$$$ for WPI vote daily now in Vivint Round 2!

[eric_s]

Now that sounds very bad, but it's not my fault... In CHASE there were a lot of Jewish orgs that at the end had huge increases in votes. And the administrators of Conejo Valley Friendship Circle's FB page http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=7161479299 are Yehudis Silverman, Sheva Naparstek, Eli Laber... It's a fact, so don't blame me... If they are playing fair, then that's ok and i congratulate them, but at least in the case of Conejo we have seen the evidence yesterday that they are buying votes.

 

[helen41]

I think what I found yesterday would have bee fine under the chase rules, because one of those groups gave away camcorders for votes towards the end, and had a great surge as a result. I wonder if some were doing this in that contest as well. If it was allowed, I would be pushing to do it too, and as we have learned, trying to figure out the rules is tough. I still don't think that is the primary place yesterday's votes came from, though. We just didn't find it.
Hopefully the Rabbi talks to the members and they don't try it again. At least if they do Vivint is on alert, and I suspect complaints would be addressed.

 

[eric_s]

I think it is very difficult to deal with these issues. For example how will you prove who put such an ad to compensate voters online? There's only some sort of a nickname there. You can fake everything when you sign up on that site. There's a lot of money you can win in these contests and it's almost impossible to enforce the rules.

 

[SpecialK82]

Daily Stats below for July 12:

WPI 28652 + 1009 = 29661
Be Perfect 9918 + 255 = 10173
Conejo 8059 + 2149 = 10208
Surfer Healing 6747 + 144 = 6891
Hailey mayz 4536 + 160 = 4696
Next Gen 3740 + 55 = 3795
Invisible 3528 + 81 = 3609
Jumpstart 3390 + 87 = 3477
King Bellflower 3216 + 79 = 3295
Sean Vernon 2269 + 82 = 2351
Patner Living 1860 + 53 = 1913
Shared Hope 1915 + 51 = 1966
Austin's House 1707 + 65 = 1772
Trevor 910 + 56 = 966
Dream 901 + 25 = 926
Courage 1154 + 33 = 1187
Ameriface 972 + 45 = 1017
Prader Willi CA 489 + 7 = 496
Gets Better 2808 + 250 = 3058
Tinnitus 178 + 8 = 186


Light & Love 16307 + 577 = 16884
St John Hospital 7295 + 240 = 7535
ME/FM Action 3847 + 192 = 4039
Prader-Willi 3407 + 165 = 3572

 

[SpecialK82]

Yep Eric and Jace, I do have a table that I update everyday with the changes, I've attached the latest graph below showing the spike with Conejo. You can increase the size when you view it.

Currently, WPI gets approx 1000 votes per day and Conejo 2000 per day. If this continues, Conejo will be even with us in 19 days and then pass us. So, as I see it, there needs to be a huge campaign started to increase WPI vote by at least double.


The big question is - will the community be up for the challenge? What can be done that hasn't been done, so far there has been complacency. People didn't seem interested to even try for the $250,000.

The fact that people were voting for Canada for awhile is not a big factor in this, maybe there were 1000- 2000 votes additional that would have gone to WPI - Conejo can match those figures in a day or two. It would only mean that it would take an extra day to pass us.

But I will definitely switch all the votes that I am influencing back to WPI until further notice. If it becomes inevitable later on that we will be trounced in the Pacific though, I think we will need to revisit the strategy. I think it would then make sense for us all to switch to Canada in order to win something.

Helen, can you keep monitoring that site you found to see when (if) the vote buying has stopped?

 

[eric_s]

I agree with this, Speical K. And thanks for switching the votes over. I also had the thought that if it looks totally lost in the pacific region the best thing to do would be to switch all the votes over to Canada. But to be honest, i think many people would never vote for anything other than the WPI and if the current leader in Canada continues at this pace, we would need around 20 days to catch up, and that's today, the gap gets wider every day. So i guess if we don't get additional voters, the window is closing for this option.

My feeling is that these Conejo votes are not true votes. So, yes, we need more voters, but even more important, if there's something unfair going on, it must stop... It will be up to Vivint, and i hope they don't tolerate a lot in that direction.

The owner of the Spanish forum mentioned a bit earlier, where there is no mention of the Vivint contest yet, has told me that he will post the text advertising for it in the coming days. He's extremely busy at the moment, because he's leaving to see Dr. De Meirleir. I will post as soon as the text is online.

I really need a break and to have some relaxed days, but i will try to talk to the Swiss org (need to talk to them anyway) and then i will try other things.

But i think in the end the most important thing is that the rules are enforced, because theoretically one group can pump out so many fake votes that it's impossible to win if you're playing fair.

Edit: Btw, are there any signs of Conejo calling their followers to vote? I didn't see anything. One of us could even sign up there (i guess) to get their mailings... Any volunteer spies?

 

[frenchtulip]

Francelle: "Wat's a dq frenchtulip?"

Sorry. I saw "dq" used somewhere here and thought it was a common abbreviation for disqualification.

I do hope Vivint is watching Conejo closely.

maryb: "Frenchtulip - really interested in your post about a voting device, just wondering if Vivant would be aware of that possibility too in addition to what helen has found out?"

I may send in my concerns to Vivint today. Yesterday's consistent minute-by-minute increases seem suspicious to me. I had planned to get up in the middle of the night to see if they continued at a consistent rate but slept right through. I tried to do a search on voting devices or machines but didn't find much. Perhaps I didn't use the right terms. Or, maybe voting devices are something some computer whizzes might know how to rig or are only available in shadowy places. I hope I'm not becoming paranoid. LOL

Btw, I've seen suspicious voting activity in more than one previous online contest, but in the small contest, the cheating was blatant.

Also, groups can be falsely accused by sponsors and not be given a chance to defend themselves. I was voting for a large wonderful breast cancer group in the Pepsi contest. We needed to move up to win and the leaders sent out a mass email to its approx. 350,000 members and we had a dramatic upward surge on the leaderboard. Then Pepsi disqualified the group thinking that our group had cheated. The sponsors do have to be very careful. But this experience added to my belief that sponsors/auditors do not have a foolproof way to know whether a group is cheating.

 

[eric_s]

They could ask any voter for the winner to send them a scan of their ID. But then, in our case, they would see there is a number of Facebook accounts with fake names, so i don't know if we would want that...

 

[Tuha]

Actually the principe of these contests are really stupid - I would never participate if we wouldnt really need that money. I think they cannot really control the situation. They have no clue how many voters got Conejo because of offering some products or what it was. They can maybe controle a suspicious accounts but its also difficult - you have to do a lot of effort. They would have to be strict - if they know about the cheating they would have to disqualifie the organisation.
What to do now? I think we will never get enough WPI voters to switch to canadian organisation. the only way is to find new voters - but didnt we try everything - the patients are passive - what to do with this. I see the only solution - the people who already vote have to engage even more - I hade 7 regulary voters and during the last days I found 4 more - I will check again who could I contact to vote.

Just a bit mathematic - with these numbers Conejo need around 1 400 vites a day (if WPI will not increase the numbers) to be better on the end.

I checked the current situation and compared it to the last update
WPI 29 661 + 746 = 30 407
Conejo 10208 + 903 = 11 111

It seems a bit that they are a bit slowlier than yeastrday

 

[eric_s]

I agree the organisers of such a contest probably have to apply quite a bit of discretion, they can't clearly know which vote was bought. I guess in a case where they see evidence for vote buying they would have to see if there is a spike or change in the trend, and for as long as the potential buying is going on, they would have to give that charity only the votes it would have based on an estimate.

 

[Sasha]

Wow, great detective work, helen - great number-tracking, SpecialK - what a team!

I really hope that Vivint sort this out with Conejo. Depending on how they've set up their site, they may be able to see the source of their votes (i.e. which website has provided the link that brings voters to the Conejo page) in which case they'd be able to see suspicious activity but that just depends on how they set it up in the first place and they might not have anticipated this problem (or have wanted to pay for that facility).

Presumably they couldn't disqualify Conejo (otherwise, an unscrupulous supporter of another charity could frame the opposition by buying votes for them with the purpose of getting them disqualified) but I hope they can disqualify the votes on the suspicious days.

This is so frustrating! Fraud is just so easy in these online contests. Still, we must keep on voting and hope to see some action from Vivint soon on the dodgy vote.

 

[helen41]

the vote request remains up on that site. Shalom Aleichem wrote on the Conejo Page 16 hrs ago "I see lots of votes coming in this is great.. we are climbing. Remember to vote every day and get your friends to vote." I just responded "unfortunately, you are gathering votes in ways that are not within the rules. Vivint has said that vote trade, vote exchange and vote purchase are all prohibited. This is one site that is clearly against those rules http://sbofferzone.blogspo?t.com/2011/07/vote-for-fri?endship-circle-of-conejo.h?tml " this is the link to the Conejo page https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=153515928054220

I then posted on the Vivint wall "the post remains up and the votes continue to climb. Hopefully they aren't counted"

 

[Sasha]

Well done, helen! How ridiculous that competitors should have to police this rather than Vivint.

 

[SpecialK82]

Excellent posts to both sites Helen! So glad that you are staying on top of this.

Does anyone know if anything came out of the investigations of the Chase contest in the end?

 

[helen41]

specialK, that graph is worth a thousand words. Hopefully we won't need to post it on the Vivint page, but it would be a powerful statement if this voting behavior continues. The next few days will be interesting for sure

 

[aprilk1869]

There's software available at facebookdevil.com apparently it's free and will create as many FB accounts as you like however I'm not sure about using it for voting. I've also tried looking around the blackhat forums but can't quite find what I'm looking for.

 

[helen41]

It might be helpful if some people went and liked my comment about the votes not counting, just so it is obvious that I am not the only one who is concerned or aware. It's under Helen Watkinson, and the thread was started yesterday. this is the Vivint link https://www.facebook.com/VivintHome?sk=wall&filter=1

 

[frenchtulip]

I just "liked" your comment on Vivint. Also, Barbara F's.

 

[helen41]

My post about the votes not counting is doing one of those invisible Facebook acts. I can see it. Vivint can see it, but no one else can. Would someone here post a similar comment about them still gathering votes?

 

[Nielk]

I'm not exactly understanding what is happening with the Conejo votes.
Please explain and I will post on Vivant too.