Project One Clarification

Gkam84 wrote:

Oh don't tell me it was one of my tweets?

No, it was the dickhead from Trek rattling on about 'vote doping', 'nefarious activity' and banning 'offenders'. My friends and family have been following this competition as well as my colleagues at work and now I have been publicly branded a cheat! Fuck Trek UK!

The more I think about this, the more ridiculous it becomes. Are 'vote doping' and 'nefarious activity' only against the rules when they are for yourself?

Maybe, I should put my computer skills to support one of the minnows? Or will that 'innocent' person be banned for having not attracted the right kind of support.

This is sheer idiocy. If road.cc / Trek UK have any sense they should freeze the competition right now and take legal advice about the mess they have got themselves into and how to go forward from here.

And while this disaster unfolds, still not a public word to explain the inexplicable from the road.cc team ....

si.brown wrote:

Having said all of this I intend to keep voting for myself, and encouraging others to do so, as I don't trust the organisers to act fairly and am assuming that the winner will still be the design with the "most" votes (although based on this evening that's whoever the organisers want it to be).

My apologies if anyone feels I've "cheated" or have undermined the spirit of the competition.

None of the contestants are to blame for this fiasco. The rules were not thought about and defined clearly enough to promote fair play. The obvious intention was to generate multiple hits but the consequences of this free-for-all should have been foreseen by any Internet savvy professional.

As people raised concerns about what is acceptable, no clarifications were forthcoming.

Now it is announced on Trek UK Twitter yesterday?!!! that 'vote dopers' have been banned but no announcement on this site and in the last 15 minutes I have cast a vote for all twenty five bikes ....

Unless, I see significant voting action, I am calling a ceasefire tonight. My blood pressure must be through the roof. Hopefully things will have been clarified by the morning, although I shan't hold my breath ...

Gkam84 wrote:

So I just had a look this morning, it is a two horse race....between one which had dodgy votes and one which had dodgy votes....

Yeah, putting aside the morals of multiple voting for a moment, it's strange how most people had a huge number of votes removed and yet others find themselves 1000 votes ahead!

jason.timothy.jones wrote:

This has gone past being sad now.

Apparently it is about the bike

Apparently not. It is about Trek marketing the whole Project One process to women in the run up to Spring when traditionally people buy new bikes, with the help of road.cc.

Gkam84 wrote:

There is only going to be one winner of the bike in my opinion, no matter what happens, she's won it

I don't disagree.

Gkam84 wrote:

No the competition was for a bike and ONLY bike, for ONE winner, no runners up, no splitting of the prize pot

Yes I accept that was the original intention and in an ideal world, where all the voting had taken place with everyone on a level playing field, it would work.
But with suspicions of a unfair result, all trust has since disappeared.

andyp wrote:

...But as it is I can just see a whole lot of greed. Which isn't particularly becoming.

Almost, but not entirely. Some talked about donating the bike to charity and I've publicly stated elsewhere that if I won, the proceeds from the sale of my current bike (a 2013 Spzd Tarmac) would go to Kidney Research UK.

My mother has zero IT skills and she could still vote over and over again for my design thanks to the useless voting mechanism.

Where do you draw the line?

How do you define "regularly" when referring to friends voting? How regular is too regular and will result in votes being deleted?

Why have some entrants been stripped of hundreds of votes (admittedly gained through repeat voting) whilst others (also blatantly using the same tactic) remain 1000 votes ahead?

Why couldn't a simple, robust voting mechanism be used in the first place which would have avoided so much confusion and frustration?!!

Too many questions for what should have been a fun, exciting and fair competition.

No. That was it. We aren't releasing something in addition to Tony's comments.

*** deleted

Gkam84 wrote:

GoingRoundInCycles wrote:

PS Good luck to Juliet Elliott. She will be a very worthy winner.

Really? This was why I started the thread, after reading comments on social media about voting on her bike.

I must say, it was nothing as far as I could work out to do Juliet herself. But her bike was receiving artificial votes.

The comment and instructions have since been deleted from the offenders facebook and I didn't take a screenshot at the time.

Comments about the same people voting again? Not sure what you mean.

GoingRoundInCycles wrote:

And while this disaster unfolds, still not a public word to explain the inexplicable from the road.cc team ....

CompetitionRules wrote:

No correspondence will be entered into.

True to their word.

gregww1 wrote:

Gkam84 wrote:

There is only going to be one winner of the bike in my opinion, no matter what happens, she's won it

I don't disagree.

From all that has happened so far, there is no other conclusion in my opinion either!
I would prefer it if the 'competition' was void and each of the shortlisted entries was given the same equal prize instead, say a choice of goods or a gift voucher to the value of £128.00. (£3200/25 = £128.00 each).
Also when the competition was launched, I thought it a bit strange that there was not any runner-up prizes, you would expect something for the top three at least!

si.brown wrote:

My mother has zero IT skills and she could still vote over and over again for my design thanks to the useless voting mechanism.

Where do you draw the line?

This +100000000

Quote:

How do you define "regularly" when referring to friends voting? How regular is too regular and will result in votes being deleted?

Why have some entrants been stripped of hundreds of votes (admittedly gained through repeat voting) whilst others (also blatantly using the same tactic) remain 1000 votes ahead?

It is still happening today. I have had votes removed today using the same exact method to vote for Juliet Elliott and other contestants who have had no votes removed. Si, my advice to you is if you can say hand on heart that every vote that you gained to the best of your knowledge was by someone going to the competition web page and physically clicking on the like button ... take legal advice about the mass deletion of your votes. You haven't broken any of the published rules governing the operation of this 'competition'.

Quote:

The British Code of Advertising, Sale Promotion and Direct Marketing (known as 'the CAP Code') sets out certain additional rules which should be followed when running prize promotions ....

In addition to the general principles that advertising must be legal, decent, honest and truthful, the CAP Code requires that the following information is given to consumers before or at the time of entry into the prize promotion:

....

.....

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any geographical, personal or technological restrictions (eg location, age, or the need to have access to the internet);

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....

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http://www.out-law.com/page-6780

Any technological restrictions such as choice of browser, proxies etc should have been clearly stated before the vote was opened. You cannot run a public competition for a prize worth thousands and make it up as you go along.

Did anyone at road.cc or Trek UK get legal advice before running this shambles? If so, get your money back.

Quote:

Why couldn't a simple, robust voting mechanism be used in the first place which would have avoided so much confusion and frustration?!!

Too many questions for what should have been a fun, exciting and fair competition.

All the right questions, IMO.

neildmoss wrote:

GoingRoundInCycles wrote:

And while this disaster unfolds, still not a public word to explain the inexplicable from the road.cc team ....

CompetitionRules wrote:

No correspondence will be entered into.

True to their word.

Not entirely true to their word, some competitors are deemed worthy of a reply to their concerns about the operation of this 'competition', concerns I raised on the 12th February and have yet to receive a reply .....

Deleted

Gkam84 wrote:

GoingRoundInCycles wrote:

PS Good luck to Juliet Elliott. She will be a very worthy winner.

Really? This was why I started the thread, after reading comments on social media about voting on her bike.

I must say, it was nothing as far as I could work out to do Juliet herself. But her bike was receiving artificial votes.

The comment and instructions have since been deleted from the offenders facebook and I didn't take a screenshot at the time.

Comments about the same people voting again? Not sure what you mean.

Gkam84 wrote:

GoingRoundInCycles wrote:

PS Good luck to Juliet Elliott. She will be a very worthy winner.

Really? This was why I started the thread, after reading comments on social media about voting on her bike.

I must say, it was nothing as far as I could work out to do Juliet herself. But her bike was receiving artificial votes.

The comment and instructions have since been deleted from the offenders facebook and I didn't take a screenshot at the time.

One can never know but the pattern of voting in her case didn't seem particularly dodgy to me. She has a large following on social media so it was to be expected that there would be an initial surge of votes for her. She is also very photogenic and will be good for publicity for Trek and women's cycling.

Individuals are unpredictable but people aren't. You can quite easily predict group behaviour which is why for example election results can be called pretty accurately after relatively few constituents ballots have been counted. You get the odd anomalous seat but the overall patterns are very clear from very early on.

What happened after the initial surge on the first day was that everyone's votes slowed to a steady trickle relative to their place in the pecking order. I was consistently running 7th or 8th keeping company with the purple bike and the blue bike with flames.

When somebody doubles their vote in one hour after two days of steadily declining voting, there can only be one explanation ... that person is voting multiple times for him/herself. You cannot cajole all of your friends and family to vote en masse in such a short space of time. It doesn't happen.

The person in question has now stopped playing possum and freely admits that he voted multiple times by removing the wireless dongle to reset his IP address. Frankly, whether or not he did this via such a crude method or by more sophisticated means, the crucial point that has not been answered by any of the organisers is where do you draw the line? Is voting once at home, again on your iPad, again on your mobile phone, again on your work computer, again in the library on your way home .. all in the same day, is that allowed?

How about connecting to the road.cc site using proxy services to register hundreds of votes? Is that allowed? Is it just a question of quantity and if so exactly ... above a certain amount per day/hour you are 'vote doping'. This is preposterous and making up the rules as you go along, which is not legal in a public competition.

I am absolutely furious and more and more minded to take legal advice about the whole matter. I have effectively been called a cheat, when I have not broken any rules because as far as I can see, there weren't any rules to break!

What are the rules? Even in my initial email to the editor, I made no reference to cheating but speculated that the extreme multiple voting that was going on was not in the spirit of fair play. That was the time when clarification should have been given.

Now the bizarre decision to freeze the votes of some of the contestants and not others ... on what basis? This whole competition is a laughable shambles.

The irony is I quite enjoyed the process of Project One and was seriously considering a custom Domane 6 but I wouldn't touch the brand with a bargepole after what has happened.

Thanks for the tip on print screening ... I am off to capture that libellous tweet ....

Gkam84 wrote:

So I just had a look this morning, it is a two horse race....between one which had dodgy votes and one which had dodgy votes....

Is this still a competition?

Is anybody clearer about what exactly is meant by "vote doping"?

Is anyone from road.cc or Trek UK out there?

Gkam84, I take it back. I think you were right all along that there was only ever supposed to be one winner of this 'competition' and when you understand that, and understand the motivation, everything from the selection process for the shortlist onwards makes perfect sense.

I would love to say more but as I am sure my lawyer will advise me, "No correspondence will be entered into" on this subject until the end of the 'competition'.

Gkam84 wrote:

Trek, I guess in conjunction with Road.cc are working on a solution and statement.

There should have only been a couple of winners to this. Road.cc with increased traffic, Trek with publicity and THEN, the eventual winner....So far it has proved that much and more, I think it is getting alot more attention that ever though of.

There is only going to be one winner of the bike in my opinion, no matter what happens, she's won it

Of course she's won it. Trek / Road.cc have backed themselves into an impossible position where the only alternative to Juliet is a victory for a bullish, ugly, middle-aged mamil, with a face like a slapped arse in every promo pic.

The only proven vote manipulation is by the organisers themselves when they deleted votes yesterday and today from every contestant except one. Poor Darren has had 6 votes removed for reasons unknown and yet the person with 1700+ votes ... not one of the votes was dodgy according to whatever rule of thumb nonsense rule they plucked out of thin air to decide with 100% accuracy whether IP address xx:yy:zz:00 is from a 'real' voter or not ... ... for every vote for every contestant in the compo, except one ....

Pardon my French but this has turned into a gigantic clusterfuck that will be written about in marketing circles for years to come.

Gkam84 wrote:

There should have only been a couple of winners to this. Road.cc with increased traffic, Trek with publicity and THEN, the eventual winner....So far it has proved that much and more, I think it is getting alot more attention that ever though of.

Exactly this!

I actually bought a Madone off the back of this comp - their job is being done from a marketing perspective, however positive or negative it is.

GoingRoundInCycles wrote:

Brendan are you still playing the innocent. You started all this when you got greedy and grabbed 120 votes in one hour, got a gentle warning and still went back for more the next day.

When others saw that was nothing was being done about it they decided to join the party.

I threatened to register 10,001 votes if the nonsense continued and I was well on the way to doing so, without cheating, whatever that is. Every vote I ever submitted was submitted from the road.cc competition page.

road.cc, please define cheating? Is using a proxy server cheating? If so, why didn't you say so up front and take action immediately when it became obvious that this was happening on a massive scale?

As i said before, i saw the vote count at the weekend and took a when in Rome stance. FYI, Even then i didn't use a proxy. All you need to do is turn a dongle off and on, then refresh... didn't you boast about computer skills at some point?!
To be honest I don't care, this whole contest has left a sour taste in my mouth but stubborn bastard that I am, I am not going to give up.

Should I win, I will do Ride London 100 on the beast and then donate it to one of the charities that I will be raising money for.

I have a lot more to say about this when the competition is over but right now I have some more votes to amass.