[nakulgoyal]

I feel this should not be an issue unless you feel some people who do not like things, may be rating against you or something ?

What do u say

[relledge]

As far as the anonymous rating system, you have made some very good points... points I cannot really disagree with!

HotScripts.com has attempted to give people the ability to view both a MEMBER review and a visitor review score on each resource. To me, it is obvious people should pay more attention to member reviews, as they have to give comments and the comments are reviewed by our staff before they are posted.

There are also checks built into the anonymous review system... we had this customized specifically for HotScripts.com as the engine running HotScripts.com did not support it. I can tell you right now that every vote is now stored in our database and the same IP address cannot vote for a resource more than once. Obviously, this isn't the perfect way to prevent spamming of votes, but it is one of the protection pieces we have in place.

As for external voting, we strongly encourage people to use external voting. The vote itself is actually recorded when the visitor is transferred to our site so that we can log their vote and IP address, again to prevent the same user from voting multiple times.

That being said, I am pleased to let you know that we are currently COMPLETELY REWRITING HotScripts.com, an endevour that should be done within the next few months. There will be many new enhancements, a new voting system, and all.

As the engine we currently use is a 3rd party application, which has been extremely customized for us, it is difficult for us to trouble shoot and debug some scenarios like you are speaking of. That is why we are taking HotScripts.com to the next level.... by writing it ourselves so we can do exactly what we, and our userbase, want to see... from advanced sorting to voting integrity controls.

Please know your comments are not falling on "deaf ears" and we will do our best to make sure that HotScripts.com continues to be the leading resource for scripts and that we maintain the highest integrity in doing so.

Thanks,


Ryan Elledge, President
iNET Interactive

[nakulgoyal]

Nice to know this Ryan Elledge !! :-)

[jsjohnst]

As always we welcome any suggestions and feedback from the community. If you have ideas which you think would help HotScripts continue to be the leading script index, please feel free to post them. We will do our best to incorporate all good ideas into our current development of the new HotScripts.

[crookyboy]

Ive had this happen - thats life. most likely to be some goon with way too much time on his hands, spamming the poor option.

I must say though, reading your post -

The script took almost 400 hours of development time to get to version 3.15, which we would normally charge a client $50,000 to develop

$50,000! Thats a bit steep isn't it!

[relledge]

We are completely in agreement with the issues addressed in this thread, and we are working to combat this with the soon-to-be-released new backend for HotScripts.com. The new system is being developed completely in house and thus we will be able to modify how things like the ratings work. Many hours of programming and discussion are taking place about this very issue, and how to prevent spamming and malicious voting from taking place.

We have brought this issue to the attention of the programmers of the current engine for HotScripts.com, and have spent development dollars with them to help prevent this from happening, but yes, there are still holes. Currently, the system logs each vote and the IP address associated with the vote and only allows one vote per IP address. This is not a perfect system, but has helped prevent some of the issues.

External voting does seem to be the problem. We have seen scripts who put external voting on their site and who alter the code and submit higher scores than the people actually submit. As we find these sites, we delist their product from HotScripts.

All I can say for right now is we are addressing this issue, and a whole new system will be in place with the launch of the new HotScripts.com, which is scheduled for the month of June. We are getting close, and yes, the rating system will be new, as will the external voting system... which should prevent this from happening.

Watch for more details in the weeks to come on the NEW AND IMPROVED HOTSCRIPTS.COM!

[Hans Bauer]

Good thanks, there are other people affected by the same problem, so the hotscripts team might see and try so solve the problem.

I was also affected of beeing downrated by manipulation.
But i also believe that guests should have an easy possibility to rate a program without prior registering at hotscripts. To rely only on member reviews might be a little bit weak because of less votings. I had many hundreds of downloads and not one member review!

I tried to give some alternative suggestions at my thread:
"Someone tries to kick me out by rating me down"
"http://www.programmingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=11462"
in the same forum.
Maybe a combination of rating only with a given associated e-mail address and a confirmation by resending an e-mail can reduce the problem. The rating and the associated e-mail address should be stored by hotscripts to avoid this kind of manipulation.

Hopefully for the problem to be solved i wait for any responce from the hotscripts team.

Thanks a lot for your thread.

[JasonMichael]

Its a cruel world out there using the Internet.

Did you know that some companies pay for services that employ methods of messing with their competitors on the internet? For example, I read that you can pay to have some place which employs workers to constantly clicking on the paid-for clicks of your competitor, in an attempt to drive up their adverstising costs.

What's to stop such a service company from employing remote workers all over the world to drive down people's script ratings, etc? Couldn't such a service bureau be hired to cast poor votes for competitors of the guy that paid them?

In my opinion, HotScripts should be doing reports on scripts that get "unusually high" numbers of poor votes, and if its being seen as an unfair judgement by the HotScripts staff, they could throw a percentage of the votes out.

IF its the same script getting constant bad votes, then that would be pretty suspicious.......... maybe it would be best to get rid of the voting system altogether. If a script is good, it will become popular by word of mouth. I think people's written reviews are much better... who cares of there is less votes taking place, especially when not much brain power is even going into those votes.... People may be voting who have never seen the scripts! They're just using the Internet for fun and entertainment - they don't care.