Yes, I corrected the issue.  During the recent proxy voter issue (which I've known about but its a pain to stop), I added in additional tracking code.  The site checks a variety of different parameters of each request now, including the TCP headers, and one guy (which may have been Makeshift theatre brigade or may have been a fan) had a header 3 times the size of a normal header, and I hadn't compensated for it.  So the system never tracked the guy's IP but still voted for him and he realized it and set up a macro to continually vote.  He was only able to do this for 1 day, due to noneedforbushido's quick e-mail to me. 

I closed up 6 possible holes today, just in case, and I'm writing additional code to help block proxies.  This will, unfortunately, mean that those the system thinks are cheating will need to answer a short question in order to continue, but hopefully that will be few and far between.

 

Thanks everyone,

---

Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

Okay, here's the deal...I didn't cheat. Well, actually...I'll tell you. I was at work the whole time. It was my wife having a ball here at home. See, there's a thing called networking. You know...people know people who know more people. Yeah, it's called Myspace.com, a few AOL and Yahoo chat rooms. I call it...thinking outside the crowd webcomics usually pander to. Would I have stayed a No. 1 for more than a couple of minutes or hours? Probably not...but, to me that's not the issue I'm concerned with. I'm proud of her working her ass off from nine in the morning to six something at night to do it. What I have problems with are two small things. The fact that she worked hard to do that in one day and you call it cheating...and the fact that the comics at the top don't seem to change all that often. In all do respect...I've read the ones in the top ten...and to me...they weren't that good. Do they deserve the positions at the top, I'd say...quality aside...yeah...hell, if I had a fan base that big I'd probably be on top all day long too. But, what I find disturbing is that...through the magic of persistant email, bulletins and chat...my wife was able to crack that glass ceiling and people freaked out about it. Look, if you suck at marketing or finding an audience...that's not my problem. If you are hoping just word of mouth is going to shoot you up those charts...you're dreaming. Branch out! I try working the punk, alter, metal head crowd...I'm on a few of their boards as well. From what I see most of the people complaining are not so much pissed that my comic cracked number one but, that their's didn't. In reality, I wouldn't know how to cheat if I could. The last macro I ever heard about was in EQ, but, I could never do one. Hell, someone else does the html work on my site (Thank you Mr. Frandsen). As for I.P.'s and junk matching or being networked...hey, she worked a pretty broad spectrum of people...and if some did get a bit overzealous, that's not my problem either. Look at the top five on the list...they get like eleven grand a day, apparently...and no one complains about that. I have no auto voters or other such nonsense...the most technical wrong doing I can be accused of is having a pirated version Paintshop and I burn copyrighted dvd's. This whole thing was my brilliant wife's boredom turned into a game of trying to see my comic at the top of the list. If it fractured what tiny esteem you have in artistic ability or self...seek professional help. I think it's hysterical that folks stare at this list all day and would play witness to her work. I'm extremely proud of her. As for the rest of everyone...she made it to number one! I'd say that's damn good advertising. I know there will be an ass load of whiners after my whole speel here and that's to be expected...but, I have a word of advice for you...take the time you'd be spending whining about this and start promoting. It works.

As for this bit of nonsense...a rebuttal. First and foremost...I put the Theatre in The Makeshift Theatre Brigade because I like Mystery Science Theater 3000...not 8-Bit. Actually, I didn't find out about 8-Bit Theater until after I started my comic. I think it sucks personally. Albeit, the writing is good...I can't stand sprite comics. Is my comic a sprite comic? No. It's basically a talking head comic...not much movement and I sure as hell don't use sprites. See, I tend to go against all this nonsense most comics have cluttering up their sites. I have a guestbook for the hell of it. I get and keep fans by personal interaction with them on THEIR forums. Plus, this comic thing is a hobby I love doing, so, if someone is willing to take the time out to like it...why not get cool with them too. Cheers.

I thoroughly applaud her for doing what she can to get your comic to the top. 

We have only one restriction on whether a vote is valid or not.  We want one vote per person per day.  How do we make sure its only 1 vote per person? 

Well, obviously there is no sure-fire way.  So we restrict it by IP address.  Due to a mal-formed browser agent and combined with a new security monitor, one's person browser wasn't being tracked when they vote, so they could vote an unlimited amount of times. 

Is it cheating if they vote 10,000 times? maybe, maybe not.  All I did was remove all the extra votes, close up the mal-formed browser bug hole, and let it go.  I didn't take the comic off the list, I didn't chastise people for cheating, and I welcome the fact that people care enough to even try to do stuff like this. :)

Ok, A valid point has come up though.  The top 10 is fairly static.  So what do we do about it?  Do we retire comics like Buzz does after 3 months?  Personally I don't think so, I'm very comfortable with a few regular comics with large communities being in the top 10. 

What I'd like to do is to emphasize alternate ways to expose comics that deserve to be seen.  I'm reworking dndorks.com in asp.net 2.0, then I'm going to be reworking topwebcomics.com in 2.0 and at the same time I'll be planning out some things for TWC.  TWC is very shallow right now, in the future it will be more comprehensive, while not taking away from the basic idea of a ranked comic list.

If people want to post their ideas here, I welcome them.

---

Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

The problem is when a comic gets more votes than total visits. There is nothing wrong with asking for votes, but isn't increasing a sites popularity the point in 10 ten lists to begin with? I don't see the benefit it getting a lot of people to vote if they're not even going to read the comic (as seems to be the case based on the hit count vs vote count at the time.

As for the qualityof the comics on the 10 ten, to each their own.

-Joe

"Cyanide and Happiness" ok, this comic has been a good 10 or 20 spaces away from even rank ten, for the longest time. Now it suddenly magically has an enormous lead? Something smells fishy

Could just be doing a good job of getting the fan base to vote. I know if only 25% of all my readers voted, I'd be snuggly in 1st place. Asking fans to vote WITHIN the context of the comic can do a lot to get those readers to make that extra effort. It could be cheating, but I'm guessing we're just seeing a vote spike due to mentioning it in the comic, which is allowed.

-Joe

Thats my opinion as well.  I do know someone was cheating for C&H before, but based purely on percentages it was such a small number that even if I had only removed the ones I was "sure" were false, they still would have been #2 or #3.  Combine the normal amount of votes they can have with an increased number of votes from their newest gimmick with the last panel being an incentive and you can easily explain why they are #1 right now. 

For the record 2 other webcomics had a bot cheating last weekend as well, but just like I'm not accusing C&H of directly cheating (I'm accusing one of their fans), I'm not accusing the 2 other webcomics, I assume they are overzealous fans with a bit too much scripting knowledge. 

What I have to wonder is where are they getting their proxy lists from?   Finding that many proxy servers with open SOCKS ports is pretty nuts, unless they are just stripping mass amounts of lists off of the net and brute forcing (most of the proxies go bad very quickly because admin's realize whats going on and block the port).  I was using a port scanner to go through the logs and find the proxy servers, and there were quite a few.  I didn't want to start a war with them attacking me for port scanning them and then us having to attack them back to retaliate or anything so I stopped (some people get really antsy about people port scanning them). 

So if you were port scanned by my IP, and see this message, don't start a hacking war with me I was just investigating people bouncing votes off of proxy servers... ;)

---

Richard M.
Grimfang
"Whisper"
Xaeraes

their votes for this month is only slightly lower than their total votes, and they've been on the toplist for a good while. Also, have you seen their comic? It's crap.

I reviewed the site Cyanide and Happiness from the very first comic to their latest one.

It has some interesting moments but from my past experince with webcomics there is no way this comic could muster that many votes in such a short time based on the quality of their work.

There must be something you overlooked or failed to find.

Is it possible for one to use zombie computers to give false votes controlled by one person?

If there is a will there is a way.

Kind regards,

Arieswar.

I say sit back and see what happens. If it is cheating, the numbers will remain unusually high. If it's a good marketing ploy, votes will begin to drop off. People only respond to such requests for so long.

-Joe

I wouldn't call it a "good" marketing ploy, either. Making your readers vote if they wanna see the final panel of a comic is way lame. But even so, I dont think they even HAVE that many readers.

Unfortunately, they seem to be part of a larger site, so I can't get an accurate Alexa ranking, but the Alexa ranking for Explosm.net  is 27,000... that's a really good ranking.

-Joe

they advertise 250,000 fans, and 1 million hits a week.

What's twc about? A popularity contest for a larger site with flash vids and such, or a site for WEBCOMICS? And if they're really so popular, why were they ranked so LOW in the past on twc?

Isn't against the rules to be popular for reasons other than comics.

I do question the number of votes considering I can't find the vote button on their site... but I might be missing it. -Joe