Coppermine Logo Competition 2006 / 2007

[LVV]

Yes, I had the impression as well that the voting count for LVV's contribution have risen in a strange manner. It's a pity that this competition is being spoiled by cheaters. It's a waste of resources, as there are fine contributions that deserve better. It's sad that I have to spend so much time to track votings and moderate this thread.
I'm a user of this board as well, so I'm allowed to voice my opinion. This is of course a matter of taste, but I'm allowed to say what I said there. You're welcome to reply to my comment on that pic. But don't drag this discussion into this announcement thread. Nobody wants a flame war here.
God knows. The database that keeps track of the votings knows as well. I'll review the cheaters when I have the time.
If the ratings don't improve as more "normal" users (oppossed to cheaters) vote, I'll trash all the previous votings and will do as you suggested.
Can't see why you should get negative karma for your posting. However, this thread is already very confrontational. Please don't add a meta discussion about karma to this thread.

:'(
I in general in a shock from your competition, from its{his} organization and votings, am the most stupid{blunt} competition when or I saw. I am certainly upset, I tried have made 8 works, have sent you, before voting all was pleasant to you, and when my pair trade marks has started to advance yours, you at once have started to make comments, humiliating with it{this} me and my works.... Why you do not make comments on other works? Why you did not make comments earlier??? It refers to - meanness{low act}! Votings were not fair right at the beginning of voting as it was visible because I have no friends at a forum and in general I not from your state.....

Excuse for bad English language

[redhair]

oh shit... we got a riot.
Peace everybody! r e s p e c t!
It's a competition for a freakin logo, not ego.

[Tweak]

well now you can easily see he won't take the competition seriously and think this is all a joke.  Keep getting those mysterious 5 stars, in the end we all know whats going on here  :-\

[Joachim Müller]

As suggested I reviewed the vote stats and tracked the IPs and users behind it. It appears that we have a severe case of "split personality": there are 6 users (Juve, killer, Vital, Men_88, GOD, Vitya, Jordan_78, Fobos) who share the same IP address as LVV (212.86.98.22). All of them have registered in december 2006 (anybody can see a correlation to the start of the voting stage?). All of those users have given a 5-star rating for contributions made by LVV. All of them have rated "competitors" with 0-stars.
According to the ripe database, the IP address belongs to "Alexander L. Kirichenko; Joint Stock Company "CINET"; 43, Komsomolska Str.; Chernihiv 14000; Ukraine". It would be a really great coincidence if that company would assign a dynamic IP address to several customers who all subsequently register on the coppermine forum and submit nearly identical votes. All of the alter egos used email addresses of russian freemail providers.
The alter egos of LVV have posted on the board as well (only in Russian though, so I can't understand what the postings mean) and have posted comments on pics contributed by LVV (applauding him of course).

We have a clear case of rating fraud, Mr. LVV has obviously cheated to improve his ratings. Therefor, I have stopped the rating stage of the competition, banned LVV and all of his "alter egos" and removed his "contributions". I have reset the votes to "zero" for all contributions and changed the cookie name to allow people who have already voted to vote once more.

I have changed the permissions for the voting as Thu suggested: only members of privileged groups (contributors, translators, VIPs, supporters and devs) are allowed to vote. Additionally, frequent posters are allowed to vote. The voting stage starts from scratch - please (re-)vote.
If this second stage should turn into a flame war again, we'll close the competition without an actual winner.

It's very sad that a moron like LVV can spoil the entire competition and turn the whole idea of a community effort and subsequently the whole open source concept (where everybody is welcome to contribute) into such a chaos.
I should have considered the rating fraud issue in the first place and should have disabled rating for newly-registered members in the first place. Sorry for not considering this in the first place.

Please accept my apologies for this complicated issue. Let's try starting the competition from scratch and forget about the idiotic cheater.

Joachim

[Tweak]

Well it was very much needed at this point.  Now everyone that re-votes, lets see some votes that are honest and give some more comments if you feel like it!

I'll go through and re-vote every logo.

[Abbas Ali]

Tried to vote. It gives me "Sorry but you have already rated this file" error. Even tried deleting the cookies.

And yes the reset was definitely needed.

[Tweak]

Yeah same here.  I can't revote.  Should just reset all the votes to 0, and we can start over

[Gizmo]

May I also suggest that the original CPG logo be included?

[h4nh4n]

same problem here I can't revote.





OOT:You are the man gaugau! Don't forget to teach the technique (check the database) how you find who's cheated in the competition. (i might need it in the future)

[Abbas Ali]

If a registered user votes then it is logged in cpg_votes table. So even if cookie is renamed it won't affect anything and user will still be unable to vote. Currently while resetting the votes the system only resets rating and hits field of cpg_pictures table to 0. So imo when resetting the votes, we should also delete that pics records from cpg_votes table. Perhaps a bug imo.

For time being, Joachim you will have to delete all the records of logos from cpg_votes table. I think this will be time consuming for you. So please let me know and i will build the query and give it to you so that you can directly run it.

[Abbas Ali]

Attached is the script which will do the needful i.e. delete all logo records from cpg_votes table. Please go through it once before running it.

[Joachim Müller]

@Abbas Ali: Thanks for the script, it actually saved a lot of time and worked as expected. Great work! I agree that a routine like this should be added to the devel branch of the svn for the reset section at the bottom of modifyalb.php. The table vote_stats need to be partly cleaned as well.

@All: please try voting now. Sorry for the delay, I should have checked more thoroughly this morning when I re-enabled rating.

[François Keller]

Ok, voting work's now for me 

[Tweak]

Yeah works now, and I went through all the logos and re-voted, and maybe a few new comments here and there.

My logo has some good votes, and personally I'd give it 4 stars.  Because I think it lacks having the symbol that GauGau really wants so badly   Yes there is a camera lense/shutter in the mix of the text, but I might have a shot at making a seperate symbol so you could be recognizable.  And still, my logo needs a bit of cleaning up on the font and elsewhere.

[Joachim Müller]

Well, that's just a matter of taste, don't get me wrong. As you can see, some of the devs have a different opinion on this. I'll gladly accept a logo even if it doesn't fullfill "my" standards as long as the majority (without cheaters) would like to see it.

[Abbas Ali]

Voted all the logos once again. I am not a designer and don't know how the logo should look like, whether it should be a symbol or text or mix of both etc.. I voted on my instinct. Only one got a 5 star and one a 0 star.

[Pascal YAP]

I voted on my instinct. Only one got a 5 star and one a 0 star.

Give a ZERO is not correct at all, only because time use to produce something ten minutes before the end 

I'm unhappy Abbas .... 

Please, in the next contest please put a global post-it. Maybe the really general poor quality is the consequence of that !
Exemple, we are only two from French Board, Frantz and Myself.

I'd just definitively delete all my bad stuffs on this contest.

PYAP

[Abbas Ali]

@PYAP: I didn't gave 0 to your entry. Maybe some misunderstanding. The one which got a 0 from me was really awful.

[Pascal YAP]

Abbas,

Sorry, maybe a real misunderstood.

Anyway, if i have some ZERO i delete my non-logo works.
i was'nt inside this contest with my own 3D concept 
Visible yet in my gallery.

PYAP

[redhair]

i was'nt inside this contest with my own 3D concept 
Visible yet in my gallery.

PYAP

I gladly would have given it a zero