9 ms·

You set off the voting ring detector.

by pg 14y ago

dazbradbury 14y ago
Thanks for responding, and I don't mean to waste your time, but that seems like a bug. We have a single ip, that 4 people can use, and none of them knew of the hn post until after the post was demoted. In fact, I don't think any of them have a hn account! On top of this, I didn't share the link with anyone, and the votes appeared to be totally organic. Our target market is not the hn crowd, and this subsequent post was merely out of curiosity, so I have very little to gain by lying. Edit: if you or your team wanted any more information for debugging purposes I would be happy to oblige, just let me know if I can help, though I understand if this is fairly low priority!
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  It maybe set off the vote ring detector because your costumers seem to be located all around London. So it may be possible that some of them shared the submission with other London users or that because they know your company they up-vote it; making it look like it was ringed but it was just selection bias. Anyway this is a tricky problem; because at the end of the day intent is a fundamental part of vote rings and that can be really hard to see by algorithms alone.
flipside 14y ago
Can you share anything about how you define a voting ring?
- zitterbewegung 14y ago
  Probably doing so might tip off the people who try to game HN so I don't think its a good idea to share that kind of information.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
anotherbadlogin 14y ago
Maybe it's the "You're posting too fast. Please slow down." bullshit. Yeah, HN, one posting every day or two is "too fast." Up yours.
shanelja 14y ago
There was really no need to respond so pointedly or awkwardly, the parent posted a genuine question and it really begged a slightly more polite response. I understand that you are an extremely busy man and I don't mean to bag on the owner of the site, but at the risk of getting hell-banned or massively down voted your response came across as being unhelpful and rude, if it had been someone else making the comment they would likely have been down voted for it, or at the very least treat with indignation and ignored. Perhaps you didn't meant to come across this way and perhaps I'm in completely the wrong mindset about it, but such a short answer does nearly nothing to help the parent, you simply stated they had set off a trigger and gave no details as to why, what they could do in the future to prevent this or any kind of statistics or advice to aid them.
- dfc 14y ago
  If pg gave "details as to why, what they could do in the future to prevent this or any kind of statistics or advice" he would be giving advice on how to get around the voting ring detection. I imagine he probably does not want to help people evade the process he worked to put in place to cut down on spammy/fraudulent submissions.
  - shanelja 14y ago
    In this case it points to a flaw in the system itself - if having any details of it at all allows you to game it, it only takes one lucky person to stumble across some aspect of it accidentally and we will have multiple unknown exploiters using it. In the case it was absolutely, imperatively impossible to give no details whatsoever, then stating this would probably have been helpful.
- spitx 14y ago
  "but at the risk of getting hell-banned or massively down voted your response came across as being unhelpful and rude, if it had been someone else making the comment they would likely have been down voted for it, or at the very least treat with indignation and ignored" What? When did it come to this? Has HN become a Reddit-style circle-jerk, increasingly elbowing out all dissenting opinions even when they are sensibly argued and corroborated with plentiful facts? When did karma war chests become purses for silencing or pariah-izing, differing or even polarizing thoughts? I have always thought you had to reason your way to the proverbial top of the heap of consensus-seeking opinions. Not carpet-bomb your way to it. Legitimate big wig or a green horn. Same credo. In fact "thought leaders" should invite criticism and discourage herdism. This is a disquieting trend. If you can't rationally present your case or think a curt one-liner will do since your tech peerage will add some pedigree to an otherwise lousy and hollow argument, you should go elsewhere. This should be a default understanding among all civil discussion online. Unfortunately we live in a hyper-partisan era where discord is detrimental. A prevailing view that directly contrasts yours is a dent in your sense of self-worth. HN should strive to be exemplary in this regard.
OzzyOsbourne 14y ago
I don't understand this concept? Anybody care to clarify? edit: specifically, What constitutes a voting ring? Why would HN want to find and prune them?
- martincmartin 14y ago
  You try to unfairly increase the upvotes on your submission, by getting people who don't read HN to register and upvote your submission. Or, you create a bunch of HN accounts, and log into each one and upvote your submission. Getting on the front page of HN can drive a lot of traffic to a site, which can turn into money, so there's a financial incentive to game the system.

You set off the voting ring detector.

by pg 14y ago

You set off the voting ring detector.

Thanks for responding, and I don't mean to waste your time, but that seems like a bug. We have a single ip, that 4 people can use, and none of them knew of the hn post until after the post was demoted. In fact, I don't think any of them have a hn account! On top of this, I didn't share the link with anyone, and the votes appeared to be totally organic. Our target market is not the hn crowd, and this subsequent post was merely out of curiosity, so I have very little to gain by lying. Edit: if you or your team wanted any more information for debugging purposes I would be happy to oblige, just let me know if I can help, though I understand if this is fairly low priority!

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
It maybe set off the vote ring detector because your costumers seem to be located all around London. So it may be possible that some of them shared the submission with other London users or that because they know your company they up-vote it; making it look like it was ringed but it was just selection bias. Anyway this is a tricky problem; because at the end of the day intent is a fundamental part of vote rings and that can be really hard to see by algorithms alone.

flipside 14y ago

Can you share anything about how you define a voting ring?

zitterbewegung 14y ago
Probably doing so might tip off the people who try to game HN so I don't think its a good idea to share that kind of information.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

anotherbadlogin 14y ago

Maybe it's the "You're posting too fast. Please slow down." bullshit. Yeah, HN, one posting every day or two is "too fast." Up yours.

shanelja 14y ago

There was really no need to respond so pointedly or awkwardly, the parent posted a genuine question and it really begged a slightly more polite response. I understand that you are an extremely busy man and I don't mean to bag on the owner of the site, but at the risk of getting hell-banned or massively down voted your response came across as being unhelpful and rude, if it had been someone else making the comment they would likely have been down voted for it, or at the very least treat with indignation and ignored. Perhaps you didn't meant to come across this way and perhaps I'm in completely the wrong mindset about it, but such a short answer does nearly nothing to help the parent, you simply stated they had set off a trigger and gave no details as to why, what they could do in the future to prevent this or any kind of statistics or advice to aid them.

dfc 14y ago
If pg gave "details as to why, what they could do in the future to prevent this or any kind of statistics or advice" he would be giving advice on how to get around the voting ring detection. I imagine he probably does not want to help people evade the process he worked to put in place to cut down on spammy/fraudulent submissions.
- shanelja 14y ago
  In this case it points to a flaw in the system itself - if having any details of it at all allows you to game it, it only takes one lucky person to stumble across some aspect of it accidentally and we will have multiple unknown exploiters using it. In the case it was absolutely, imperatively impossible to give no details whatsoever, then stating this would probably have been helpful.
spitx 14y ago
"but at the risk of getting hell-banned or massively down voted your response came across as being unhelpful and rude, if it had been someone else making the comment they would likely have been down voted for it, or at the very least treat with indignation and ignored" What? When did it come to this? Has HN become a Reddit-style circle-jerk, increasingly elbowing out all dissenting opinions even when they are sensibly argued and corroborated with plentiful facts? When did karma war chests become purses for silencing or pariah-izing, differing or even polarizing thoughts? I have always thought you had to reason your way to the proverbial top of the heap of consensus-seeking opinions. Not carpet-bomb your way to it. Legitimate big wig or a green horn. Same credo. In fact "thought leaders" should invite criticism and discourage herdism. This is a disquieting trend. If you can't rationally present your case or think a curt one-liner will do since your tech peerage will add some pedigree to an otherwise lousy and hollow argument, you should go elsewhere. This should be a default understanding among all civil discussion online. Unfortunately we live in a hyper-partisan era where discord is detrimental. A prevailing view that directly contrasts yours is a dent in your sense of self-worth. HN should strive to be exemplary in this regard.

OzzyOsbourne 14y ago

I don't understand this concept? Anybody care to clarify? edit: specifically, What constitutes a voting ring? Why would HN want to find and prune them?

martincmartin 14y ago
You try to unfairly increase the upvotes on your submission, by getting people who don't read HN to register and upvote your submission. Or, you create a bunch of HN accounts, and log into each one and upvote your submission. Getting on the front page of HN can drive a lot of traffic to a site, which can turn into money, so there's a financial incentive to game the system.