[Hans Bauer]

Hotscripts seems to have a serious problem of rating manipulation. E.g. inspect the 'Top-Rated'-scripts 'by Votes' and take a look on their excellent votes. Many of them own thousands of excellent votes 'overall' but only a few excellent votes last year. For me it looks like spamming excellent votes for new scripts by their owners to initially place the script into the Top-Rated.

After hotscripts enhanced their rating verification, the spamming of excellent votes retards and the few votes given last year / last month / last 7 days seem to show the real world.

Is there a possiblity to valuate the votes due to their age? E.g. ignore all votes older than one year and give newer votes a higher importance? Using such a valuation also could help to boost scripts in active development rather than aiding sleeping and dying scripts.

I'd be happy to hear some comments from hotscripts.

[Hans Bauer]

Dear hotscripts team,

one month is gone and noone seems to be motivated to rectify the obviously manipulated rating of many scripts, occured before the hotscripts rating system was enhanced.

Hotscripts at least should realize that allowing spammers to further make use of their previously manipulated and boosted rating will make the enhanced rating system worthless. It even does not enable honest authors to equitable participate at hotscripts. This is a really annoying distortion of competition.

Hans Bauer

[Skeleton Man]

Personally I think popular/top rated should be based on member reviews and not guest votes ! I have a couple of script listed with 5 star reviews, but they don't get near the top rated/popular list coz people have 30,000 guest votes..

The ranking system doesn't seem quite right in some categories too.. how can a script with 10,000 less hits and no member reviews be 2 places higher than my script with a lot more hits and 3x 5 star member reviews ?

[snaip]

Thank you for your feedback. I think you have a valid concern. Today, we offer a breakdown of visitor ratings by period so that users can see when the votes occurred. This information, together with the description and the members reviews should be taken into account when users make a decision.

However we acknowledge the fact that the 'Top Rated' section of HotScripts.com should only consider new votes - perhaps based on a (current date - 1 year) basis. This should give our listings partners a fair chance to have their resources featured.

We’ll take your suggestion into consideration for our next release.

[Hans Bauer]

Hello Snaip,

thank you for your reply and your statement for a new valuation of the votes in the Top-Rated section of hotscripts, possibly neglecting the votes older than one year.

But this step only would be half-assed. Usually the visitors browse the script category they are interested in and their first decision is based on looking to the Visitor-Ratings - your pepper symbols. So the primary importance should be to rectify the Visitor-Ratings of the scripts listend in each category. Why don't you just ignore all votes older than one year? The newer votes given with your enhanced rating system (using visual code) mostly seem to be correct, many older votes are manipulated to ensure long-time leadership. Alle these manipulated ratings i mentioned will persist if you only rectify your Top-Rated section.

Thanks again for your statement and maybe you do the full step to ensure a fair competition for your members.

Hans Bauer

[snaip]

Hans,

You do have a point here and we'll certainly take that into consideration for our next release.

Keep your suggestions coming!

[Hans Bauer]

Hi Snaip,

glad to hear your words. I'll wait and see. Do you have a time-table for your next release?

An improved suggestion: It might be somehow hard for some scripts to get all their votes older than one year expired. I mean scripts with less than about 10 or 20 votes per year. As i realize, only about 1 of 400 downloads leads to a vote (e.g. see my scripts TreeMenu, RPNcalculator and UnitConverter) and i assume this as usual and without manipulation. The rating of scripts getting more than one vote per 200 downloads are doubtable for me. So it could be clever to count leastwise the 20 last votes, if the last year did not get more than 10 votes or something like that. Do you agree?

Thanks and best wishes
Hans Bauer

[Hans Bauer]

Hello snaip and hotscripts team,

i opened this thread one year ago but nothing seems to be changed although you confirmed my concern. Nevermind, it's your problem of credibility.

But there is another amazing behaviour of your site. Just follow the steps to see:
1. From your 'Home' change into the Javascript section
2. Scroll down until you see the 'Top rated' section in the right colum
3. Are you amazed to see 'Banner rotator' at position 7, 8 and 9?

I thought it is not allowed to spam hotscripts with listing duplication.

4. Now click the 'Top Rated' button on top of your page
5. Are you amazed not finding 'Banner rotator' within the top-rated of the Javascript section?

Quite strange?

Best wishes and happy new year.
Hans Bauer

[snaip]

Hans,

Indeed strange; I suspect there is a bug somewhere. I have notified our development team.

I thought it is not allowed to spam hotscripts with listing duplication.

Right, we do not allow duplicate listings. Looking at the listing IDs of the 'Banner Rotator' listings, they are from a single listing with ID 3173.

[Skeleton Man]

Wow.. haven't heard mention of this in a while..