Why is it that people seem incapable of following the rules and having contests for what they are – a bit of fun?
As I’m sure you are all aware, there has been a lot of drama in this thread recently on the subject of a certain Aeroblyctos cheating. Well, naturally, I investigated (being the sort of thing I do) to ensure that this criticism was true and to take appropriate action (punishment if it was indeed true, or swift stopping of such debate if it was not). You may be interested in the results:
So first off, I checked out the voters for Aero’s submission. Mostly fine, but one person (
TheJoJoRiS) was rather suspicious – 0 posts in all his time here, and the only comment in his profile is from (guess who?) Aeroblyctos, and yesterday at that (soon after he voted for Aero).
Now, I was willing to give Aero the benefit of the doubt here and assume he was not multiaccounting. However, I think that the odds of this being a friend asked to come and vote for Aero are far more likely, and this is disallowed by the contest rules. There were also a few other suspicious votes, such as a certain
DPL - who has the user title of "Respect Aeroblyctos" - but it is more likely that these were votes based on friendship, rather than votes
asked due to friendship, and thus they are legitimate and really couldn't be prevented anyways.
Now, this is obviously not substantial evidence for any action, and as such CMarket (who was obviously, from the thread, following this as well) and I did nothing more than keep an eye out and (in the case of CMarket) post an occasional comment. However, strangely enough, Aero’s submission stopped being voted on soon after it was made clear people suspected him.
Now, very soon afterwards, Kitabatake’s submission (Kita is a good friend, and some say real life friend, of Aero) surged up by an astonishing thirteen votes, moving from fourth place with five votes to first place with eighteen, while the other submissions climbed one or two votes if at all. Coincidence? Unlikely, but perfectly possible.
There were already obviously some friend votes for Kita (namely, Aero and Xarwin), but these were perfectly within the bounds of the rules as we can assume that they were not asked to do so by Kita. However, investigating the users who voted in this surge was more disturbing. Here are the suspicious ones:
- BenjaminFredson just registered in February, has posted once (but apparently is global ignored), and has a Scandinavian-sounding name (Fredson). I should note here that Kita and Aero are Finnish.
- draken koning just registered, has only a few posts, and was suspiciously busy private messaging someone when I checked his profile (who private messages people when they are that new? Unlikely, but possible I guess).
- Ghazghkull just registered today (April 8), and his only evident action has been voting for Kita’s submission. Possible though unlikely, but with all these other ‘coincidences’ very likely cheating.
- Lichemperor had not done anything since last July until he apparently spontaneously logged on the other day and voted for Kita. He also has an IP collision with none other than Aero.
- Mandrilx has posted 15 times since his registration years ago, and didn’t show a particularly high level of activity. Strange that he suddenly logged on and voted for Kita’s submission.
- meteOrain- has been spamming people via PMs to vote for Kita. Pretty obvious here.
- NS_SMOKE has posted five times since his joining about two months ago, and has not really communicated with anyone until his sudden voting for none other than Kita.
- Peteri1111 just registered and voted for Kita, his only other action being a comment on a map of Kita’s. Peteri also happens to be a Scandinavian and primarily Finnish name. Also, one Lancer1111 voted for Aero, with a surprisingly similar name to our friend here.
It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here, and that it is not friendly or in the spirit of contests. The two of you (Aeroblyctos and Kitabatake) have been disqualified from the contest for the reasons mentioned above and would be best to drop the issue before you get any more attention for your actions. Your rewards will be coming shortly; hopefully you and others will learn from them.
I hope the contest is smooth from this point on. Good luck to all contestants!
![Dreadnought[dA]](/data/avatars/m/134/134647.jpg?1465504677){kind=avatar}
proof i didn't get any friends to vote for me!
