Being one of the newest guys on the block, I've only read this while scratching my blue-haired head.  It does suck when a comic is cheating, and I realize the need to trim false votes.

Akashik worked very hard to get to where it was. It was in the 200's - that was a long climb.  Yes, we only did it in a few days... but it was still like climbing Mount Everest .

We only update once a week (hey, a starving artist has to make a living... or I would if I could find a job) so even on a good week I don't expect our traffic to get as high as those of you who are able to devote more time and energy to your babies.

The reset put us back down to almost 500.  And folks with only one registered vote like ours... are ahead of us.

I realize that those of you with a large fan-base and a lot of traffic would not be as badly affected by such policies as reseting the vote every month.  But the rest of us would.  As it was pointed out earlier in the thread, one single spot can make a world of difference.

I can predict that the upped competition for votes that would cause would increase the temptation to cheat.

I'm not saying not to do anything or to try to fix the problem... but please don't forget us little guys. We outnumber you big guys here, neh?

 

We luuuuv yooouuuuu

 

Ok, so there was the big vote comic reset, and it really didn't seem to do all that much. The suspected comic got back into the top ten, and now hangs out around the under top ten mark. I noticed that there was another huge surge of a webcomic to the number one position, where it dominated with thousands of votes, after previously haven never gotten past the top nine. The votes would come in surges of thousands, rather than a gradual climb. Now suddenly it's going down in rank.

Okay, this is getting crazy. Prepare yourselves for a bit of a rant here, but I am starting to get pretty bummed about this.

Am I expected to believe that the comic "ROL", with it's teeny tiny forum that's collecting dust (unless you count the three people besides the creator who post there) has as many readers at the other top ten comics in TWC? Am supposed to believe that updates like this page are standing up next to Girl Genius and Dreamland Chronicles? Are we all supposed to not notice him talk about proxy codes and how he's making them for his site on this page?

If the votes are legit, I want to know his secret. I want to know how he can bump me and other comics out of the running with pages like that, no vote incentives, no long history on the web and no notable traffic in his forums or comments pages.

I'm sorry for going off like this, but it's really looking like he's taking everyone for a ride. Is there nothing we can do?

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A D&D satire webcomic about... well... a buncha goblins.

This is the first time I've posted here but we've been a part of TWC from maybe a month or two after we launched. Back in November, I had concerns about Project ROL cheating and asked that they be looked into. I honestly didn't know that other people may have suspected them and it seemed like they were staying below the radar for quite awhile. But now it looks like they have either had an explosion of fans. (And I'm having a hard time with that) or enough information has been posted on this thread to show someone with scripting knowledge how they were discovered the first time to allow them to generate a better script that maybe spreads out the IP's and masks the behaviors.

There are a lot of great comics in the Top 20 that bust their butts to climb the charts. SG has been in and out of the Top 10/Top 20 for the past few months and has been passed by other comics often. (Dreamland Chronicles, Crowfeathers, GOblins, Flipside) and I see no problem with it. They have vote incentives, they have a history, a following and obvious respect for what they do. But this weekend Project ROL gained over 500 votes without an update.

Right now SG is in the Top 10 and that is great. But I feel like we worked hard for our position. We advertise here and at other places and there are others who also deserve to either be there or to at least be fairly jockeying for the positions. So if someone could look into this, please do.


Sorry for the rant folks, but I think this matter deserves attention.

David A. Rodriguez
Writer/Co-Creator
Shadowgirls

Hello, I would just like to comment about some of the "evidence" being used to accuse this latest webcomic of cheating. First off, I have no opinion as to whether or not I personally believe this person is cheating - however I cannot stand reading accusations that have no basis behind them.

First off, this page as mentioned earlier was a double update. If you check the archives, you'll see that that page came out on the same day as page 83, so counting that page alone as an update is pointless, because it isn't.

Next, this rant as mentioned earlier features the creator talking about adding a script that blocks spam bots that uses proxies. You can find scripts like that all over the web on Yahoo! and Google. Blocking people who uses proxies is COMPLETELY different from going through the effort of writing a script that uses a bot to change proxies and vote at different times of the day (which to my knowledge is not something you can look up on Yahoo! or Google). Let me pull out a revelant quote from that rant:

I haven't been able to fix the kinks in the system, because I don't have any means of really testing the script.

To make that comment to his readers (and not for this topic of discussion), he obviously does not have access to any working proxies, otherwise he wouldn't need to make this statement. Again, this "system" he talks about is for blocking SPAM BOTS.

Also, apparently after the "big" reset, this site did not create any false votes (I did notice some other top 20s fall such as PC Weenies). Perhaps the big reset only didn't affect this site - I don't know. But at the very least, the votes here are more valid than the other comics that DID fall, of which no one seemed to complain about.

Again, I am not for or against this webcomic. I'm just annoyed when people are forcing "evidence" out of nothing. To ban a site because it doesn't "seem" to belong there is clearly favorism.

You make some very intelligent points. Maybe I'm jumping the gun and getting upset about imaginary things here. In my own defense though, I haven't actually accused him of cheating, just pointed out how much it looks like he is. I'm entirely open minded about all of this and I'm more than willing to be shown how he is not cheating. I'm ready with my "I owe this comic an apology" card at any time.

 The name of this thread, after all, is "Post Here If You Suspect A Comic Is Cheating".

My biggest unscratchable itch with this comic, is the seeming lack of a fanbase. If you dip into the other top 10 comics in the list, it's easy to find evidence of a real community behind each one. Large groups of people who've come together to support a comic they love. Some of them have fan sites, fan art, fan fic and of course, scores of threads where all the diehard fans discuss and argue about the finer points of the story/humour they all love or love to hate. This comic, however, seems to be devoid of that. Sure, there are a few people peppering the forums, and comments pages, but it all smells so empty for a comic as high up the list as his. Again, I'm not claiming any hard facts here, I'm just pointing out how odd it is. Couple this with how fast ROL shot up the ranks when it first appeared on the scene, not long ago, and it all gets very fishy.

But thank you Johnedwards. You've brought some good points to the table that I'll think about carefully.

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A D&D satire webcomic about... well... a buncha goblins.

I just wanted to comment that I do read this thread and modify TWC accordingly, mostly in making it more difficult for "bots" to vote, not for people to vote multiple times.  I "do" make it somewhat more difficult for some people to vote multiple times, if they don't know what they are doing, but the rest its just very difficult, and honestly not worth the trouble IMO.  I do want to make a system where if you're registered and logged in then your vote "weighs" more, but thats a different topic for another time.  The point is that its very difficult to block human cheaters, and its only marginally easier to block bot cheaters (if you've seen anything about google's problem with spambots lately then you can see TWC can't really compete when even Google can't stop them), but I read this thread and I try to change things around here and there so that at the very least I have to waste the various script kiddys time as much as it wastes mine. 

Ultimately the more difficult I make things for cheaters the more legitimate votes risk ending up getting lost. :(  So its a delicate balance, and once I get my new hard drive and my pc doesn't crash every hour of using it I'll spend a bit of time looking into changing things around again for the May reset.

Thanks everyone (and thanks Thunt for caring, Goblin is awesome!)

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

thunt - well, naturally there is no means of proving ANY webcomic is not cheating on TWC, even the "major" contenders that most people assume could manage to get that many votes. However, I do have a few suggestions of which I'm going to address to RichardM

RichardM - I was going to suggest using a similar script as the one talked about above for blocking proxy spam bots, however I see that you also don't want to block valid votes from people on public networks. So instead, I suggest a similar script that adds a little mark on any IP addresses that are behind a proxy. That way, the votes will still count and people can report webcomics that have an unnaturally high percentage of proxy users over non-proxy users.

As you know, it is not possible to completely change IP addresses since each network is assigned to a unique one, so the only way for a webcomic to cheat would be to vote on multiple networks or use proxies. Luckily, most standard proxies can be detected easily - unless the user paid good money to buy a secure proxy server, but those can cost hundreds of dollars for just 10-30 of them. And technically...voting on a different computer is valid. Plus no one in their right mind would vote 100+ times daily on 100+ computer networks.

I suspect "Goblins" of cheating. The updates are infrequent (I think there was one last month), and the artist is currently on a camping trip. Despite this, "Goblins" has shot up in the rankings with what I consider to be unnatural speed. I know that cheating is hard to prove, but at this point all I'm doing is expressing my suspicion. Thank you for your time.

http://goblinscomic.com/d/20050626.html

crazyman:

I suspect "Goblins" of cheating. The updates are infrequent (I think there was one last month), and the artist is currently on a camping trip. Despite this, "Goblins" has shot up in the rankings with what I consider to be unnatural speed. I know that cheating is hard to prove, but at this point all I'm doing is expressing my suspicion. Thank you for your time.

http://goblinscomic.com/d/20050626.html

Firstly, thank you for helping to keep this list as honest as possible. Allow me to respond to your suspicions...

 ~ The updates occur every 7 - 10 days. In the three years that Goblins has been online, I have never gone more than 14 days without updating. There has certainly been more than one update last month.

 ~ Yes, I have just returned from spending the weekend camping with my family. However, readers can still vote for Goblins even when I am away for the weekend.

 ~ Goblins has shot up the rankings in the past couple days because I have recently posted new pictures under the vote buttons. Goblins currently has roughly 150,000 to 200,000 regular readers and so when I do post new vote incentives, the comic spends two or three days moving up the list very quickly as many of those readers pop in the see the new pics. The speed is not at all "unnatural".

 ~ You are correct is saying that cheating is hard to prove, but in this case I am able to prove that I am legit. Anyone can check on the traffic that Goblins gets and see that its reader base fits that of a top 10 comic. Furthermore, the blog posts in which I mention that I have new incentives under the vote buttons can be traced to show that every spurt up the list is directly connected with those posts.

When I suspected a certain comic of cheating, I did research on that comic. I read through its forums, checked its total traffic and carefully compared its quality with other comics in the top ten. In the future, I would like to respectfully suggest that you do the same. Your post here shows that you have not given Goblins anymore than a cursory glance and as a result, have posted false statements and uneducated guesses about me and my comic. All of the information that I have given here to prove Goblins legitamecy is public and can be found out in a very short period of time with very little effort.

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A D&D satire webcomic about... well... a buncha goblins.

Heh.  Hey Thunt, hope you enjoyed your trip. 

Thanks for the post, even if it just gives someone who comes to this thread in the future some guidelines on what some of the first steps should be when suspsecting a comic.  Obviously Goblins has been on TWC for a long time and has a long history of immense traffic, thanks for your continued support. :D

 

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Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes