Marantz competition likely to draw a lot of fake entries

[admin_exported]

I posted this into the Marantz contest thread but i'd like others to give their view. Since I wrote it another seven or eight totally new profiles have posted the competition answer. Are they even remotely genuine users of the site or just multiple profiles of the same person with a giant stack of free webmail e-mail addresses?

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"Doesn't it strike anyone as odd, that almost all the posts to this competition thread are from people with only 1 posting to their name? Just how many usernames are some people registering, just to be able to vote again and again and increase their chances of winning?

If there are 1500 odd people regularly posting to these forums I'm a monkey's uncle. How you solve the problem is a completely different matter. I have no idea. Just seems rather dodge!"

 

[Andrew Everard]

I know the competition has been picked up by some of the websites which specialise in publicising competitions, so many of those people could just be coming from there. I guess it's no different from any competition, where people tend to send in postcards with the names and addresses of all their family members. It just happens, but if lots of entries are coming from the same IP address we should be able to spot them.

So not dodgy at all, i reckon - just human nature when something is up for grabs for free.

 

[Anonymous]

I totally agree. Just a shame. But ce la vie!

 

[Anonymous]

I am one of the people who signed up to the forum enter the competition - surely one of the reasons behind using a forum thread (rather than email or whatever) is to drive sign-ups? although incidently I know most of these things have simplistic answers, but having 140 responses in the thread before you give your answer does make it a bit of a sure thing!

 

[Anonymous]

Yup, I'm sure it's driven sign-ups. I'm not at all unhappy about that. After all, as you rightly point out, that was the idea of the competition.

The thing I don't like is that the same person may enter as many times as they like by using multiple e-mail addresses and creating stacks of usernames from them. This is cheating. Very different from simply appealing to new users.

But as Andrew pointed out, it is possible to match IP address to usernames, if the same IP is being used for multiple identities and entries, they can be counted as one. Competition magazines take advantage of the weaknesses in the entry systems and do not help the organisers to achieve their aims, they just deprive genuine users of the chance to win something.

That's just my view.

 

[Anonymous]

The IP mapping wouldn't work as well as some people might think.

Some ISP's give you a different IP address each time you connect, so to get around IP mapping you simply disconnect from the net then reconnect.

Also some of us travel a lot for work so all we would need to do is go into an internet cafe inthe town we are in and then enter from there.

Before anyone asks I haven't done this, just saying that it can be done. For the record I have entered once using this account, and I think a 1 in 2000 chance is better than a 1 in nothing chance.

 

[Anonymous]

Perhaps a better way would be to filter for people who've made at least 5 posts. That would get rid of the total freeloaders just logging on to win.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Only 5? Why not 50? Or maybe only members who have made over 1000 posts?

 

[Anonymous]

You can't run a competition and say before you can enter you have to have a limited amount of posts... that wouldn't really be a fair competition for the site to run. Especially in the current climate of competitions being fixed.

The competition has been run IMHO the only way it can be open to all. If you win you win, if you don't well you haven't exactly lost anything apart from maybe the 1 minute it took you to enter.

No matter what you do people will always try to find a way to 'cheat' the system. That is thier choice they have to sleep at night with it.

 

[Anonymous]

Anything other than letting them all through would be illegal. It's wishful thinking! And, no Andrew it's not a hurdle or a daft sort of "if they do this then we'll do this" or " they carry a knife, we carry a gun" kind of thing. I just think it would be great to boot the competition mag readers back into touch, that's all.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Points taken, but if we had a minimum posting limit then the forums would just clog up with nonsense posts as people tried to hit their quota. And as already mentioned, there's no cost involved for entrants...

 

[Anonymous]

Ok I shall stop whinging! 🙂

Andrew I'm not being practical. It wouldn't work to put in ANY hurdle at all. I know that.

And it's all a bit of fun, I know.

Right. I'll shut up now!

Sorry to be a pain!

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Will Harris"]

The thing I don't like is that the same person may enter as many times as they like by using multiple e-mail addresses and creating stacks of usernames from them. This is cheating.

[/quote]

The winner entered twice using the same user name, never mind creating new accounts with different email addresses. He/She just used the same username. But oh well, there were no rules about that I don't think. Maybe I should post multiple answers for the current competition!!!