Comments | howardtayler: At Best, Inappropriately Expressed Enthusiasm

howardtayler

At Best, Inappropriately Expressed Enthusiasm

Feb 04, 2010 00:42

I blogged about the final round of the easily-spoofed Washington Post poll, and I made a mistake. I mentioned that it was easily spoofed.

This was not meant as encouragement to spoof, but apparently it was taken as such. For this I am sorry.

You see, when I blogged at 9:15pm local time, Schlock Mercenary had around 120 votes. Three hours later ( Read more... )

Comments 30

goodluckfox February 4 2010, 08:22:17 UTC

Sometimes it *is* better to Lose With Honor.

ccdesan February 4 2010, 08:45:04 UTC

Well said.

It is always better to lose with honor than to win without it.

( ... )

wizarth February 4 2010, 09:05:05 UTC

Unless it involves getting paid twice for the same job. Then Tagon does a happy dance.

unixronin February 4 2010, 12:50:32 UTC

That.

Thread 5

becky_black February 4 2010, 11:02:54 UTC

Oh dear. Some people need to learn that just because something CAN be done doesn't mean it should be done.

herveus February 4 2010, 12:17:08 UTC

As of a few minutes ago, it was clear that the message had not been received. Schlock had 88% of a million votes.

jenil February 4 2010, 12:38:32 UTC

It almost makes me feel guilty for legitimately voting (just the once).

I say almost because I know there's no rational reason for feeling guilty, but I can't help but get that sick-stomach-twingey feeling.

amunthri February 4 2010, 15:15:42 UTC

Well, yes and no. The reason you feel guilty or twingey, is because now, Like Howard and anyone else who voted legitimately, you're associated with the hacker-bot people.

The flip side is, the hacker-bots were already FIRMLY going. I don't for a moment believe that Perry Bible Fellowship- an admittedly amusing comic when it was running many YEARS ago- had such a devoted following so far in excess of all the currently operating comics.

Stark comfort, but the poll itself is firmly hacked to bits, and so at least we're not the ONLY ones tarred with that brush.

amunthri February 4 2010, 15:22:13 UTC

gah. If I could edit...

I want to mention that the earlier hackery took place in the previous round. It does look particularly bad for us to be the only ones being hacked in this round so far.

Thread 5

seawasp February 4 2010, 12:39:42 UTC

Oh ballocks. That sucks. I would've liked to have seen the poll go on and let Schlock have a decent showing, even if one of the more well-known comics won out.

Now the poll is screwed and the name "Schlock Mercenary" will be associated in at least some people's minds with "hacker scum".

unixronin February 4 2010, 12:52:28 UTC

The poll was screwed from the start. I visited it a couple of times and it rapidly became clear that thanks to the WaPo's ineptitude in setting it up, it wasn't a poll, it was a contest of who had the best ballot-stuffing robot.

sff_corgi February 4 2010, 13:18:40 UTC

The regular column-commenters got all fussed when the Girl Genius fans hit (legitimately) their first one and ran the numbers up. After that, the hacker-gloves apparently came off. :(

lionsphil February 4 2010, 14:59:18 UTC

That's no bad thing-if everyone goes ballot-stuffing crazy, it's the poll that loses credibility, not the party that comes out on top.

unixronin February 4 2010, 12:50:05 UTC

That's kind of interesting, because when I last looked, a couple of days ago (Sunday I think), Schlock had something like 9,800 and was creeping slowly towards 10,000. This seems to imply that different people are seeing WILDLY different vote counts.

(Of course, as of Sunday night, 9,800 votes was about enough to make a narrow vertical red line at the left margin, compared to the two or three hundred thousand votes Penny Arcade and its only serious ballot-stuffing competitor had at the time...)

(UPDATE: I see I didn't realize they'd since added a new round.)