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Ethics emergency

Ethics emergency

Postby Allerleirauh » May 16th, 2008, 5:35 am

Hi everyone! I used to post here about, oh, a billion years ago, and I was impressed by the quality of the discussions. That's why I'm here asking for help with an ethical dilemma. I need help and I need it fast!

I'm participating in an online photography contest at a club-based forum. The contest was sponsored by a single person who suggested a theme and offered a prize. There are a number of entries.

The problem is that I'm pretty sure the two front-runners in the contest are cheating, and I don't know if I should say something.

Here's the deal: the voting is hosted at an online poll site. Anyone can vote, and there's no mechanism to keep you from voting as many times as you like. I tested this by voting twice, once for myself and once for the person with the lowest number of votes. Hmm, I said, that doesn't seem very secure, but this is a close knit group of friends and I figured they would be more or less on the honor system. It's actually pretty easy to vote twice by accident, because if you go to the poll to check the results, the "check results without voting" link is tiny and the "vote and see results" button is large, so someone wanting to check on the latest results might vote a second time without knowing that both votes counted.

Anyway, the contest progressed in a logical fashion with the ranking more or less in order of (according to my opinion, at least) merit for several days. The rankings were all within a few votes of each other, in any case. Then all of a sudden the previous last-ranked person shot way out in front with three times the number of the next-highest. Then suddenly the second-to-last ranked person shot way out in front. The ranks sat like that for several days. The last day of voting is tomorrow, and tonight both these front runners have more than doubled their votes, with no other participants gaining even a single vote. The two front-runners are now within two votes of each other with no others even close.

It looks fishy. For one thing there aren't even as many people in our little club as have voted. (It's possible that one of these leaders asked everyone in her entire large office to go home and vote tonight, but that in itself seems unethical in a private contest run by a group of friends.) For another, I'm pretty sure that almost everyone who was planning on voting has voted before tonight. Lastly, these aren't the best two photos - the current leader is the one I would consider the worst photo in the entire contest, a very token effort.

For the record, I don't think mine is the best - there's another very good one which made me sigh and throw up my hands when I saw it, because it so obviously deserves to win. That one is near the bottom at the moment. I suspect most of the ones higher up are people who cheated a little, then decided things were becoming ridiculous.

I don't think the organizer of the contest is aware that everyone can vote for themselves as many times as they want to. The prize isn't of great monetary value, but it's valuable enough that I know at least one of the people entered would jump for joy if she won it.

Here's my dilemma: this is a friendly contest, in a tight-knit group. I can't imagine any result of pointing out that someone's cheating which wouldn't lead to extremely bad feelings in the group. That would make the person who started the contest very unhappy, since all she wanted was to do something nice for everyone. On the other hand, the cheating is the elephant in the room; I doubt I'm the only person who has noticed. And the people who put a lot of effort into their entries deserve to know that they didn't deserve to come in last. Finally, there's the matter of the cheaters not deserving to win.

What should I do? Should I keep my mouth shut and assume that everyone with sense can see the contest is rigged and the cheaters will be punished by their own consciences? Should I say something? If so, how?
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Postby Shadowland Dweller » May 16th, 2008, 6:03 am

I would say something privately to the person in charge, they can find a nice way to say "whoops, we need to do this again".
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Postby Lioba » May 16th, 2008, 11:27 am

I think, shadowlanddwellers proposal is sensible,because the whole thing is on the outward side not about important things.
It's actually pretty easy to vote twice by accident, because ...
That´s a good point to show, that the voting should be repeated, without blaming somebody specially.
On the other hand, maybe you have to check your relation and your feelings towards the group-members that were cheating.
Iustitia est ad alterum.
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Postby sqrt[-1] » May 16th, 2008, 12:00 pm

If you can restart the poll - use a poll service that records IP addresses/ cookies to prevent more than one vote.

A quick Google found many free services that do this like : http://www.snappoll.com/
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Postby Allerleirauh » May 16th, 2008, 12:29 pm

Actually I was really surprised that this poll site doesn't use cookies! (It's called misterpoll.)

I noticed another possibility - there's a "random poll" button and since this poll isn't private, it's possible that it's coming up randomly. The pictures are on a private site so the person getting the random poll would only be able to pick by title. The two winning entries have USA and Canada respectively in the name. So maybe we're getting some random people from primarily the US and Canada voting without having any idea what the contest is.

On second thought... maybe not. Random visitors wouldn't all vote just before the end.

About my feelings towards the other people: one is my very good friend. I don't really know the other person well. I'm a little dismayed at the thought that my friend might be cheating. I'm somewhat disappointed that my own entry doesn't have more votes, but as I said earlier, mine wasn't good enough to win anyway. Believe me, I've been scanning myself for ulterior motives... I know for example that I get kind of a kick out of being a know-it-all meddler sometimes. That's probably the main reason I haven't said anything yet.
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Postby Karen » May 16th, 2008, 12:47 pm

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Postby Stanley Anderson » May 16th, 2008, 1:07 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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Postby Allerleirauh » May 20th, 2008, 4:43 pm

So... this turned out weirder than I expected... the main cheater ended up winning 57% of the total votes. But - she was out of town during the end of the contest and claims she didn't even know she won for a few days.

So, I asked around circumspectly and it turns out my friends are way dumber than I thought they were. Her entry was first on the poll, and they were all voting for her every time they checked the poll results, without knowing their votes counted!

The second place person does seem to have been cheating, but it turns out that the cheating started when she visited her grandchildren and showed them the contest. I would bet money someone decided to make Grandma win.

The lesson here, if there is one, is that I should have pointed out the flaws in the site security when I first noticed them.
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Postby Shadowland Dweller » May 21st, 2008, 7:29 am

:lol: what's that saying "truth is stranger than fiction"?
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