

This Game Is Fixed: Democratized Content v. Voting Rings - jolie
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/democratized_content_v_voting_rings.php

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bradbeattie
I would think the problem could be broken into smaller detection problems:

* rings voting up new articles

* rings voting down new articles (burying the competition)

* rings voting down popular articles (consistently going against the grain)

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SamAtt
I'm not against the effort but in the real world the game will always be
rigged because of "voting rings" that contain actual people.

I work with 4 other people who are on HN and we added it up a few weeks back
and found we represent over 7,000 karma points. So we could easily get
something on the front page if we colluded to do so. We specifically make an
effort not to but I'm sure many (<http://bit.ly/aUKFwc>) aren't as honest.

To me that's no different than having bots do it for you.

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bradbeattie
The problem is poorly phrased. As you point out, it has nothing to do with
bots or humans. There's still benefit to inhibiting rings of users (real or
otherwise) that frequently vote together. Maybe some kind of diminishing
returns?

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jolie
That's a good point, Perhaps votes really ought to count for less if you vote
for a certain user's submissions all the time.

Solves the problem for both bots and humans... and androids... and any other
Internet-using life forms.

'Cause really, I know the human power users are 50 times more traffic-gaming
than the "spammers" or "bots" this problem addresses.

