from cheating attempts.
Let’s take a look at this analytically. Think about the type of people running the tournament. Minimal effort with seeding, extended period of time has passed since the “break for the new voting system”, lack of a paid domain, and even not considering simple statistical things like randomizing the order in which the two blogs appear in the poll to reduce bias. Do you expect them to put together a panel (a decent panel) to judge blogs? Seems like you’re asking too much. That sounds like an undertaking for an entirely different group of people. People popular enough or with the skills to do that, I wouldn’t expect to be willing to exempt themselves from a competition where they have a clear advantage.
I don’t have much to say about the voting manipulation because there really isn’t much that can be done about that and I have to agree it’s a problem (I still think it’s a pitiful excuse for drama, though, and that any “drama” came from people building it up because they wanted drama). On the bit about having friends and coworkers vote. If you check the rules, I don’t really see anything that restricts who votes, and it says something to the effect of “pick the blog you would rather read.” Whose blog would you rather read? Your friend’s or coworker’s? Or the random guy pitted against him/her? Seems simple to me. Plus, I’d say that this is much better than some of the anime bloggers who don’t take the time to judge the two blogs in a match. Instead, they turn to people who have reviewed the blogs to make their decisions easier because they can feel secure that they have made the “right choice” if someone else agrees. Hardly seems any better.
From my perspective, minimum efforts will mostly result in mediocre or disastrous results. The lack of effort in securing the voting system from four instances of ballot stuffing ruins the integrity of the tournament. It also shows that open voting does not work since anyone can cheat the system. However, I’m surprised that no one is willing to host the tournament site on their own host opposed to WordPress.com. If someone volunteered, they could make a better polling system and allow restrictions on voting like a person has to register and prove that they write for an Anime Blog before they can vote.
Aside from that, the panel is not the only solution to the problem as there are others that will make it less of a Popularity contest and more about content. Bloggers should know best since they know what makes a good blog and don’t vote just on stuff like design.