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A new kind of manipulation on SP

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 Author Topic: A new kind of manipulation on SP
Alpinist


Joined: 29 Jul 2003
Posts: 5153

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 1:56 pm GMT  Quote
 
We're all familiar with voter manipulation in the old days. For the most part, that was resolved with the release of SP2. Well here's a new one for you; hit manipulation. Shocked

Case in point: The Women of SummitPost album was released in March 2007 and was an instant hit, surpassing all other albums (by number of hits) in less than a year. Then suddenly out of nowhere, an album with only 7 images and 1 vote starts generating nearly 1000 hits per day. The Hollywood album will soon have the most number of hits on SP. There's no way that kind of traffic is naturally occurring.

So how and why would anyone artificially inflate the number of hits on a page? With a little research I discovered that there are software applications called "hit generators" that generate bogus hits to any URL in order to inflate the hit count.

Why would someone do that? Hit generators are mostly used to artificially inflate the hit count for business reasons, to get higher rankings in search engines, etc. It seems in this case the owner's intent is to catapult the album to the top of the SP album hit list; as a joke, for bragging rights, whatever. (People do some bizare things.)

At the end of the day, it's not a big deal. But manipulation is manipulation and it shouldn't be condoned. Would we tolerate it if someone were manipultaing hits on SP photos, and by cheating displaced the top ranked photo?
Diego Sahagún


Joined: 07 Oct 2001
Posts: 11877

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:16 pm GMT  Quote
 
If that is true it should be banned Alpinist, for sure
imzadi


Joined: 04 Sep 2008
Posts: 115

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:24 pm GMT  Quote
 
Interestingly, if you click on the owner of this album...his profile is more like an advertisement for his business. There is a video game you can play and the pictures mostly look like 'photography' shots?

He is in art set-up/sales and photography...and his "few words" leads to his home page for his business...

He has been a member since 2005 and last active Sept of this year? Interesting...
squishy


Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 4886

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:26 pm GMT  Quote
 
Diego Sahagún wrote:
If that is true it should be banned Alpinist, for sure


You can't ban what you can't catch, I don't see anyway to catch this unless they are stupid enough to inflate the numbers so much that you notice it. Someone could in fact use this to get some hits and turn it off before it gets noticed. It's kinda sad that people will do such things, but I wouldn't put it past them. You have to remember these still could be legit hits as well, sometimes people send out links to family and friends or a spider just so happens to be looking for certain terms, there's tons of legit reason why this could happen. Point is, ranking based on hits, is not a good idea, just like the pictures that make the POTH without any votes. SP should just count the hits, not make the hits count...
Alpinist


Joined: 29 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:29 pm GMT  Quote
 
squishy wrote:
Diego Sahagún wrote:
If that is true it should be banned Alpinist, for sure


You can't ban what you can't catch, I don't see anyway to catch this unless they are stupid enough to inflate the numbers so much that you notice it. Someone could in fact use this to get some hits and turn it off before it gets noticed. It's kinda sad that people will do such things, but I wouldn't put it past them. You have to remember these still could be legit hits as well, sometimes people send out links to family and friends or a spider just so happens to be looking for certain terms, there's tons of legit reason why this could happen. Point is, ranking based on hits, is not a good idea, just like the pictures that make the POTH without any votes. SP should just count the hits, not make the hits count...

I thought about that as well. It's doubtful that friends and family would generate that much daily traffic. And before I posted this I did some sleuthing and couldn't find a link to the album anywhere in the public domain. I searched on obvious key word phrases like, "Hollywood sign", and "Mt Lee" and didn't come up with anything.
goldenhopper


Joined: 12 Dec 2005
Posts: 2631

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:49 pm GMT  Quote
 
Has anyone called this guy out on it?

Squishy, what's with the new profile pic... where's the stogie to go with that booze?
Deleted User


Joined: 13 Feb 2006
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:09 pm GMT  Quote
 
Wouldn't down-voting it take care of the problem? It is afterall a sh*tty album. Confused
squishy


Joined: 26 Jun 2007
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:13 pm GMT  Quote
 
I did some research on the guy and how this is done, he knows php very well and has the capacity and means to do this. Not everyone has the tools and know how to do this sort of thing, it's not like you can just download an app and click a button. You need to set up proxies and accounts in order to generate hits from lots of different IP's. I'm not saying he did do this, I'm just saying this is the type of person who would be able to do it...

from his site.
Quote:
I created a quiz using php.
Alpinist


Joined: 29 Jul 2003
Posts: 5153

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:40 pm GMT  Quote
 
jfox wrote:
Wouldn't down-voting it take care of the problem? It is afterall a sh*tty album. Confused

It is a crappy album IMO, and we could vote it down. However, I don't believe the Elves delete content any more based on low votes. So it will still be the "most popular" album on SP by hits.
MoapaPk


Joined: 13 May 2005
Posts: 4396

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:22 pm GMT  Quote
 
This looks to me like a devious way to manipulate the global credit markets.

I guess I'm really naive. What difference does it make if this crappy album gets a lot of hits? I was unaware that the album existed, before this thread.
squishy


Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 4886

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:44 pm GMT  Quote
 
MoapaPk wrote:
This looks to me like a devious way to manipulate the global credit markets.

I guess I'm really naive. What difference does it make if this crappy album gets a lot of hits? I was unaware that the album existed, before this thread.


If it's tied with another album, score wise, it will be ranked higher because of the hits. You can also sort by hits and it will always be on top in such a list. I recently discovered a POTH which had no votes and won just because of hits. I believe a ratio of hits to votes could be used, but lots of non members look at ugly pictures or maps for beta and the hits are legit and should be important in that case. The public can't vote on a map, and if they are lazy they will never register. The hits then give a good indication of how useful a picture is, not how pretty it is. Unfortunately there is absolutely no way to stop someone from padding these hits with a hit generator we rely solely on the integrity of the SP members. I just hope you guys are out in the mountains more often than not and don't have time to learn interwebs haxoring...
rhyang


Joined: 28 Apr 2004
Posts: 8212

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:51 pm GMT  Quote
 
Most popular photo album .. who cares, seriously Rolling Eyes
Bob Sihler


Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 3081

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:55 pm GMT  Quote
 
My, this is much ado about nothing.

The default search arrangement for photos is by score. The default arrangement for other pages is, I think, by alphabetical order, though if it's not then it's by score. You have to manually select an arrangement by hits. Who does that? Who cares?

Repeat: Who cares?
vancouver islander


Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 325

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:56 pm GMT  Quote
 
I noticed this a week or so ago and posted a thread on the subject. My combined postings were receiving >50 hits/min for over an hour before suddenly slowing down to normal (1 hit/year Very Happy ).

Could this be the same source? And why? The hits seemed to be on all my various objects and images. Not just one as in this case.
Diego Sahagún


Joined: 07 Oct 2001
Posts: 11877

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:06 pm GMT  Quote
 
rhyang wrote:
Most popular photo album .. who cares, seriously Rolling Eyes


Every honest SPer care in my opinion
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