My subreddit is a challenge/competition group that votes for the best submission every week. As mod, I need to be able to see the actual upvote count so I can pick a winner. Is there a way for me to make sure I'm seeing only the real upvote/downvote count?
Posted Jan 20, 2011, 9:19 PM UTC
reddit was not designed for polling. Your best bet is to use an external polling service.
ok, thank you
GreaseMonkey + Reddit Enhancement Suite.
1 I have chrome so I don't need GreseMonkey
2 I already have RES
3 RES just mirrors the up-down vote count that is already visible on the top right of every post's page
Okay, okay...I was just brainstorming, no need to slap me around with your awesomeness.
Hmm. So am I learning today that the top right corner section that list the upvotes and downvotes isn't an accurate count of real upvotes? I didn't know that!
There's a fudge factor added to those counts as an anti-cheating measure. It makes it harder to determine if a vote was counted normally or if the anti-cheating measures counteracted the vote.
Maybe a CSS hack that disable the downvote arrow ? Several subreddit have that. (don't remember which)
I don't think that'll affect the scrambling reddit does to votes, to disable spam bots. However, according to jedburg, no matter what, the difference ( up - down = x ) is always correct... so you can use that as the top.
this is true however I am trying to count only the upvotes. We have a policy that one should not downvote if they dislike something so we don't count them
Ah, well I guess removing the down arrows would do something, at least... but if people are following your rules, the difference will still be correct (and even if they aren't following the rules!).
Can you elaborate on that statement? I am curious.
The way jedberg explains it, the numbers are fuzzed to prevent spambots from knowing if their upvotes counted (allowing shadowbans to be effective) and hampering their usefulness.
I can't find the exact comment, but it was confirmed, however, that the total karma a post receives is the true karma value... just the upvote/downvote totals and ratio are skewed to confuzzle the bots.
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Use an external poll.
Those numbers are fuzzed, and you cannot unfuzz them. Hiding the downvote arrow still won't help, and even worse is that the people who do downvote it will throw off the only legitimate number, the difference between up and downvotes (which is still hardly 'legitimate', but it is close)
Any suggestions?
I've seen people make polls using Google Docs? But there is probably an easier way.
Just make sure you don't make the same mistake I saw another Redditor make when he made a poll for Reddit, then realized after it was done polling that the company wanted him to pay them for the actual results.
this. Reddit is too easy to game. Worse (for your purposes): the antispam algorithms alter the up/down vote counts.