Rigging a web poll to help my friends - was this the wrong thing to do?

Gothic Walrus

Gothic Walrus

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The Detroit Thanksgiving Parade is on now. The TV station that is covering it - WDIV - is running a contest where the most popular marching band will get to play at a Pistons game.

I have friends in the Fraser HS band, and they're one of the bands at the parade. I went to go vote for them and they were closely competing for first with the Rochester HS band. Fraser was winning at the time, but the difference between the two was maybe fifty votes or so. After voting ten or so times by myself, I had an idea...

"What would happen if I posted the link to a really high-traffic website?"

So...I posted the link to Fark and asked people to vote for Fraser. The link didn't make the front page, and I wasn't expecting it to - I just thought that having the TotalFark users helping would be more than enough.

Was it ever. The margin of difference shot up, and Fraser is now over 1300 votes ahead of Rochester. Considering that there are only 15,000 votes total and that they're spread between eleven schools, that's a HUGE difference.

The question here: Was what I did wrong?

Fraser was up when I posted the link, and they definitely could have won without the added help. In the sceme of things, this was a relatively minor infraction if it is, in fact, wrong. And my only intention in doing it was to help my friends - hell, I don't even go to the school. My entire motivation was to help my friends.

Still...I can't help but wonder whether or not this was fair. I feel like I've screwed Rochester out of any chance of winning...

The link, if anyone wants to see the poll. I can't link to it directly; click on "Vote For Your Favorite Marching Band!" in the right-hand column of content.
 
Gothic, just out of curiousity, where do you live? I graduated from Fraser.

My girlfriend is in the marching band and is out there today, so if you rigged it for them I could care less and it isn't like you cheated, just got some extra help.

EDIT: Fraser is up by 1800 now.
 
Haven't you ever heard of American Idol? Same thing. That was a bit more lucrative and nationwide.

You earn points for ingenuity!
 
I think it was kinda wrong, the whole idea was that people who were watching the bands and aware of the poll should only be able to vote, not random fark-sters. Though if your choice was going to win (slightly ahead) then maybe not, but its still shady.
It would be like rigging an election by having dead people vote for the candidate.
 
[quote name='Arakias']It would be like rigging an election by having dead people vote for the candidate.[/quote]

No, it would be more like uninformed people voting on the election, and that happens all the time.
 
dude you didnt rig the poll! you just promoted it...rigging would have been:

going to fark
posting a like along the lines of "omg lQQk @ this!!1" and having the link connect to a direct vote to your friends band...what you did was ask for some help, and it seems to have worked ^^
 
[quote name='xzafixz']
No, it would be more like uninformed people voting on the election, and that happens all the time.[/quote]

Dead peoples votes would get put against the candidate someone applied them to, uninformed people would vote uninformed and each candidate could have equal amounts.
 
Looks like the poll is closed, Fraser was up by almost 2.1k when I last checked, looks like posting it here got even more votes.
 
I want to see the exit polls!
Were there U.N. observers watching the voting?
Did people from Ohio vote?
Was Jimmy Carter there as an observer?
What's Canada's position on the outcome?
What did Colin Powell say about the results?
Will the Democrats demand a recount?

:D (kidding) :D

CONGRATULATIONS :!:
 
yeah, you didn't rig it, you just helped along fraser. a lot.

i'm alright with it because the high school i graduated from wasn't performing (and even if it was, i wouldn't care, because my high school was pretty bad). i don't think i knew anyone that went to fraser, but that's ok.

fraser high school is like right down the street, sort of. weird.
 
I wouldn't say it's completely wrong, because someone from another school could have done the same thing.

It's just a bit dishonest, since none of those people actually give a shit about the band.
 
It wasn't wrong. You just advertised the one you wanted to win making it more popular, so you didn't do anything wrong at all, you just made the Fraser band more popular. Good job.
 
It made it unfair, and I would view it as wrong personally, but I can see it as being debatable. Getting others to vote was in the rules, but they had no idea what the band sounded like. The point was to show which band the people thought was best, and by doing this you may have defeated the purpose (though it's not as bad as helping the band with the least votes win of course), that is if the other HS might have won. Though I also think the designers of the poll messed up too, you should only be able to vote once, many sites do that. My problem is though that as bad as your friends wanted it, the other band wanted it just as bad, and in the end may have deserved it (though now we'll never know).
 
It's not like you took a bank of computers, set up a macro for them to start up IE, go to WDIV's site, vote, shut down IE, open up the command line, run ipconfig and have it release it's current IP and pick up a new one, and continue the process for hours on end.

Not that anyone would ever do that :)
 
[quote name='JSweeney']It's not like you took a bank of computers, set up a macro for them to start up IE, go to WDIV's site, vote, shut down IE, open up the command line, run ipconfig and have it release it's current IP and pick up a new one, and continue the process for hours on end.

Not that anyone would ever do that :)[/quote]

macros rule!
...dont know how i would have gotten through math 101 w/o it :wink:
 
It's not wrong, someone from another school could have done the same thing. And if the station was really concerned about the integrity of the voting they shouldn't have put it on the internet to begin with.
 
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