Testing 1 2 3

What's going on with the mod account nominating poems that have been deleted?

As far as I'm aware there is no problem nominating poems from the categories you have chosen...Nature, Special Event and Life. I know there's a problem with the Love and Friendship categories so...what's the deal?

I think you must be referencing our new strategy to eliminate the public votes.

Yup! We're trying to eliminate glitches without Janis' help. :P

Well...as no mod has replied to my last pm...I'm bringing this back to the main boards...

[ post answer ]

I think you must be referencing our new strategy to eliminate the public votes.

^^^ Public votes? What does that mean exactly???

author: Britt
status: moderator
date: 2015.07.22 14:10

[ post answer ]

Yup! We're trying to eliminate glitches without Janis' help. :P

What sort of glitches? As far as I'm aware, the categories that the mods have nominated have no glitches that I'm kow of? Only the love and friendship categories seem to be a problem right now for nominations?

It has nothing to do with the categories. We've discovered how phantom votes are happening on the contest and trying to figure out a solution so it won't affect the contest.

Phantom votes? What does that mean? Votes are being added that are not from the current judges...is that what you mean?

Miscellaneous votes cast on nominated poems (by copying the nominations page and viewing it after logging out, then casting points on poems anonymously). We've definitely brought this issue up in the main forums before, it's not private :) We don't want to draw attention to the site glitch if we can help it though (since Janis isn't around to solve it). We're trying to figure out ways to remedy PnQ problems with the limited power we have as mods... In this case, we thought we could "dump" the "public vote(s)" on fake poems that we would then delete, but the issue is that poems that have been voted upon remain active even after they've been deleted.

So it's just a bunch of stupid little crap we were trying to solve behind the scenes. Nothing fishy, don't worry.

I'll revise this post tomorrow. It's Friday and I've had too much Chardonnay!

I actually brought this to the attention of the mods...perhaps two years ago. Why now, after all this time decide to act on it?

Edit

I don't recall ever seeing anything regarding this on the main boards.

Yes, you did! We have been acting on it by casting the "public votes" on poems that are supposed to win based on the votes from judges, but this strategy isn't totally fail proof, which is why we thought we could cast the votes on fake poems that we would subsequently delete rather than waiting to see what poems are supposed to win based on judges' votes. Didn't work though since voting on poems that we subsequently delete does not actually delete them.

Make sense?

EDIT: I am almost certain this has been brought up on the main forums at least once, maybe multiple times. Not recently though.

No...it doesn't make sense to me at all...sorry??? Poems that are nominated and then deleted...even poems that go on to win, show up as a deleted poem...only the title remains.

Ok, let me discuss with the other mods and we'll get back to you on this tomorrow. I feel like I'm not even totally sure why the new idea to dump public votes isn't working, but I think some of the other mods have a better idea and would be able to explain better. Sorry, Hellon! As always, I appreciate your concern for transparency and want to be as transparent as possible with all of PnQ.

No worries...

Hi Ladies,

I want to tell a little story, it happened 5-6 years ago...
I recognized a frankly plagiarized poem on the nomination board, straightforwardly I reported that. within one day the poem was modified, few words omitted, others were added... But it was not deleted and no surprise it won the weekly contest, that was a very clear reason for me to leave this site.

Why do I tell this now?
Because I'm very glad that despite all the challenges facing this community, it reached a good level of transparency. We can criticize, make questions and highlight glitches, discuss any issue privately or publicly, that creates a kind of mutual trust, I guess.

~Kudos

That's terrible that it won. Someone nominated a poem back before I became a mod. In her comment to the poem she explained she'd nominated it because no one did anything when she reported it as plagiarism. In that case the action did not take long and the poem was deleted. I do not remember if the nomination disappeared but no one voted for it.

Hellon, when you reported the "public vote" to us it broke the mystery as to why poems were getting to the front page without enough votes by the judges. Before that Rania (Ms Sunshine) & then Chelsey took hell from a lot of people as they tried to host the weekly. Your discovery (which has since been reported to us by many more people including Narph & Luce) prompted the mods to take over the posting of the weekly ourselves. We discussed it on the forum at the time & a few times since then, but never described how the votes were cast, not wanting to encourage more tampering.

Jane exactly described how we've been dealing with the problem: adding votes so the judges' choices won. It gets even trickier when you not only have to add votes, but assure that the poems receiving tie votes from the judges are both ahead of the false votes and still tied.

Regardless of the seeming silence about the subject, again, so as not to encourage more public voting, we have continued to discuss the issue and to seek solutions. This test poem idea was a brilliant one Britt came up with. Unfortunately it did not work. Here's what happened. We made three "poems" from the mod account, then dumped the public votes on them, then deleted the poems from the mod account. The poems disappeared from the mod account, but not from the nominations page. Scratch that idea!

It used to only be senior members who could access the nominations page...I know that changed a while ago and now anyone can view it. Just wondered if these phantom votes started after this and if so, would restricting access once again cut down on the problem?

This is also one of the reasons why I've always been against members being allowed to have multiple accounts.

No Mark....don't ask me how it worked and, I'm not going to put it out here but...I had left the site when I discovered this by accident. I actually rejoined to let the mods know about this gliche...I could have voted as a non-member of p&q...

I'm really not sure about your other questions or statements...not computer savvy really, just stumbled upon this..

I definitely think you should be logged in before you can view the nominations page and...although it should not be a restricted area just for judges I do think we should consider going back to senior members only having access. I know this may seem like a step backwards for some but it could also be seen as an encouragement for members to gain SM status.

My other concern and, I think it may be related, is members who have accounts with no poems...no profile...absolutely no contribution to this site signing in and doing WHAT exactly? When I brought this up before I was told.."maybe they just like reading poetry" well...you don't have to join this site to access all the poems (except explicit) so...why are they here? Mods...perhaps you should suss these members out and ask them the question?

I'm staying clear of this one, lol. Larry will understand!

Hellon, those members have no affect on the contest because as you said you can cast the vote as a non member.

Why else they're here I don't know. We can start asking as we see them come up.

Ohhhh, I see what you guys mean, but uh, basically it's bad coding. Janis should have made it so that when you request to visit the nomination page, it checks to see if you're 1) logged in, 2) a valid judge. It can only be fixed on his side.

^ Mark, I agree.

Mark you're right on about how the cookies work and I guess you now understand it is coding only Janis can correct - if he wants to. Hell, for all I know he put that there for some experiment on his part.

Ben was victimized by someone putting a public vote on his poem, causing it to win. He honorably deleted his poem & reposted. Rather than claim an unearned win.

Britt...I've answered you in a pm to the mod account.