The toplist on this site is farked...

[photokyo]

Ok, it was going ok for a while, people werent abusing it TOO badly, but now its just getting out of hand.

For example, the list resets every month on the 1st, and now its the 3rd. Look at the toplist right now, and you will see iKjeld.com and japanesestreets.com right up there at the top, with 477 and 445 incoming votes so far.

Next, take a look at this:

http://www.nedstatbasic.net/s?tab=1&link=1&id=383759

Those are the stats for iKjeld.com. Notice that he has had only 113 pageviews on Dec 1, and 102 on December second. Those are PAGEVIEWS and not uniques, so basically with a total of 477 hits coming in, and only 215 pageviews so far, it appears that every single time one of his pages are loaded, the person is voting twice. How could this be?

Well obviously this toplist is cheatable. How do you do it? Just hammer away on the voting button before it takes you to the next page, and blamo, all those votes get registered.

The reason I'm complaining is that the sites that are pushing themselves up on the list are NOT the ones with the most traffic. What needs to happen is either:

1) People stop screwing around, and try to make the top list look like it is actually showing the TOP SITES and not sites with hardly any traffic.

or

2) Fix it so its not hackable like it is right now. That way we will REALLY be able to see who has the most traffic, and I bet that TokyoDV or something will be the actual leader.

Those are my 2 cents.

Chris
www.photokyo.com

[Twisted]

Uhm, i think it's just because the list isn't reset on the first day of the month.

I reccon that the only way to cheat is to clean up your cookies after you voted for a site. Kjeld is far too busy to be resorting to that kind of practice.

[photokyo]

When it is reset is pretty much irrelevant, I was just showing that in the 2 days since it was reset, how many hits have come in, and how much traffic he actually had.

Cleaning your cookies up is not needed to cheat on that thing. Just hammer away on the vote button and the next time the list is refreshed, you will see the results.

Something needs to be done, as this list is NOT an actual top list.

[tokyodnb.com]

Yes its true.

If you would like, I can sit here an hammer my own site and come 4:30pm Japan time, I will have hundreds more votes.

All you need to do is sit there and click the vote button rapidly with-out letting the next page load.

In fact Im a little bored here at work. My current vote count is at 80. and has been that way for the past day or so. would you like to see it tripple in less than 30 minutes?

:p

[thomas]

OK guys, cheat protection is now fully engaged:

- hits from proxies will not be counted

- one vote per IP/12 hours

- only cookie-enabled browsers can send in hits.

[photokyo]

Good, how about a reset now to straighten things out?

[tokyodnb.com]

Ok. :happy:

As you can see my votes are now at 597.

WOW! That sure is some voting power! In less than 30 minutes I now have over 500 more votes! And a sore wrist.

I would like to thank all the little people out there for making this possible!


:cool:

And if you will follow the top list like we do ... you will see it wont be long before the other stagnant sites jump in the hundreds to catch up and overtake me.

You would think things are a foot when sites dont get any votes for hours and then all of a sudden they gain a few hundered votes and are in first place.

:note:

[thomas]

I apologize for any inconvenience.

Last October I tried to upgrade to the latest version of the script, but didn't like it as it only generates dynamic pages (I prefer static pages). So I reverted the Topsites to the current version and must have completely forgotten about enabling the cheat protection.
:blush:

Some people's mice must have been smokin' lately, lol.

[tokyodnb.com]

Heh.

Yeah I would have to say so. 500 votes in 2 days?

My wrist was hurtin after I pumped mine up to prove photokyo's point. :o

easy.

[photokyo]

So are we going to have a reset to make things fair from the start? Leaving those sites that just hammered away on the vote button at the top is pointless as they will be grabbing all the traffic that the other sites are actually sending in.

[thomas]

Hm, I am reluctant to reset the script, as this will mess up the next reset date at the front page. I've just edited the number of hits from those pages that apparently benefitted most from the disabled cheat protection.

I hope the issue has now been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. :)

[photokyo]

I cant imagine that a cheat free list would chap anyone.

Thanks!

[tokyodnb.com]

I dont mind one way or the other. But Photokyo keeps complaining to me!


hehehe JK.

[thomas]

One vote every 12 hours seemed a bit too restrictive to me, I've set it to 6 hours (you should have seen the cheat log, lol).

[photokyo]

Yes, I can imagine it would have been a good source of comedy. Did you show it to Mr. Twisted who said that Kjeld is too busy to do such things? ;)

[Twisted]

Perhaps Kjeld has his henchmen. :)

I had every good reason to think that cheating was impossible though. No matter how much i vote for my own site, it never shows up in the toplist at all.
While it did work in october, after the november reset it has never re-appeared anymore.
Perhaps you could check that out, Thomas.

[thomas]

It's not Kjeld, by the way. There are others you'd never expect to do such things. My lips are sealed.
:)

Peter, your account should work now, I'm going to contact you through PM.

[sushicam]

Glad to see that the voting is back on track and accurately reflecting site traffic.

[thomas]

And I am glad that everyone's happy again. I wasn't aware of the fact that our Topsites are so closely monitored, lol.

[sushicam]

Thomas,

Japan Reference is a great resource for everyone involved, and it helps get the word out about what an interesting place Japan is.

Thanks for providing such a great service to us all.

Jeff

[thomas]

That's ambrosia for my soul, lol. Thanks for your kind words, Jeff! ;)

[deborah gormley]

Jeff,, I second that! I could not have said it any better.

[sushicam]

Thanks Debs,

And I'm especially pumped since I am now ranked #2, and rising!

I never knew Sushicam was so popular. In prior months, when people were rigging the voting, I would be buried pretty deep down in the ranking.

It's nice to see my hard work paying off in a higher ranking.

[thomas]

Congrats, Jeff! :happy:

It's amazing how the ranking has shifted. Fewer hits, but real popularity, lol.

[deborah gormley]

Hey thats great news!!!:clap: :happy: keep up the hard work and before you know it you'll be top ranked,,
I'm just going to check it out my-self:bow:

[Zentaur]

First of all I'd like to say that this forum should be easier accesible. Coming from the banner-exchange you must accidently click onto the rules and read until the line where the link to this forum is. I think it should be linked more visible.

I've good understanding that people are upset about others who try to cheat and steps are set like an IP is counted not more than once every 6 hours BUT :
You should tell so in the rules! On other banner-exchanges it is absolutely usual, that members can put the code into different files of their website. So when someone is surfing there he/she will find another banner after every click, and every banner is counted. If the IP is blocked for 6 hours the webmaster could feel cheated when he wasn't told so. Same things with cookies. You should tell in the rules that just visitors which accept cookies are counted - if it is like that.
For me all the information I found in this forum I've only the question what happens when a visitor somehow reloads or revisits a page or meets the same banner-code on another page within 6 hours. - There comes a new banner! If this isn't counted from the point of view of the webmaster where the banner is shown - is it counted from the point of view from the webmaster who linked this banner? Or is it a "free" banner-display?

If the question is just how to stop those who thrash [F5] while viking in front of their own website (pls. forgive my expression - I'm from Vienna) it's enough to block an IP just for 1 or 2 minutes. - And this would count the clicks of serious visitors on a website.

About different banner-sizes I wanna say that I'd think it better if banners of various sizes with maximum dimensions would be allowed WITHOUT defining different groups of banners.

I've the feeling that there are coming more and more new members - good sign this is.

:note:

[Maciamo]

I think these rules are normal to avoid excesses. It's so easy to boost up one's vote with several banners on the same site that count as different votes. It's impossible de check the real numberof visits without cookies I guess (?).

[thomas]

Hallo Zentaur, zun臘hst mal herzlich willkommen! :wave:

I'll continue in English though. Thanks for pointing out your difficulties in finding the support forum, I guess I'll have to improve in user-friendliness (my to-do list keeps growing, lol). Anyhow, it is not necessary to register, the support fora are open to guests as well.

The "one IP address every 6 hours" rule applies to Topsites Japan, not to the banner exchange. You are absolutely right, I will add that to the rules in order to avoid confusion.

As for the banner exchange: the script I am using requires pre-defined banner sizes, but can handle up to three image sizes, so it's three banner exchanges in one. For the time being I have settled for just one exchange, 468x60 being the most common banner size. In future I may consider a button exchange (88x31) and a 120x60 (or 120x120) logo exchange.

Thanks for your confidence. :blush: