Vote Count Rule Changes

Today I have made a small change regarding the way votes are counted.

Previously each user gets one vote on a particular deal, and you can either vote +, vote - or not vote at all. After you have voted, we will then update the count to show the number of users who have voted + and the number of users who have voted -.

The change is — instead of counting the number of users who have voted, we are now counting the number of unique IP addresses that have voted a deal. So for most deals it does not really matter, but for some you'll see a slightly smaller count. When you click through the "Votes" tab you will still see all the users who have voted, but the final count will be less.

This change is made to preemptively guard against abusing the voting system by users who have created multiple accounts to increase its popularity. I have actually had some evidence on such activities but I do not wish to draw the conclusion too quickly. Meanwhile, "unique IP address" rule will be used so that malicious users cannot easily artificially inflat the number of votes.

I know some of you guys are behind transparent proxies (like the poor TPG users) or behind university network. Sorry if all your course mates decide to vote on the same deal, only one vote will be counted.

Here is the WARNING. As per our ToS, you cannot create extra users to abuse the voting system. I do not want to pull the incentive, i.e. the competition prize, to stop this kind of behaviour. More technology will be developed in the next few weeks to help me identify the abusers. Accounts will be banned if ToS is violated after the first warning.