Ballot Stuffing

TreeBay

I am responding here to outline complaints and action taken in response to an allegation of ballot stuffing made against two specific accounts that correspond to the same IP address (computer Internet address)

The problem has been addressed, but the persons responsible have been in communication with other member(s) about this issue. The only way to address this situation is to make the facts clear:

1. 12 Votes were made using two bonsaiTALK accounts from the same IP address
2. Votes were made against the top 6 rated contenders from these two users, and none of the others were ranked
3. Ten of the twelve votes were made consecutively in time so as to appear one above the other in the ranking.
4. the voters "panned" five of the six top entrants (marked in red below)
5. The voters gave the remaining entrant high marks. (marked in green below)
6. The votes were reported to me (understandably) as evidence of ballot stuffing

After compiling the table below, in the interest of keeping the contest fair, all 12 votes made from this IP were removed and a warning was issued not to re-vote under penalty of banning. This is consistent with the interpretation of section 5b of the Rules: Below you can see a chart of the average score of the various trees and the votes from this IP address. The trees and usernames have been made anonymous. However the average rating at that time and the votes from those user accounts are listed below as User A and User B.

TREE #1 bonsaiTALK Average: 8.33
USER A Rating: 5 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:28pm
USER B Rating: 4 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:19pm

TREE #2 bonsaiTALK Average 7.79
User A Rating: 3 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:28pm
User B Rating 5 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:21pm

TREE #3 bonsaiTALK Average: 7.11
USER A Rating: 3 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:28pm
USER B Rating: 6 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:22pm

TREE #4 bonsaiTALK Average: 6.88
USER A Rating: 10 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:27pm
USER B Rating: 8 posted Mon Apr 25, 2005 5:40pm

TREE #5 bonsaiTALK Average: 6.83
USER A Rating: 4 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:29pm
USER B Rating: 3 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:29pm

TREE #6 bonsaiTALK Average 6.81
User A Rating: 4 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:29pm
User B Rating: 3 posted Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:23pm

**I have since been informed by another member that these two individuals are related, which explains to some degree the sharing of the IP. However it does not account for the obvious alignment of the votes.

Please note that ballot box stuffing will not be tolerated, nor will "trolling" for votes.

Regards,

Matt

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Bonsai Barry

Sorry, Matt, that you were forced to deal with this issue. The time you give to this forum should not be relagated to dealing with such thoughtless matters. It's the trees that matter!

Thanks for your efforts,
Barry

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Bonsai Barry

"Our talent lies in our choices."

Jay

It is not good when we have individuals who prefer to damage rather than help.
Thanks Matt for dealing with this in the propper way. And...I do not have a tree in the contest but still am offended by the action of this individual (IP address).

Jay

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dbz12fan

Many thanks to Matt for taking immediate action on this issue. Two votes may not affect the final outcome, however, it is the principle of the issue.

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Charles Bevan
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Vance Wood

I find it hard to believe that anyone would make this kind of effort to influence the outcome of a competition of little real property value. What's the point? However if the point is revenge for some precieved wrong done to them in the past I can understand it and condem it at the same time. At least here there is some rhym and reason to the insanity. Human nature I guess. I am amazed at the way the voting has been going it tells me a lot about how the members of this forum view bonsai in general and there fellow bonsaiist in particular------Boy has that been an eye opener.

BrianBay9

I understand the suspiscion, but I suspect this was most likely an innocent mistake by a couple of newbies. I'm certain it would have done little to influence the outcome. Besides, what was the significance of the outcome of this competition? I can't imagine this was designed to alter the contest.

Brian

TreeBay

Brian, unfortunately you're wrong about the signficance of these votes. Every vote counts, and we are talking about twelve votes. Consider first that in most of these cases the posts were made at a grade roughly half the statistical mean:

Imagine 60 legitimate votes averaging out to 7.00 on one tree, add in two votes averaging 3.5 and you will drop the average by 0.123 points; that's actually more than twice the point spread currently separating 5th from 6th place, which is currently a spread of 0.06 points. That's the difference between being a finalist and an also-ran.

Now if you drop five of the top six and increase the remaining one, you've compounded the difference by at least a factor of two when you compare one of the five that got 'panned' against the one that got 'raved.'

These decisions aren't based on suspicion, but fact.

Regards,

Matt

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BrianBay9

Matt,

I guess I just prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt when possible. But, I clearly don't have all the information to make the decision you were forced to make. I'm not trying to second guess you. I would hope that no one would get so wrapped up in such a trivial thing as an on line styling contest, that they would sacrifice their integrity. This is not life-or-death stuff here. But apparently some get carried away.

Brian

pootsie

Aw, Jeez, not this again!



pootsie

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