As I write this, I think we have our first serious case of abuse.
bandgeek has entered 53 bills. Trevor has received 52 hits.
All hits were generated 13 hours after Trevor entered them… and he has a hit % of 61!
As I said, they are still being entered right now. Be interesting to see when, and where, they stop!
Looks like he's gone to bed now, his final hit percentage is 70.7965 %
And his first page of hits are DDD1**567, EEE, FFF, GGG…
He also wants to join a team because My dad is a treasurer at our church, and marks alot of bills.
I won't even go there.
Don't worry. DR will blow these guys away pretty quick…
DR will blow these guys away pretty quick…
Of course he will. But it will take time that would have been more constructively used on the new version.
I think we are always going to have people who abuse the site. I'm not condoning it, it's just a fact of life.
Maybe DR could make a couple of us 'scrutineers' so we could do a little policing. A few guidelines and a password…
Ya, I'm not sure what we can do there. Again, I will have to have a think about how to handle this stuff. So far there has been very little abuse of this kind. :(
-dr
Further to my last, what are your thoughts on this idea? I was thinking that I would perhaps impose a daily input limit for new users, say 5 or 10 bills (I'm leaning towards 5). This limit would remain until the user had been around for a while and had proven themselves. Then the limit would increase, perhaps to a couple of levels, until finally they would have an unlimited entry count. And they couldn't get to that unlimited entry level until they had a certain number of bills. I think this will work for most new users, especially since only 10% ever stick around and enter more than the one "hit" bill that they found. And that way, the most that someone could enter in a 24 hour period would be twice the limit assuming they entered the limit before midnight and then the limit again right after midnight.
And on the note of fake serial numbers, that is solved in the new version by checking a list of prefixes (supplied by MmmBeer) versus the valid denomination/series.
Please let me know your thoughts. And think about how you would feel as a new user if you were limited to only 5 bills when you had first come here.
Thanks gang,
-dr
I think I would have been gone had I only been able to enter 5 bills a day for a couple of weeks. However, to stop this abuse, I think its a good idea. The person could always email to have the number incresed after dr looked at the account.
Q: when does a person go up on the scale? Ive entered over 500 bills, 16 hits and I'm still a newbie? I feel so low on the feeding chain!
Heh, I need to manually run the update script (which will happen automatically on a semi-regular basis in the new version). I just ran it now, and voila! You are now a 'Senior Newbie'… :)
-dr
I don,t like the idea of limiting new users to a number of bills per day as it may affect people who are gung ho. It seems to me, someone will notice an abuser as they do things that alert regular users. This being said I will live with the decision of DR. as he is the one that gets to do all the work…
It's not some much being alerted to the abuser; the problem is repairing what's been done. It took me 45 minutes or so this morning to remove all of the obviously fake hits/entries and briefly look over the other entries. As Pooga said, this is wasted time. Especially in that it could be used to work on the new version.
Worth looking at is the fact that when ordered by the number of bills entered, the person in 100th has only entered in 30 bills total. And the person in 200th has only entered 6 bills. So 5% of users have entered in 30 or more bills, and only 10% have entered in more than 5.
I agree (and am worried) that putting a cap on the number of entries a new user can enter in one day may scare some people off, but if after blowing their daily quota they see a nice screen explaining why, I think that they will understand and simply come back the next day. If they get hooked after 5 bills and come back, then cool, that is the kind of peorson that we want. If they get mad and say "this sux" and never come back again, I contend that we probably don't want that person anyway. And while we want others to share in the fun this site has to offer, the enjoyment is the same whether we have 50 good users or 50,000 good users. So long as they are "good" users like we have right now.
-dr
I don't think Bob would have liked this at all.
Some sign-up just to spam, there haven't been many thankfully. Its also good that we haven't seen any hackers to spoil this site, lets keep our fingers crossed.
So 5% of users have entered in 30 or more bills, and only 10% have entered in more than 5.
There seems to be a lot of zero entry, 1 entry, less than 5 entry users, why not drop them if they haven't logged on in a while? We send them an email suggesting they log on and enter a bill, if they don't within a certain time, their account is deleted. Then again you may want to keep these superfluous users just to say we have X number of users at this site. (Now I know I'm rambling but bear with me)….or keep them but as INACTIVE USERS. I don't know, just a thought.
why not drop them if they haven't logged on in a while?
The reason we don't want to drop them is that they may want to be notified still when one of the bills they entered in a long time ago gets hit. Having the users there doesn't really hurt anything except the "average statistics" on the stats page. So for now, I think we'll keep all users.
And as for Bob The Great not liking that, well as I said in a previous message, if Bob is the kind of person that we want here, then I think he would have understood. This site is no fun if I spend all my time administering bad input and if most of the bills/hits entered are fake. So far, we've been fine with both. And I'm trying to come up with a fair solution that will be a good trade off between usability/friendliness and administration.
-dr
Yeah, I wouldn't have had a problem with a limit of 5 bills to enter each day. Especially if a screen came up telling me why.
Of course, I rarely had more than five bills at one time, anyway. I say 5 is a good number… those with hundreds of bills to enter can maybe spare the time and have the patience to only do 5 a day for a while… I dunno…
i like the idea of maybe 10 bills a day, only because i was one of the few who started out then went nuts entering bills.
If I had to stick around entering 5 bills a day for 2 weeks or something, i just wouldnt have entered as many bills as i had at first, and chances are I would have left because I would have had lists of bills that I couldnt enter.
But Im not a newbie anymore, so it doesnt really affect me, and I do see a need for some kind of change.
Ya ok, 5 bills and a screen to explain why. This should give those with serious intent a chance to get a stamp, if they have a bundle to enter then dr would give them an exception.
I didn't realise keeping the more inactive users was no problem at all, I too got discouraged after a while with no hits (months) and came back after my first one.
At first blush, I was against any limit for new members, but this might be the only way to control this kind of abuse. My vote is for a limit for newbies for a limited time, say a month or so, and then increase their limit. There are a couple of times when I have broken the rules out of ignorance (or stupidity), but what these characters did was blatent cheating. Maybe, if you get caught bending the rules, existing members could get 'put on probation' for a month too…
Another idea is to make new people who set up their profiles read the rules first, (like when you buy software and they make you read the licence agreement and then press 'agree') before they can continue. Then, if they obviously cheat, like these guys, I would be inclined to ban them permanently.
Incidentally, I notice that users of the other site spend a lot of time accusing each other of this kind of stuff.
Hey DR;
That thing you do to ID a users computer…I forget the terminology…why not check the abusers ID, then check with Hank at the Dark Site to see if it is a user/abuser from over there?
notice that users of the other site spend a lot of time accusing each other of this kind of stuff.
We've been fortunate. Except for the odd bill that's gone to 'Hit Hell', this is the first instance of a serious abuse. But it was pretty obvious!
a limit for newbies for a limited time, say a month or so, and then increase their limit.
In this case, it would not have worked. Trevor joined in February. He had already entered about 70 in that time, so he would have had no limit on him 4 months later.
Tough call either way. I'm still mulling over the possibilities.
Still another one, same person.
ID # 156246
Ah yes, now that's interesting!
Remember we discussed that particular bill before.
<a href= http://www.cdn-money.com/cdnmoney/servlet/cmtViewBill?ID=156246>156246</a>
Now for an opinion from me…
I don't care. I've been on a year and it doesn't effect me. As long as he/she can enter one of my bills to get a hit for me, i'm there for happy.
But I think that message appearing saying "bla, bla," will be ok, maybe a link to an application screen to get off the minumum period list sent to Dr.
Maybe a page saying to write down all bills in the period of the 2 weeks, order a stamp, and get ready for craziness, etc. after a user signs up??
I just say that dr could have, yes, been uploading the new version today, but the 5 bill deal wouldn't stop Annon user abuse. I know on WG that if you enter a bill like 1234567, or 9999999 a screen pops up saying that you couldn't possibly have that bill, contAct site admin. Possibly a system like that?
Anyway, have a nice evening
MmmBeer: That's not a bad idea, except then we get people putting in random numbered bills that are fake. I prefer that if someone if going to do it, that they do it with the easy route that most people take: 1234567, 1111111, etc… as they are easier to spot.
Idjit: The problem with banning users is that right now, there is no verification of the users email or anything like that. Which means that while I could "banish" a username, they could simply create a new user. But even if I did verify email addresses; it's not that hard to create a new address on Hotmail(tm).
Sarge: The problem with banning a user based on their IP address is that dial-up (and even cable modem) users share a "pool" of addresses. So, for example, an abuser may have the same ISP as 3 valid users and thus, if they happened to log on with that IP, they would would not have access. There are some way around that but would required more programming than a limit.
Pooga: Ya, I like that most of the complaints about potential fake hits come to me via email; it keeps the forum messages to relavant stuff. I'm hoping to pawn some of the "checking for fakes" stuff on to my Evangelists at some point once I write the code to automate it via the web. Hint hint, looking for volunteers, hint hint. As for this latest case, he actually only entered 23 bills over 2 days and then disappeared (per se) for a little over 2 months. So I'm thinking that in order to increase the limit, the user has to meet several criteria; perhaps based on number of bills entered, number of days entering bills, time since registering, etc… and it wouldn't be automatic. The user would have to send an email requesting that their bill entering limit be looked at, similar to asking VISA for a credit limit increase (heh, how's that for an analogy?). At that point, myself or one of my helpers would then look at each user on a case by case basis and raise their limit accordingly.
-dr
Yeah, DR's right- for now the best defense against abuse is scrutiny… I know that DR keeps an eye on this stuff, but Pooga was right on top of this one as soon as it happened too… Way to go P.
I am a relatively New User, and I would find no problem with the limitations that you have suggested. To date I have just over 20 Bills entered and I have been on about a month. I think it is important to keep things fun, and by people cheating it can ruin that. You have a good idea.
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