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Re: [phoenix-epic-dev] FW: bogus rankings on EPIC
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Title: Re: [phoenix-epic-dev] FW: bogus rankings on
EPIC
All,
I read with concern the message from Mik Kersten. As all of you on the
EPIC Council know, I am very concerned with the legitimacy of the
ranking system and am among those pushing most strongly for making it
better.
At Instantiations we have an explicit, written policy that
prohibits our employees from ranking either our own products or those
of others on EPIC. We do this although we are fully aware that it is
common practice in the industry for those with a vested interest to
vote for their own products and against competitive products. We do
this because a) we believe our products can win on their own merit,
and b) we know how angry it makes us when a competitor unjustly slams
our ratings (an unfortunately regular occurrence).
That said, we have a couple of dozen employees and its entirely
possible that the trickle of votes Mik references came from our IP
address. We vigilantly watch for this and constantly reinforce our
company policy...but violations of that policy have certainly
occurred. In every case where we could identify the source we have
appropriately disciplined the person responsible. We will continue to
do this and if Mik or anyone else can point us to an offender we will
enforce our company policy.
Instantiations' internal policies aside, I wonder what makes
these votes inherently "bad"? Are plug-in vendors
officially restricted from voting for their own products on EPIC? Not
that I know of. What alerted Mik to these votes? Maybe if we knew we
could watch that data source and use it to enforce our own company
policies.
In Mik's data I count 17 votes over a 5 month period involving
about a dozen different products. Certainly not enough to swing
ratings much if at all. WindowBuilder, our highest volume product (and
the only one in the EPIC top 10), has literally thousands of votes, so
the one in the questionable data set had no practical effect. Our
other products in the data set have a smaller vote count, but there
are still not enough votes to affect the ratings in a meaningful
way.
I have to say that even given the many discussions we've had, and
are continuing to have, at the EPIC Council about improving the
ranking system and protecting it from those who would game it...these
votes wouldn't make it onto our radar screen. What the Council is
trying to do is remove the possibility of significant, illegitimate
ranking. We have to rely on the community to alert us to small,
infrequent misuses of the ranking system, and for that I thank
Mik.
I'm curious, why Mik's previous emails didn't get the visibility they
deserve? Instantiations would like to be alerted anytime any gaming is
going on with our listed products or if it is suspected that our
employees are voting in an unsavory manner.
Regards,
MikeT
PS. We would be perfectly happy if all the votes referenced by
Mik were removed from the database.
At 9:51 AM -0400 9/18/06, Ian Skerrett wrote:
All,
Mik Kersten sent me an e-mail complaining about some
of the rankings that have been made on EPIC. I think we need to
decide how we want to respond to Mik's concerns.
Btw, Mik agreed for me to post his original e-mail on
the mailing list. Please copy him on any replies, since he has
not subscribed to this list.
Thanks
Ian
Ian Skerrett
Director of Marketing
Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Tel: 613-224-9461 ext. 227
Fax: 613-224-5172
ian.skerrett@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.eclipse.org
Blog: http://ianskerrett.blogspot.com/
From: Mik Kersten
[mailto:beatmik@xxxxxxx]
Sent: September 15, 2006 2:38 PM
To: 'Ian Skerrett'
Subject: bogus rankings on EPIC
Hi
Ian,
Could
you give me the email address of someone responsible for EPIC? I
have submitted 3 email/web complaints of bogus rankings trying to
bring up Instantiations products and bump others near them on the
top-10 down. I still have received no response and the bogus
ranking is continuing, e.g.:
http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&req=ShowRaterDetails&userid=&hostname=68.178.73.218
If
these kinds of problems with anonymous rakings are not addressed
pro-actively by EPIC abuse like this is likely to continue, and
someone could blog about this and make EPIC look
untrustworthy.
Mik
--
Mik Kersten, http://kerstens.org/mik
Mylar
Project Lead, http://eclipse.org/mylar
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--
----------------------------------------
Mike Taylor
President and CEO
Instantiations, Inc.
Power Tools for Professional Software Developers
Voice: (503) 598-4911
mike_taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.instantiations.com
