download abuse

[Wormskull]

look at the top 15 most downloaded skins, the n1 is a recolor to blue, and the particles emitters are still yellow, since he only edited the skin, thus only the rocks. people thinks he edited the flames and vote 5. the authour hitted 1600 times the button "download". even i have tried it myself, i clicked 100 times on a test skin and after a while, it showed "100 times downloaded". that's a lame exploit that can send your skin in the top5..

also theres is another infernal, and that horrible skin that is nr.3.

that download abuse is lame, crappy skins are sent in top 5, this is hardly making me feel good.

god's sake, i could do nr.3 and nr.1 in one second, but hitting the download button so many times would take ages. i should try clicking 3000 times anyway, to show how lame it is.

 

[Vexorian]

look at the top 15 most downloaded skins, the n1 is a recolor to blue, and the particles emitters are still yellow, since he only edited the skin, thus only the rocks. people thinks he edited the flames and vote 5. the authour hitted 1600 times the button "download". even i have tried it myself, i clicked 100 times on a test skin and after a while, it showed "100 times downloaded". that's a lame exploit that can send your skin in the top5..

also theres is another infernal, and that horrible skin that is nr.3.

that download abuse is lame, crappy skins are sent in top 5, this is hardly making me feel good.

god's sake, i could do nr.3 and nr.1 in one second, but hitting the download button so many times would take ages. i should try clicking 3000 times anyway, to show how lame it is.

Darky usually catches them and resets the counterto 0, but I didn't see him for a while, I am sure that once he appears it will be resetted

 

[Sopho]

This possibly could be problem.
In my opionion, the download count counter should record only each download for the unique I.P to stop download abuse.

 

[EvilYardGnome]

static ip indeed. about half of the stuff on there is either a filter in photoshop or a crappy recolor or just plain bad freehand.

 

[Wormskull]

you mean on wc3csearch, or in the top 15?

 

[Sopho]

you mean on wc3csearch, or in the top 15?

on wc3sear

 

[Metabee]

Sum people(like me) Post their Skins(ex) just 2 get approval, and 2 get correction(rarely) so maybe a section with test skins 4 approval should be openend.

 

[TimeMachine]

@wormskull
Man, first make your own skin, than u'll have the right to say "horrible skin" about other skins.
I want to see how's your skining skills before I read your comments, that most of the time are against the author.

 

[Kerrigan]

i must admit that it is true. the top rated and dled stuff anywhere is always really stupid or easy to make!

 

[Sopho]

I think I should ask Darky whether a unique user IP download tracer for the download counter may be needed. Real popular downloaded resources should reserve their pace if on the top downloaded and should not let any download abused skins beat them.

 

[DemonsHellFire]

This possibly could be problem.
In my opionion, the download count counter should record only each download for the unique I.P to stop download abuse.

That will be impossible, because they could just log out and download it as a guest.

 

[Yu_Yevon]

Maybe some of the ones people like are just easy to do. Did it ever occure to you people that not everyone downloads stuff because they know it took the person a long time to make?

 

[Mecheon]

To the person who said that they could log out: It would make no difference

An IP adress is not an account, its the thing which allows you to connect to the net

So yeh, IP adress is best way to go

 

[Vexorian]

Log out ? lol

 

[RaeVanMorlock]

I know this thread is a bit old now, but I wanted to shed some light on the subject.

There is no sure-fire way to track anybody. An IP address may seem like a good idea, but alot of people have dynamic IPs. You can send a request to get a new IP and then appear as a different person. Furthermore, by tracking IPs, you'll be getting people mixed up. If Person A uses address 20.30.15.1 to download a file and then gets a new IP address.. then some Person B may later be assigned address 20.30.15.1 (since it's since been sent to the IP pool) and be mistaken for Person A.

Another way to go would be to use cookies. This way, the cookie set on that person's machine and will never be confused with another person. The obvious problem here is that cookies are easy to change or delete.

You could track users by their username and store the information locally on the server. The space required would be fairly minimal and there'd be no way for the end-user to alter it. But of course, accounts are free, so the diligent person could create numerous accounts and download with each one--but this would probably be the best method since creating a meaningful number of accounts to do this would be a hassle. A script could be used, but that's why most places now create dynamic images with verification codes... it's exceedingly difficult to create a program that can "read" an image. Lastly, with this method, scripts could be designed to find the cheaters. If you see the same 100 accounts downloading on the same images all the time and having virtually no other involvement in the community (forum posts, comments, submissions, downloads, etc) then it's likely that they're being used to cheat.


Additionally, these measures can be applied to voting. And by doing so, it'd be possible for people to change their votes (either due to a change of heart, the work being improved, or them having accidentally clicked the wrong thing to begin with).

An example of stored information would be:
<total vote> <total number of voters>
<person A> <person A's vote>
<person B> <person B's vote>
<person C> <person C's vote>

So if person A voted 5, person B voted 3, and person C voted 4:
12 3
PersonA 5
PersonB 3
PersonC 4

To get the average vote, simply do 12/3 = 4. Then if person C wants to change his vote to a 5, you can easily see that he previously voted a 4, so you'd do 12 - 4 + 5 = 13 to get your new total:
13 3
PersonA 5
PersonB 3
PersonC 5

And now your new calculated average would be 4.33

 

[Kerrigan]

raevanmorloc - wow. at least someone else konws math.