Comments on: Now let’s be fair :)

By: Tony Hirst

Tony Hirst — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:06:20 +0000

Keep up, keep up…

This post is deprecated, I think, err, maybe till there’s another one…

“Another day of people deleting cookies and voting hundreds (in one case thousands!) of times has led to us having to limit all polls to one vote per IP.

Unfortunately this means that if you are on a network – as many schools are – which shares an IP address, then you don’t get to vote (if someone else has) until you get home onto your own net connection.”

http://edublogawards.com/institutional-voting-now-not-possible/

By: » Love your teacher a bit too much? The Edublog Awards

» Love your teacher a bit too much? The Edublog Awards — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:16:32 +0000

[...] it looks like having your votes deleted doesn’t deter the mass voters. [...]

By: Stacy

Stacy — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:37:59 +0000

I am incredibly abashed if it is my students causing this problem. Bellsouth.net sounds like my area. I don’t understand what you mean by they are voting with different ip addresses. They would all be voting from their homes (not an institution). I don’t know any of them to be that computer savvy to be hacking the system in any way.

I’ve posted a notice on our blog for them to stop voting immediately. I certainly want things to be fair and am again quite disturbed if it is my students causing this problem. We’ve worked too hard on our blog for it to be tainted with a negative image. Please inform me if there is anything else I can do to remedy the situation. We really are greatly honored (maybe too much so) to be nominated.

By: James

James — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:01:58 +0000

If that institution only uses the one IP address then a limit of 50 votes from that IP shouldn’t be too much of an issue (as it shouldn’t be too much of a big institution)… if you can think of a fairer way to handle mass voting I’m all ears.

By: Tony Hirst

Tony Hirst — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:56:05 +0000

So what happens if a blog actually has a wide reach within an institution and plays a role in “local” knowledge dissemination?

tony

By: Arthus Erea

Arthus Erea — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:39:57 +0000

touché

I agree, it’s fine to be “innovative” but it’s still important to keep things fair, and judge edublogs based upon actually blogging skill rather than computer skill.

By: James

James — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:36:27 +0000

I wouldn’t call it cheating – I’d most likely do the same :) This is just to keep things fair and in a decent spirit.

By: Arthus Erea

Arthus Erea — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:33:07 +0000

Ah.. much fairer. Thanks for clarifying!

It is unfortunate that some would feel the need to cheat in order to win an award… even with no cash incentive. (They must be good teachers though, if their IT students are that dedicated to make a program. :))

By: James

James — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:29:39 +0000

Please see the extra detail now in the post.

We’ve had to wipe hundreds and hundreds of votes already!

By: Arthus Erea

Arthus Erea — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:23:35 +0000

What about those of us who just asked the people in your local network to vote for them?
My school network has a single IP address, and I asked a bunch of my more intelligent peers who read my blog to vote for me. It will appear as a single person but in effect is multiple people voting from the same LAN.

Since this is an education award… shouldn’t we be sensetive to school systems?

(Of course, just noticed that you didn’t cut off my votes… guess you understand :))