Cheating the voting system.

[tdonnelly]

My podcast, Point of Inquiry, spent most of February in the Podcast Alley top 25 after a push for votes on our website. Still, we only picked up a handful of new listeners from this site, far less than any of our other promotional outlets. The only way to get a boost from Podcast Alley is to get in the top ten, and while I am sure given the size of Point of Inquiry audience, that if I pushed voting at Podcast Alley harder we could break the top 10. But I am simply unwilling to do that. Point of Inquiry is the podcast of a national advocacy organization and our audience is heavily comprised of our previously existing members and magazine subscribers. These are people who are coming from outside the podcasting scene, and I consider them VERY valuable for that reason. Sending this new audience over to Podcast Alley and getting so little in return is not fair and I am unwilling to do it.

SO...

Anyone can cheat votes rather simply using a disposable email service like sneakemail.com and switching proxy servers for each vote. More of a hassle than it is worth for me, but a number of people are already doing this, and some of you may want to now. It just proves how worthless the voting system here is anyway...

[tdonnelly]

And as a plug for Point of Inquiry:

The latest episode of Point of Inquiry features an interview with Daniel Dennett, author of such groundbreaking and influential books as Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize). Dr. Dennett isÂÂ*famous for being a philosophical gadfly, challenging unexamined orthodoxies in our society. He has made considerable contributions to the study of consciousness, the understanding of the development of the child's mind, artificial intelligence and evolutionary theory. He is University Professor, professor of philosophy, and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

In this interview with DJ Grothe, he discusses his new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Also in this episode, Tom Flynn asks Did You Know?, detailing facts about world religions and their scientific study, Point of Inquiry contributor Benjamin Radford explores beauty and self-esteem, and in the second of a two-part series, DJ Grothe talks with CSICOP's Joe Nickell about real-life ghost-hunting, focusing on effective investigative methods.

You can listen online at http://www.pointofinquiry.org

Point of Inquiry is the Center for Inquiry's radio show and podcast, drawing on CFI's relationship with the leading minds of the day including Nobel Prize-winning scientists, public intellectuals, social critics and thinkers, and renowned entertainers. Each episode combines incisive interviews, features, and commentary focusing on CFI's three research areas: pseudoscience and the paranormal, alternative medicine, and religion and secularism.

Past episodes include interviews with Richard Dawkins, Chris Mooney, Eugenie Scott, Max Maven, Ibn Warraq, Susan Jacoby, Andrew Skolnick, Wallace Sampson, Joe Nickell, and Paul Kurtz.

Website: http://www.pointofinquiry.org
RSS feed: http://pointofinquiry.libsyn.com/rss

[podcastrant.com]

I actually love Point of Inquiry and highly recommend it.

[tdonnelly]

I actually love Point of Inquiry and highly recommend it.

Thanks. We've recieved plenty of positive reactions both from within the podcasting community as well as the humanist, skeptic, and freethought communities.

Still, I only used my show as an example. To open it up more, I would love some feedback on what everyone thinks of the trade-off of sending Podcast Alley traffic with little or nothing in return unless you get in the top ten? And with a flawed voting system what does the top ten really mean anyway?

[podcastrant.com]

I personally do not ask for votes from podcast alley, not because of the voter impropriety, but because it is monthly and I don't want to put my listeners through that. I get 1000+% more traffic from places like PodcastPickle, MySpace, Craig's List and other links on fellow podcaster sites.

Honestly it would take every single one of my listeners to make it into the top ten and that's never going to happen, so for me it's pointless. But for those that have a more popular show it is probably more valuable.

edit***I just looked at the top ten and saw that RBPC had 181 at #10 so my comment above is in reference to the end of the month when you have to have around 400 to be in the top ten.

[Steve Pinder]

Why is it so important to cheat votes?
Who cares if others are doing it.
For me, that would be as bad as going to the Karate Store, bying a black belt, and trying to convince everyone you're legit.
Some things take time. You should embrace the process. The ones that cheat are only fooling themselves and have little integrity.
Wouldn't it be nice to hit the top ten, having earned it?

Steve Pinder
www.karatekast.com

[roadrageradio]

Why is it so important to cheat votes?
Who cares if others are doing it.
For me, that would be as bad as going to the Karate Store, bying a black belt, and trying to convince everyone you're legit.
Some things take time. You should embrace the process. The ones that cheat are only fooling themselves and have little integrity.

Wouldn't it be nice to hit the top ten, having earned it?
Steve Pinder
www.karatekast.com

Exactly. It's rather like cheating at solitaire. If you're going to do that, why bother playing in the first place?

I stopped begging for votes on PCA about four months ago and my monthly vote has risen since then. Go figure.

[tdonnelly]

Why is it so important to cheat votes?
Who cares if others are doing it.
For me, that would be as bad as going to the Karate Store, bying a black belt, and trying to convince everyone you're legit.
Some things take time. You should embrace the process. The ones that cheat are only fooling themselves and have little integrity.
Wouldn't it be nice to hit the top ten, having earned it?

Steve Pinder
www.karatekast.com

Perhaps I should unpack what I was saying a bit, since I had a number of mutaully supporting points.

1, It is not about being "legit". The advocacy organization I work for has a national membership program, a number of US and international branches, countless community and campus groups, and a number of large publications, all of which promote Point of Inquiry (and Point of Inquiry promotes all of them in return). The Point of Inquiry audience is heavily drawn from from this national member base. I estimate that our audience is as large as if not larger than many of the podcasts in the Top 10, and most of that audience is far removed from your typical podcasts demographic. We are legit, I simply refuse to beg our audience for votes.

2, The Podcast Alley top ten is not an accurate portrayal of the top podcasts as it includes only those who beg or only those podcasts audiences who would go out of there way to vote for a podcast. A large majority of our demographic (older, educated, professional... think CSPAN or NPR) would never vote on podcast alley as it seems a bit childish.

3, The fact that you can cheat demonstrates how irrelevant the rankings are.

4, By placing a vote link on our website we received enough votes to get us in the top 25. It resulted in only a handful of referrals. Not worth it IMO.

5, Unless you get in the top ten (and possibly even then) even linking to Podcast Alley is an unfair relationship. Podcast Alley/Podshow is making money by having people link to Podcast Alley to vote and they are providing very little in return.

6, I am encouraging people to cheat votes for their shows. It highlights how unimportant these rankings are.

[paul]

What about the fact that sending listeners to podcast alley may expose them to other shows and promote podcasting more generally.

I think it's lame as hell to encourage people to cheat just to subvert the system here. We started doing two shows a week and have enjoyed a nice boost in our ranking. I kind of resent you encouraging people to cheat the system even if it IS imperfect.

[pwfenton]

Ranking high in a directory is good for one thing only. Sending more NEW listeners to your podcast for at least one try. But ranking has little to do with your number of listeners. My wife used to constantly bug everyone she could think of to vote for my podcast at Podcast Alley. As a result of her efforts (which I wouldn't call cheating) I was usually in the top 50 here. Frequently I would rank higher than Adam Curry, who has... oh I don't know... 200,000 more listeners than me? But she eventually grew tired of the effort, and I certainly don't help much by not asking for votes in the podcasts. The result is we've fallen off the radar. However, I have just as many subscribers as I always have had... and to me... that is what it's all about.

Ranking high here is like a free advertisement. You can probably do as well by pissing someone off and having your name pop up in all kinds of blogs and forums.

[Steve Pinder]

1, It is not about being "legit". The advocacy organization I work for has a national membership program, a number of US and international branches, countless community and campus groups, and a number of large publications, all of which promote Point of Inquiry (and Point of Inquiry promotes all of them in return). As such The Point of Inquiry audience is heavily drawn from from our national member base, and our magazine subscribers. I estimate that our audience is as large as if not larger than many of the podcasts in the Top 10, and most of that audience is far removed from your typical podcasts demographic. I refuse to beg our audience for votes.

It's the lack of motivation, to vote, in your audience that needs to be addressed. My producer is the brother of Drew, from the Dawn and Drew show, and all they have to do is say to their audience, "Hey remember to vote" and overnight they'll get hundreds.



2, The Podcast Alley top ten is not an accurate portrayal of the top podcasts as it includes only those who beg or only those podcasts audiences who would go out of there way to vote for a podcast. A large majority of our demographic (older, educated, professional... think CSPAN or NPR) would never vote on podcast alley as it seems a bit childish.


Don't place the issue of your shows Inadequacies to draw people to vote, on everyone else in the top ten, and call it childish.


3, The fact that you can cheat demonstrates how irrelevant the rankings are.

There's not much in this world that you can't cheat at, and that's bad. Asking people to cheat, to serve your inadequacy is worse.

This is as bad as when you were a kid, and got your butt kicked by another kid, and then getting all your friends together to go and gang up on him to save your ego.
It's the same thing.

The truth is we would all like to be in the top 10, and if a few have cheated to get there, so what. That's there problem.
If I get there, it will not be from cheating. I would rather never be there.


Steve Pinder
www.karatekast.com

[tdonnelly]

I am not asking people to cheat to serve my own inadequacy.

I was venting, since I feel duped by podcast alley, and was pointing out a number of flaws in the system, including how easy it is to cheat. People are aleady cheating, and I don;t think there is much of a line between begging for votes and cheating as it is. There is a certain level of injustice in the system, if someone wants to spend the effort to cheat, go for it.

I also don't believe that sending your audience to vote here introduces them to other podcasts. It introduces them to the Podcast Alley adverts and the top ten list.

[Patrick]

PW hit the nail on the head. What good does cheating votes do? I've listened to every podcast in the top ten, and checked out their shows and website, and can't see one that doesn't really deserve to be there (ie got the votes legitimately).

You can tell by a shows website if they have traffic from comments, message boards, etc. You can tell by listening if it's a show many people would find entertaining or useful.

[ElNacho]

how do you get a hit from craig's list...?

[WyethDigital]

4, By placing a vote link on our website we received enough votes to get us in the top 25. It resulted in only a handful of referrals. Not worth it IMO.

So, sticking a link on your site is that difficult? All you need is the functional mental capacity to cut and paste some code that is provided to you.

I was venting, since I feel duped by podcast alley, and was pointing out a number of flaws in the system, including how easy it is to cheat. People are aleady cheating, and I don;t think there is much of a line between begging for votes and cheating as it is. There is a certain level of injustice in the system, if someone wants to spend the effort to cheat, go for it.
Duped in what way? Did they tell you that you could only reach heaven by getting votes? That you would lose weight and have a brighter smile if people visited PCA? It's a rather trivial voting system! Not a way of life! If you're the type to feel duped by this, I sense a serious need for self examination and introspection.

As an aside, this is the type of post(er) I was mocking Here (http://www.podcastalley.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9110), just in case there's still someone who doesn't get it!

I seriously want to take this... er.... seriously, but c'mon! :roll:

Peace,

Eric

[WyethDigital]

how do you get a hit from craig's list...?

You kick his puppy! Then you'll be at the top of Craig's list! Oh yeah! That'll do it!

Eric

[podcastrant.com]

El Nacho - You post your show announcement as an event.

[ElNacho]

You kick his puppy! Then you'll be at the top of Craig's list! Oh yeah! That'll do it!
haha

[WyethDigital]

thought you might like that!