Hi, all!
Much to my dismay, I recently discovered that a member has been, wittingly or unwittingly, manipulating photo rankings in the Top 10 by artificially boosting one metric that contributes to these rankings. As a result, a couple of photos lingered in the Top 10 far longer than they would have otherwise. The good news is: this person has been warned, and the situation has been remedied.
To clarify: there's no rule against loving someone else's images and looking at or liking them. In fact, we encourage that sort of healthy activity! 
And there's nothing wrong with external traffic from another site driving up a photo's rankings, and keeping it in the Top 10 for a while, as has happened a few times in the past. But when one person from one IP address tampers with the system to give someone else an unfair advantage, that's another story completely.
I never thought I would have to state the obvious here, but evidently I do: any gaming of trending algorithms on the site is strictly prohibited. If I find a member doing this, that person will be given the benefit of the doubt once (i.e., one warning). But any repeated offenses will lead to removal from the site. I will also remove the affected photos out of fairness to others.
There are a number of very good reasons why I prohibit this activity:
- First and foremost, it's unfair to other members who deserved a Top 10 spot, but didn't get one because someone was artificially driving up activity on another photo.
- It generates trouble reports (as it did in this case), which I must investigate - and that takes up my valuable time.
- It can cost me hard-earned cash to investigate some of these issues; in this case, I spent a few hundred dollars to verify the source of this traffic. Clearly, this money could have been better spent on more constructive things on the site. And, last but not least . . .
- Members, myself included, tire of seeing the same images in the Top 10 every day and every week; it discourages others from contributing, which in turn drives down overall activity levels and advertising revenue on the site.
Please remember that I started the Top 10 and our Saturday Spotlights in order to celebrate a diverse array of members' contributions that have legitimately earned bragging rights. I never intended them to turn into competitions that members would manipulate to give friends or someone else an unfair advantage. (BTW, it's impossible to manipulate your own stats.)
Please be aware that I have visibility into all activity on the site, and I do monitor for this type of activity on a regular basis. It's unfortunate that I need to spend time on such things, but it's extremely important to me that people have faith in the integrity of our site and systems.
At any rate, our integrity remains intact! Thank you to the vast majority of you who make sure of this every day!
Any questions? Please leave them below.
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