Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

I don't think anyone really thinks you guys are cheating. IRE has enough players between all of its games to justify the votes that it gets.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Actually, the current rules reward that type of cheating. You are allowed to give your game a mud-wide reward based on a result (being #1, being in the top 10, whatever). You are not allowed to give people a specific reward if *THEY* vote (I believe IRE used to have their vote button setup so they knew which IP numbers hit the vote button on their web site, and would reward players in game accordingly).

Rewarding game wide encourages people to do whatever they can to get the mud's total ranking up.

Rewarding people individual only encourages that ONE person to vote one time.

I am not arguing for a change in the rules, but I think if anything, the current system rewards cheating more than the old, no-rules system.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

You cannot offer mud wide rewards.



Or have those rules changed?

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Those are all player specific rewards.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

That looks like he is saying absolutely no global events. Am I misinterpreting it?

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Disregarding the crappy data collection, there is also problem with analysis. Muds that were popular in the day don't necessarily lose their voting advantage when they lose players. I haven't played Carrion Fields in years, but I still vote for it as being the best mud. How many players a mud currently has isn't nearly as important as cumulatively how many players it has had in the past.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

You are correct, nothing like "We will run double experience this weekend if we are in the top 5" etc.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

The site has a subscription to Xroxy.com and receives a nightly feed of new open proxies.

Well, I just discovered that the format of the feed changed and the script that flags a high percentage of votes for a particular MUD from proxies hasn't been working. This could get interesting...

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Lasher, since you are involved in the thread, what is the status on busting some of these 15-20 people muds that are clearly cheating to be in the top 5 or top 10?

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Hmm, you changed the post, what I came to reply to was:

Late 2003 was the first time I found TMS and I don't recall mud-wide rewards ever being allowed. Maybe they were some time before that.

As for those other MUDs that may be cheating, I had thought proxies were already taken care of. Perhaps something will show up there, but I've googled many random IPs from certain MUDs (and one in particular) and found nothing. Referrals looks normal (not all from a pay-per-post site etc). There's other things to look for, but going into detail is like publishing a guide to working around them.

Thinking someone might be cheating and proving it are two different things. If you and I were in a bar having this conversation completely off the record I'd have probably used some stronger terms, obviously I have to tread carefully here.

So the status is that to you they're "clearly cheating", to me their voting activity compared to numbers online looks worth a more detailed look and certainly is suspicious, but I can't just remove them based on that.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Wouldn't expect you to, honestly. Every game administrator has run into a situation where something looks fishy but simply can't be proven. Hard evidence is really the only thing you can use without possibly creating some really bad press and hard feelings.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

To be honest, I dont think the top mud sites top 20 is a true indication of anything other that 'Top 20 Most loyal, ferverant players clicking to support their mud'

I think it is refreshing to get reminded of some of the other muds out there, and overall the top muds are still all in the list. Accusing people of lying is a bit underhand.. it does not take many fingers to work out that most votes could be accurate.. its a not all about players.. could be admin, builders who dont play, could be casual players who play infrequently who vote from work.

I also occasionally vote for a game, even though I no longer play it.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

It's good that it's being looked into, in my opinion, because if games are cheating to hold a Top Ten or Twenty spot ... they're taking up space from new games and other games that are struggling to get seen, but aren't stooping to illicit tactics.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

You know...I can think up at least four ways right off hand on how to vote...It's not that hard to think up ways to get around rules. That is one reason why I liked the fact that TMC went to a user account based vote system.


As it is, in my opinion if you have to cheat the system to get the votes that your own players aren't giving you...Or even knowing that your players are voting in a manner such as this...Why are you a part of the Administration of your Mu*??


Part of being a member of the Admin Team should be the ability, and the courage, to not only follow the rules of your own game, but to also follow the rules of the sites upon which you list your game. If you are clearly incapable of following such simple rules, then why become Staff?


Being a Staff member is a privilege and an honor, and should be viewed as such.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

I completely agree with the above poster. In one mud I played, numerous people would actually admit to voting at home, school, etc. (on their chat channel) on a daily basis just to push up the mud rankings. The admins wouldn't even scold such behavior. Of course, they wouldn't condone it either. They'd post little vote reminders on the channel and within seconds, players would state that they'd be voting in different areas, so the admins knew what they were doing.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Becoming admin on a MUD doesn't grant you supernatural powers. You're limited very much in what you can actually do when people are not directly going through the MUD itself. You can lay down rules, you can even lay on a smackdown, but in the end, having rules that you can't enforce makes you look incompetent. And that's okay, because if you are laying down rules where you can't even detect *who* is infringing them, then you *are* incompetent. It all works out.

All you can do is try to encourage an atmosphere where voting is considered important, but breaking the rules is considered, as part of the MUD ethos if you like, unacceptable. In the end though, you are relying on people to police themselves. I think we've cultivated the right atmosphere on Discworld, for what it's worth, but it comes from social pressures between players rather than an edict handed down From Upon High.

Drakkos.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

I can't speak for other MUDs, although I would assume it is the same, but at WOTMUD we have a huge base of ex and mostly inactive players who haunt the forums. In the heyday of the mud average player count was at or near 200. When you consider how many people it takes logging in for a hour here or an hour there the number of individual players was significantly higher.

Most of us have moved on with families, school, work, etc and cannot spend the time to login and play much. Dental school keeps me personally from playing for more than a few hours a month. But I check the forums everyday, just like I check patriots.com everyday even though I don't have the time to go to the games everyweekend. Every once and awhile a player will get a burr up their but to start a vote thread. Occasionally it is an admin, but usually a player that makes a drive to vote, and all those oldies who aren't contributing to the 52 some odd players online will get on and click a link to vote. That is what got me to log on and I happened to see this thread about cheating and that WOTMUD was implicated. I cannot think there is any cheating going on, and if it is its just some high schooler who hits up all the computers in the library without any permission or understanding that there are all these rules about voting, not a contrivance of the administrators or some accomplished programmer writing scripts to cheat. I had no idea till I read this thread that that was even not allowed. I figured if your going to go to the trouble of going to the library, a wifi spot, your home, work etc and vote on each one, that's a lot of effort on your part and obviously you love the game. *shrug*

Also, WOTMUD has a link from their main page to click and vote, but their forums have been down and moved over to freeforums.com temporarily so for a long time people have not even been going to the main site because the forums weren't there. Tthis week they began moving back to the old forums on their main page, so more traffic is going to see the link to vote now.

Anyway, I am sure that when the admin of this site looks into it the votes will be legit, but it is categorically unfair to accuse a site of cheating just because they have low play numbers. Additionally, we probably had more than 50 some odd playing when you checked anyway - there are three races and each one has a separate who list. Only admins can see the whole who list, so there were probably more like 70-80 playing when you checked.

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

"If you have access to additional computers or IPs or whatever, that is great, but the most important thing is to simply mobilize the people we have and get them voting every day.

If we are able to maintain position in the top 5 on all sites, we will do fun things like a few hours of double xp, half price food, special events, etc. to reward everyone."



"Voting in October 2009 - Lets Get Serious!"

"If we can get in the top 5, there will definitely be some double xp Nights and/or days. We will definitely reward you all for the effort!"

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

At a very quick glance, that would definitely appear to be in violation of the voting rules, atleast from my perspective...

Re: Lets Talk about Voting - Shall we?
 

Haha. Kavir just owned Threshold. How delightfully satisfying.

I'm guessing Aristotle is Threshold?