by 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?