Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,692
I posted this in another forum, but I wanted to make sure everyone saw it.
We are currently dealing with an issue of some apparent fraudulent votes being cast over the last few weeks. These votes appear to have affected stories submitted to the holiday contest and also stories in a couple of specific categories. The fraudulent votes appear to be both positive and negative, and it appears that they came from more than one source. We're going to spend some time over the weekend investigating the situation and removing the suspect votes. You should expect to see a number of stories lose some votes, and there will be some realignment of the top list as a result.
It is still not entirely clear what entities are behind this recent attack, but we are working on pinpointing the culprit(s). If it does turn out to be a member of the site, and we don't yet have proof it is, then that account will be suspended.
Just to be clear, the bug that affected Couture was a technical problem on our end relating to our move (sorry Couture!). This new situation is an apparent attempt to manipulate the scores by a third party.
The saddest thing about this is that we're going to have to put off announcing the winners of the holiday story contest for a few days while we get this cleaned up. You can rest assured, however, that we won't let the Grinch(es) spoil our Christmas, and the winners will be now announced on or about Christmas Day.
Thanks again to everyone for submitting your wonderful holiday stories & poems, and feel free to contact me if you have questions about this.
We are currently dealing with an issue of some apparent fraudulent votes being cast over the last few weeks. These votes appear to have affected stories submitted to the holiday contest and also stories in a couple of specific categories. The fraudulent votes appear to be both positive and negative, and it appears that they came from more than one source. We're going to spend some time over the weekend investigating the situation and removing the suspect votes. You should expect to see a number of stories lose some votes, and there will be some realignment of the top list as a result.
It is still not entirely clear what entities are behind this recent attack, but we are working on pinpointing the culprit(s). If it does turn out to be a member of the site, and we don't yet have proof it is, then that account will be suspended.
Just to be clear, the bug that affected Couture was a technical problem on our end relating to our move (sorry Couture!). This new situation is an apparent attempt to manipulate the scores by a third party.
The saddest thing about this is that we're going to have to put off announcing the winners of the holiday story contest for a few days while we get this cleaned up. You can rest assured, however, that we won't let the Grinch(es) spoil our Christmas, and the winners will be now announced on or about Christmas Day.
Thanks again to everyone for submitting your wonderful holiday stories & poems, and feel free to contact me if you have questions about this.
