Bird of the Year voting rigged?
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
The problem i think is everyone knows about Kereru, and Kea, but the average person (not birders like us) dont have a clue about some of our other lessar known endemics, like Yellowhead, Rock Wren etc. so they overlook them and vote for what they know.
- zarkov
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
Neil Fitzgerald wrote:Is it meant to be democratic, or meant to raise awareness?
Can you only vote for one of the birds featured on the voting page? What about red-billed gull? Surely lot's of fond memories of childhood holidays feeding hot chips to gulls, and they could do with a bit more appreciation.
Of course you're right, and a bit of skullduggery is more newsworthy than a simple poll.
The point I was making [only half seriously], was that although the organizers spotted the fake votes for the Heron, the numbers for the Kea and the Kereru still look out of kilter compared to the others. The Kea has double the votes for the pigeon and it has nearly double that of the next competitor, so something's obviously going on.
Maybe some country schools are block voting hoping to push their local favourite over the line?
Whatever, it's probably a timely reminder of the kind of outcome we used to get under "first past the post".
- Neil Fitzgerald
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
Kereru and kea are probably guilty. I wouldn't trust either to keep their pre-election promises. Kea would just plain lie, and kereru would forget it.
I'm sure it wouldn't be technically too hard to get around the barriers. If I was that way inclined (I'm not), and had some time on my hands (I have not), I could manually set up 10's of thousands of alias email accounts and vote from behind fake IP addresses. What they need to do is get people to sign up with photo ID and have their addresses verified with a unique code sent by post.
I'm sure it wouldn't be technically too hard to get around the barriers. If I was that way inclined (I'm not), and had some time on my hands (I have not), I could manually set up 10's of thousands of alias email accounts and vote from behind fake IP addresses. What they need to do is get people to sign up with photo ID and have their addresses verified with a unique code sent by post.
- nzsam
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
How about voting for the Black-fronted Tern? It was just added to the contest today at 2pm so has such a huge amount of ground to make up as the others have all been in the action since Monday morning. Goal for the first 24 hours of action? - to improve from being ranked at the bottom position!!
- kimbirdley
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
Hi everyone,
I run Bird of the Year and thought I would chime (or squawk) in with some context.
I found out about the issue when a scientist at Dragonfly Data Science in Wellington sent me a graph showing that the votes shot up for the white-faced heron (which is now rather red-faced, I imagine). Turns out he has been using his technical know-how to scrape votes off the site for monitoring and upon further investigation I found that all 112 votes came from the same computer address in Christchurch (we still have no leads and no suspects).
So, with regards to security I have added an https:// certificate and blocked a list of all known "fake domain" emails.
But really, the whole competition is honesty-based. And if someone does rig the votes then it becomes a good opportunity for publicity. I mean, I am just impressed that someone cares enough about birds to go to that trouble. Good on them!
However, I can confirm that there have been no other spikes in the votes for other species, although I have certainly seen a spike in accusations being thrown around over the past week or so.
Voting closes on Monday the 23rd at 5pm, so if you haven't already done so - make sure to get yours in!
Kimberley Collins
I run Bird of the Year and thought I would chime (or squawk) in with some context.
I found out about the issue when a scientist at Dragonfly Data Science in Wellington sent me a graph showing that the votes shot up for the white-faced heron (which is now rather red-faced, I imagine). Turns out he has been using his technical know-how to scrape votes off the site for monitoring and upon further investigation I found that all 112 votes came from the same computer address in Christchurch (we still have no leads and no suspects).
So, with regards to security I have added an https:// certificate and blocked a list of all known "fake domain" emails.
But really, the whole competition is honesty-based. And if someone does rig the votes then it becomes a good opportunity for publicity. I mean, I am just impressed that someone cares enough about birds to go to that trouble. Good on them!
However, I can confirm that there have been no other spikes in the votes for other species, although I have certainly seen a spike in accusations being thrown around over the past week or so.
Voting closes on Monday the 23rd at 5pm, so if you haven't already done so - make sure to get yours in!
Kimberley Collins
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
I signed up some years ago to a fairly well known free web based email service. There are over 4000 different email addresses it automatically provides me with that will be seen as unique by most other systems. Now I know how it works, I could sign up in under a minute and have access to over 1 000 000 unique email addresses.
This would not help me with the IP addresses though - and I think a couple of years ago a couple of over enthusiastic kids used a parent's work system to generate many votes but they were removed when IP addresses were checked.
This would not help me with the IP addresses though - and I think a couple of years ago a couple of over enthusiastic kids used a parent's work system to generate many votes but they were removed when IP addresses were checked.
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
The subject has made The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -in-a-flap
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -in-a-flap
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
Dunnock was robbed.
- Neil Fitzgerald
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/27-10- ... year-2017/
This sad excuse of an opinion piece is exactly why red-billed gull should have at least been on the voting list. OK, the photo isn't even a NZ species, and it has the meaningless title of "seagull", but I think it safe to assume the author is referring to RBG. The intro "None of these are native birds, I believe", and the subsequent rant does nothing raise awareness of the species and its Declining status.
Who wants to champion RGB for the next BOTY? Better start now.
This sad excuse of an opinion piece is exactly why red-billed gull should have at least been on the voting list. OK, the photo isn't even a NZ species, and it has the meaningless title of "seagull", but I think it safe to assume the author is referring to RBG. The intro "None of these are native birds, I believe", and the subsequent rant does nothing raise awareness of the species and its Declining status.
Who wants to champion RGB for the next BOTY? Better start now.
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Re: Bird of the Year voting rigged?
Neil Fitzgerald wrote:https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/27-10-2017/the-dirtbag-bird-of-the-year-2017/
This sad excuse of an opinion piece is exactly why red-billed gull should have at least been on the voting list. OK, the photo isn't even a NZ species, and it has the meaningless title of "seagull", but I think it safe to assume the author is referring to RBG. The intro "None of these are native birds, I believe", and the subsequent rant does nothing raise awareness of the species and its Declining status.
Who wants to champion RGB for the next BOTY? Better start now.
I wouldn't call it an "opinion piece". It is just someone trying to be funny. If you look at the author's other "articles" they seem to basically be attempts to be humorous about things he knows nothing about.