Pretty much every Web site has run a poll now and then. Why, even we run 'em. But what's to keep the polls from being rigged? Normally, it's the relative trivialness of their questions. Still, it's interesting to read What's wrong with Wales: Culturenet: not quite right - an interview with the former IT manager of a Welsh government Web site about a poll it ran to define "100 Welsh heroes:"
... Voting went on throughout the week but the figures on the website were normally updated only once a week - usually on Monday afternoons. Obviously, that schedule was created so that we could spend each Monday morning fiddling the figures before publication.Back to Compendium
I was asked to sort out a way of fixing the votes so I wrote a program to adjust the week's pending votes by a percentage or an amount agreed with other staff. So that we wouldn't arouse too much suspicion, the program could add imaginary votes across the board to the 100 nominees and then we could adjust up or down selected nominations.
For example, if legitimate votes over a week for Phil Campbell of Motorhead had pushed him into a leading position then instead of discounting too many of the votes and alerting his fans to our fiddle we could discount some and increase everyone else's by a sufficient amount to keep him in a lower position.
When we were content with the numbers - and that would be a Marketing call - we'd update the website. ...
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