How do ratings appear and then disappear in minutes?

I put a perspective shot of a guitar in the forum and within minutes I had some

decent ratings. Many were 6/6 and I alas got a dreaded 3/3 and a 3/6. Then,

within a few more minutes nearly all the ratings, especially the good ones

disappeared and I went from 13 ratings (all anonymous) to 3....I don't

understand how?

Because I have been deleting bogus ratings accounts. It happens about once a month.

How do you find out that some accounts are bogus ratings accounts? Is there a list of such accounts? The same happened also to me more times, also today.

We have a lot of different ways to figure out stuff like this. However, those methods are not something that I will be sharing. As doing that would just encourage the people creating these accounts to try and find ways around it. I already spend too much of my time hunting down ratings issues. It is time I should be using to create better site features and documentation. To say nothing of editorial content.

 

Typically, I delete accounts like this once a month or so. And when I do, I tend to delete 20-30 accounts each time. So many people will see their ratings go up or down depending if the bogus accounts were full of 7/7 type ratings or 3/3 ratings.

Thanks for the 'cleaning out' Josh. The seriousness of these 'rogue ratings' just had to be appreciated after what happened to two of my images today. I put up two images ( at a time when the online members count was 330+) which quickly collected 13 and 14 ratings. Some few mintues later, (presumably after the 'clean up' operation) these same images showed just 3 and 4 ratings respectively. So the destructive false and negative nature of these 'rogue ratings' has to be appreciated.

Thanks once again, Josh. A suggestion for when you delete accounts- make an announcement somewhere that most people will see it. I don't know if you have in the past or if you can do that, but it would be helpful. Either way, thanks for doing what you do!

Once a month is obviously not enough. Twenty one ratings in one night and a day later down to nine on the same image?

 

As any one account can only give three sevens in a day...there must be an awfully huge number of bogus accounts compared to legitimate accounts on this site.

I have done it in the past, and a large majority of people never pay attention. So i didn't bother to do it this time since I have to answer email and posts like this anyway.

Well Josh,

I appreciate your taking valuable time to answer my question. I see I am not alone when it comes to this situation. Most of us do take the site seriously and despise the random 3/3's without explanation. I do also think it is nearly impossible to police. I believe I echo the many many thanks that you and the rest of the Photo.net team deserve for running a quality site. Thanks Again!

Why would you have a bogus account?

What is a bogus account?

don't you have to register?

"<i>Why would you have a bogus account? What is a bogus account? don't you have to register?</i>"<p>1. Why? So you can anonymously dump on people just for the hell of it.<br>3. Bogus=Phony, i.e. phony e-mail accounts under a false name, bogus domains such as those used by Spammers and other lowlife types, etc., etc.<br>3. Just because someone has to register, doesn't mean they have to tell the truth when registering, especially for a free account.

Thanks Josh,

 

Your many efforts are greatly appreciated, even by those of us who do NOT complain about our ratings so much or worry about the odd 3/3 or so.

 

Screwing with OUR rating system is pretty treacherous stuff on a site like this where many do take their ratings seriously, and obviously someone is getting a kick out of it; someone who in 'real life' probably has no real 'worth' and only can rely on destructive urges.

 

Life has always been full of such people, but a more anonymous society has given such people increased influence -- that gained prominence with the advent of the Interstate Highway System (freeways), and its epitome now is the Internet where the 'crooked' can hide in their anonymous cloaks.

 

Guys like you will always have a job, but at least you get to write the code that will automate that job for the future somewhat.

 

Keep up the good work.

 

John (Crosley)