Alright, so the "Deleted Accounts" thing has been a problem for a while now. There are votes on articles out there that belong to users that have decided they want nothing to do with the site (or wikidot) by deleting their accounts. For most of us, it's just a small punt to our pride. One downvote doesn't mean that much, after all, does it?
Which brings me to the problem.
At first, I pretty much just Lol'd. After all… Seriously? You join and delete on the same day? How sad are you? And then Reject pointed something out.
Yes, but he upvoted my article in the ten seconds he was here, so it's okay.
Pffffffffff- What?!
Yeah, he did. Actually, he wrote a glowing review of it, too, it seems:
I like this idea a lot, but it does seem a bit rough as is. The issue that breaks it for me is the way most of the kids are basically parodies of disruptive children. I feel like this would be much more effective if the children were mostly normal kids, who just happened to have a few odd quirks. I think that would make the few that are completely unhinged much more intriguing. The issue with the triggers being so specific does bother me as well, but not quite as much. Still, this is a good enough idea that I'll upvote even before changes are made.
So, just for posterity, I took a look at the current votes on the article:
Page rated by:
Adam Smascher -
catwhowalksbyhimself -
Chocolate Chip +
Doktori +
DrBright -
Drewbear -
DrGuin -
ed_montague -
Grigori Rasputin -
Lumancer -
Metaphorphosis -
Salculd -
Scantron +
Shebleha -
spikebrennan +
Tabbyclaw -
TuomeyTombstone +
Tyber -
Voct +
(account deleted) +
(account deleted) +
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. That is correct. In the last two days (Reject's article is two days old currently), it had two, count 'em, two upvotes from accounts that were subsequently deleted.
I'll be honest. I have not yet done the work. I don't know how far these two accounts went or what else they voted on. What I do know is this: without an application, it is exceedingly easy for someone to create an account, vote, and delete the account. Within five or ten minutes, I could upvote/downvote every article written by someone (assuming they had an author page, to make it easy).
So, just as a quick stopgap, I'm proposing the following measure be added to the deletions guide:
Votes from accounts which have been deleted will not be factored into the rating of a article for the purposes of deletion. For example, an article which is at -4 that has two upvotes from deleted accounts would be eligible for deletion. Likewise, an article at -6 that has two downvotes from deleted accounts would not be eligible for deletion.
This should serve to stop the issue of dealing with people upvoting to keep their articles alive…
But there are still other problems, such as:
- Inflating the rating of an article.
- Deflating the rating of an article.
Inflating articles… I'm honestly not worried about. Well rated articles are usually fine. The worst that could happen is pushing something higher on the "Top Rated Articles" list. Deflating is a problem, one that I believe Bright has dealt with in the past. While previously, it was just an answer to dealing with one person…
Now, there is the possibility for a mass attack on a single article. And I honestly can't think of a way to deal with it, other than making it a pain for people to join via the application process. And I don't want to do that.
So, all. Thoughts?
"WELL FOUNDATION. YOU MADE IT SO EASY. SO VERY VERY EASY." - dimensionpotato
