
Reddit's Favorite Scientist Just Got Banned for Cheating the Site - antr
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/reddits-favorite-scientist-just-got-banned-for-cheating-the-site
======
agent00f
Why this matters:

Visibility on Reddit is essentially predicated on early votes. Get a few
upvotes and even mediocre comments will often remain at the top due to
momentum. Less than -4 and it's doomed to oblivion (ie. downvote the
competition).

One of the most popular linked sites on reddit (quickmeme) got to where it was
with only a few strategically placed votes for each link, and it took ages for
them to be found out and similarly banned:
[http://www.dailydot.com/business/reddit-quickmeme-banned-
mil...](http://www.dailydot.com/business/reddit-quickmeme-banned-miltz-
brothers/)

More broadly, the algorithm reddit uses is not only known wrong/buggy:

[http://technotes.iangreenleaf.com/posts/2013-12-09-reddits-e...](http://technotes.iangreenleaf.com/posts/2013-12-09-reddits-
empire-is-built-on-a-flawed-algorithm.html)

but also generally defective:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/vqy9y/dear_circ...](http://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/vqy9y/dear_circlebrokers_what_changes_would_you_make_to/c56x55f)

It's possible HN suffers from the same flaw (initial sort and feedback loop
from such) since it's the natural (naive) way to produce such algorithms. The
machine can't tell if it's quality content or just easy to upvote, and the
latter is more common.

TL;DR: Visibility == early votes from people who have no interest in depth and
don't read the articles anyway.

edit: fixed links

~~~
jhmarten
Of course reddit is flawed. Anyone that has spent time on Slashdot or Advogato
could have told you the whole premise of up/down voting is beyond silly.

No, the utility of up/down votes is in retention. It's nothing more than a
Skinner box that people check in on to see if they are winning or losing.
Which is how Digg and Reddit both became huge in a short amount of time.

~~~
baby
> the whole premise of up/down voting is beyond silly

It's not silly when you have a community this size. It might be flawed but
it's one of the less flawed system.

~~~
icebraining
Do you know Slashdot's system? jhmarten wasn't criticizing community-based
moderation, only the simplistic model of up/down voting, when compared to ones
which get users to specify _why_ they're voting.

~~~
baby
I'm just a lurker so I didn't know their system. They have an extremely small
community compared to reddit though, that was my point.

~~~
icebraining
Compared to Reddit as a whole, yes, but that's because Reddit is a collection
of disparate subreddits, not a single common area. Slashdot had 5.5 million
users in its heyday, which is on the same order of magnitude of the biggest
subreddits.

------
minimaxir
/r/subredditdrama has a more honest albeit less neutral recap of the events:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/2c9ida/recap...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/2c9ida/recap_unibanned_a_recap_of_the_fallout_of_reddits/)

Vote cheating was only the final straw: part of it was a silly argument
between Undian and another user.

~~~
shitlord
The argument wasn't the reason he got banned, though. The admins don't care
_at all_ if users argue with each another like idiots. That's the subreddit
moderators' problem.

It was the blatant vote manipulation that did him in. The admins only ever ban
users who break one of the five rules or make the site look bad. They should
probably do a lot more...

------
na85
It seems the real issue is the cult of personality that develops around these
people. It happens here on HN as well. There exists a large cadre of people
who rally around certain well-known community figures and eventually morph
into sycophantic zealots.

The positive-feedback cycle stemming from early votes serves only to create an
illusion of consensus, and many impressionable users begin to form thoughts
like "that many upvotes can't be wrong" etc.

That, IMO, is the real problem with up/downvote systems.

~~~
minimaxir
A slight but important difference is that Reddit idolizes semianonymous users,
while the most-respected users on Hacker News have fully-transparent
identities.

The identity of the idol, and the lack thereof, can change the perception of
this funny super-commenter completely.

Source: I gained internet notoriety through my comments on TechCrunch under my
real name. As far as I know, I don't have any sycophantic zealots.

~~~
jackweirdy
That's true - and as for Reddit, it seems to make people focus more on the
content. Accounts like shitty_watercolour and awildsketchappeared aren't
really popular because of who they are, rather what they produce.

------
myhf
_sigh_

Here's the thing. You said "vote manipulation is cheating the site."

Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.

As someone who is a scientist who studies web forums, I am telling you,
specifically, in science, no one calls multi-voting cheating. If you want to
be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same
thing.

If you're saying "vote manipulation family" you're referring to the taxonomic
grouping of votidae, which includes things from posting quality original
content to asking strangers for upvotes to running vote-bots through proxies.
So your reasoning for calling multi-voting cheating is because random people
"call the unusual votes cheating?" Let's get copypasta and image macros in
there, then, too. Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the
other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A bot-vote is a bot-vote
and a type of vote manipulation. But that's not what you said. You said vote
manipulation is cheating, which is not true unless you're okay with calling
all members of the vote manipulation family cheating, which means you'd call
good posting, bad posting, and copypasta cheating, too. Which you said you
don't. It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?

~~~
GhotiFish
I...

Is there some context I'm missing here?

It's an article taking about unidan having a bunch of alts to vote himself up.
Referring to that as vote manipulation is a completely acceptable practice.

Why are you being so pedandic? You must have a reason. I refuse to believe you
see this as a "Terrible trend that must be stopped". Because that would be
hopelessly insane.

edit:

>Is there some context I'm missing here?

answer: YES

give me a link or something, jesus -.-

~~~
myhf
Unidan's post that led to the ban:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/2byyca/reddit...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/2byyca/reddit_helps_me_focus_on_the_important_things/cjb37ee)

------
codezero
I'm pretty surprised reddit's backend doesn't just automatically devalue this
kind of vote cheating. In the general case, it's really easy to detect, and if
your cheater is a bit more sophisticated, it's still not that hard, it takes a
really serious person to have five accounts on five different browsers/vpcs
that each come from different IP addresses consistently, even then, when you
see them colluding together, you can still devalue those votes simply because
it's an obvious clique taking early action consistently, so even then it
should be pretty detectable.

I don't see a reason to ban someone over this behavior as long as you can make
sure that the fraudulent votes don't actually add any value to the content,
which they shouldn't.

~~~
dang
> In the general case, it's really easy to detect

Why do you say that? I've worked hard on this problem and would not call it
easy.

~~~
lliwta
>> In the general case, it's really easy to detect

> Why do you say that? I've worked hard on this problem and would not call it
> easy.

Are there reference data sets for this problem? If not, you or reddit should
publish data sets.

~~~
minimaxir
The issue with giving information as to how a voting detector work is that it
would make it easier to cheat.

~~~
lliwta
Not the algorithm, the data. Anonymized user ids and their votes, together
with relevant meta-data.

I suppose the fact that there's already a detection algorithm biases the data,
but it'd still be better than nothing.

------
kordless
When it first launched, Reddit's founders used software to fake a large number
of users to make it look like the site was more populated than it really was.
I really don't see how someone doing this with their own posts is any better
or worse. Does it really matter if the content is good?

~~~
nmjohn
I think there is a very large difference.

Reddit doing it, although some would argue unethical, was meant to make reddit
even usable. It was one of those sites where it takes a critical mass to
become usable, and without that critical mass it would be very challenging to
actually get it. So they faked it until they had it - and it worked very well.

Someone doing it on their own only serves to benefit them - and their karma
count. The goal isn't to benefit the larger community or make the site more
usable - it only is to boost their ego.

> Does it really matter if the content is good?

Unidan had a lot of very good content, I cannot argue with that. However he
also had a lot of really shitty content that under anyone else would have been
downvoted to hell. Unfortunately his user page was taken down so I can't
provide examples. But the problem is, that this bad content pushed other
people's content out of view.

------
un_publishable
> Despite being banned, Unidan has already made a new account, called UnidanX,
> and has been posting for most of the day under that username. It's looking
> like he hasn't been banned with that username yet.

What's the point of trying again, he's already lost the trust of the community
and his name is a red flag. Is that subreddit super-forgiving? Or maybe the
turnover is so high people will just forget?

~~~
rohit89
All of his posts in his new account[1] have been massively downvoted. So they
are not forgiving right now. His account shows 6k+ comment karma though.
That's strange unless gold gets you some karma?

[1] - [http://www.reddit.com/user/unidanx](http://www.reddit.com/user/unidanx)

~~~
erichurkman
I'm not 100% sure how the total karma is calculated, but IIRC if you downvote
someone from their user page, it does not really count. The idea is that if
you're hunting to downvote/upvote all posts from the same user, you're
probably up to no good.

------
baby
> I had five 'vote alts' when things were in the new list, or to vote on stuff
> when I guess I got too hot-headed.

I can totally understand that, I used to spend a huge times on forums,
communities, etc... And I also used to have a bad temper. Of course I created
fake accounts to upvote myself and downvote others. I'm pretty sure anyone who
is a bit clever and also a sour loser/has a bad temper, has done that before.

And only 5 accounts? Maybe there are others, but that's really minimal. That's
"unprofessional" which is a good thing and I really think things are getting
blown out of proportion. Reddit wouldn't be the same without this guy, that he
acted like a kid or not.

PS: What is actually sad here, is that he wasn't doing it to give to the
community, but just for internet points.

------
CamperBob2
That sucks, I always enjoyed (and learned from) Unidan's posts. What a weird
thing for him to do with his hard-earned reputation.

~~~
CamperBob2
Oh, sorry, I meant, "Wow, Unidan sucks. I always knew he'd turn out to be a
bad egg. Good riddance."

Better?

------
ChikkaChiChi
If he honestly cared about sharing his knowledge with the world and not his
ego, he wouldn't he would have come back under a different, anonymous name;
not UnidanX.

------
onedognight
> Reddit's Favorite Scientist

That's being too generous. I would vote for RobotRollCall as Reddit's Favorite
Scientist.

~~~
nhebb
I thought they were referring to Neil deGrasse Tyson, which made the title
highly implausible.

------
raldi
Aww, I remember when Chris Slowe was reddit's favorite scientist.

