Big Fat Stupid Cheaters!!

June 18, 2007 | Written by

Clive Thompson penned a great article on video game cheating this week on Wired.com. If you’re a gamer, it’s definitely worth checking out.

This entry is about a different kind of cheating.

Last week I published a short story on Gather.com, entering into a competition sponsored by Borders and author Mitch Albom. The competition worked as follows:

1. Post your story
2. The Gather.com community votes on your story
3. Mr. Albom picks a winner from the 10 most popular stories

I sent everyone I knew to sign up at Gather.com and give my story the highest possible rating.

Is this cheating? I don’t think so.

Why not? Because this contest, while good-natured and promoting good writing, is still being executed for publicity.

The publicity works as thus:

• Gather.com wants more members in their community.
• Mitch wants to sell more books.
• Borders wants everyone to buy Mitch’s books at their stores.

So, by sending every aunt, uncle and pizza guy to Gather.com, I’m doing exactly what Gather.com wants. (And I have already sent more than 30 new users to the site.)

Anyway, my story was riding high this weekend with a 9.3 out of 10, in THIRD PLACE among all contestants.

This morning I was down to 7.7, knocked WAY out of the ranking.

I looked at the total number of votes and saw that only 2 more had been made since I last checked. This means 2 people came by and gave me a 1 out of 10, each.

Is this cheating? You bet.

Why? Because, even if you don’t like my piece, I know it’s undeserving of a 1 out of 10. Maybe a 6 or 7, but not a 1. 1 is a vote you give to an off-subject piece, or a blank webpage.

Now the story I had so much faith in might never make it before Mitch’s eyes. All because of some nasty cheaters who gave me a big fat vote-bomb.

Keep On Clickin’, JR

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