Project One Clarification

Ok so let me get this right. you have knocked my votes down to three hundred and something, and yet Micheal Downes remains on eighteen hundred and something.. BS!

Goodbye

It was pointed out days ago. No reply was ever given! As i said before, are we just meant to sit back and watch? I told people this morning on FB, not to waste their time voting because of all this. It's a shame because it was actually a fun competition.

And yes, i could point out two people that were boosting votes right from the word go

Well thats good to hear

Someone is using a Bot by the way, which IS cheating

Well i have better things to do with my free time than sit and push a button all day. Any time over the next week that my finger goes near a keyboard, it'll be casting a vote for anything without Yellow flames!

..... Well at least its a level field now i guess. The question was asked, no reply given. I for one will still look for votes (manly because its become quite fun), but i'm not just gonna sit back and watch people sail off in to the distance.
You are right Paul, these competitions are always about promotion above all else

Define cheating.

This was always going to be a lucky dip followed by a popularity competition.

Given that one aim of the road.cc website is to maximise views, and the aim of the competition is to promote the trek project one service I'd say that the only people who will be bothered by what has been uncovered are the 24 finallists who don't win.

Road.cc and trek will only be looking at (& happy with) the number of hits.

Yep bloody stupid! Noticed last night. Some idiot basically told people how to cheat. Nothing was done about it by anyone running the "competition", so what do you do?! It's a joke. Are you meant to just sit by and watch, after actually trying to get proper votes?.. Who Knows.

Wow, some massive jumps in votes over the last few hours...quite a silly amount really.

Done

20thebear, which one is yours ? As we are both from the North East i will vote for yours mate.

It is now blatantly obvious that repeat voting is going on from more than one candidate from the same computer. Even with the use of social media, let's say you have 500 followers, they are not all going to stop what they are doing at 10:30 - 11:30 pm to vote en masse and if they did, when you checked you would see big jumps in the votes rather than a steady trickle of 2-3 votes per minute just enough time for one voter to find another proxy reload the page and fire ....... then abruptly nothing overnight.

It is a shame that the contest has now become a computer skills competition but to be honest it was never a design one. I am delighted to have been shortlisted and a Top 10 finish would be great but I am sorely tempted to use my own considerable computer skills to award myself 10,001 votes on the last day of voting, just to highlight the level of farce.

Of course, should I not be disqualified, the bike would go to charity.

I've seen this before in other online competitions, and sadly it's a case of if you can't beat them join them. Yes, you can vote from multiple devices. Yes, you can vote daily. No, I'm not sure how and why, I'm not technical enough. But, the administrators of the competition should be able to monitor that and remove those votes if it was not allowed. If they can't do that, then unfortunately how can it possibly be policed?

Also, it's more of a case of popularity and how many friends you have these days and your ability to manipulate social networks to your advantage more than anything else. In fact, Dave kind of states as much in his spiel on the voting page, I quote "ceaselessly harangue your mates to vote for you". Well, that's great, if Justin Beiber had entered, he'd have instantly won.

A slightly fairer system would require voters to register and would not include the names on the entries. In my forum post about trying to persuade people to vote, I think the first reply included that the person voted for another bike because the designer "is female". WTF? What the hell has that got to do with it? I didn't realise it was a gender battle. I thought it was a contest between which was the nicest looking bike for the money (and that would include the components used, most of which you can't really see from the picture). Clearly I misread the brief, I should have changed my name and created a multi-coloured monstrosity so that it stood out.

So, what have I done to generate 'votes'? Well, I posted on the forum here to try to persuade folks who were undecided, it probably put them off, but never mind, I hope it amused some if nothing else. I've tweeted to my followers quite a bit and asked them to retweet, maybe 10 or so have. I've posted on Facebook daily and a few friends shared initially. As time goes on less and less are interested. In both of those cases I've stated that you can vote daily. I estimate I've probably generated 1/3rd of my votes by people voting again. I also have another tactic up my sleeve, which would be totally above board, but which hasn't worked...yet.

What haven't I done and what won't I do? Well, used a "proxy" to vote over and over again, I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. I haven't bought votes on a website, which I know you can do and have been beaten by someone in another competition in the past who did. I was tempted to offer my current bike in a draw if I won this bike to anyone who retweeted or shared my social media posts...and then I realised that I might be accused of bribery and subject to the bribery act 2010, not good.

So, with a week to go I've pretty much given up, turning my attention instead to upgrading some components on my current bike and looking forward to riding it again once these storms bugger off.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, as long as the winner wins fairly then I don't mind losing, unfortunately it is totally unclear what is fair and what isn't at the moment.

When and where exactly have i done this??
I'm using nothing more than various forms of social media and very good friends to get votes. At absolutely no point what so ever, have i done what you've just said.
tbh, It sounds nothing more than a propaganda tactic you're using to eliminate the competition.