An apology for my fraudulent votes and abuse of the photographers program

Apology or not, this is a bummer. I know how hard people work to get their art out for the public to enjoy, sucks someone would screw over other people that share the same passion. I could maybe see just up-voting your own more justifiable (still not cool), but down-voting other people?? Come on.

when i came to this thread, i was suprised that there wasnt something already in place to check for these kind of things. not cheating but rather a lack of thought that someone would cheat is what suprised me the most.

hahaha

#summernewschoolersdrama

Alias voting is nothing new, and truthfully the way NS handled this, at least in my eyes, was pretty close to terrible. Now granted, I'm not going to hide my extreme bias towards this situation and I'm not saying what Matt did was okay, but I agree that there is more than one party at fault here....

If you ain't cheating you ain't trying. Sure he got caught and there should be punishment but even with the ratio system and the amount of votes getting put out it is moderately insignificant.

the rating system is just a popularity contest anyway... Still would be nice to get rid of the downvoting d-bags though

This makes me sad.

The internet's anonymous, so it's likely dude didn't really think about what he was doing as something that was affecting other people. That doesn't excuse what he was up to, but whatever, we've all done shitty things without thinking of the repercussions.

For someone who puts a lot of time in effort into making their photo and or video, don't you think we shouldn't have a dislike button? I may sound like a hippie but keep the positive vibes rolling.

I like it when you post.

"For someone who puts a lot of time in effort into making their photo and or video, don't you think we shouldn't have a dislike button? I may sound like a hippie but keep the positive vibes rolling.

Voting for media with aliases is fraudulent and a complete asshole move but it would be stupid to punish a single account, without any aliases, for down voting content.

Like Vimeo, only a like button no dislike. Keeps it positive, don't like something don't have to click any button.

almost sprayed milk out of my nose when i saw the asterisk.

What if Sklar just had two other friends that came on right after he posted a picture on the same computer? #FREESKLAR

To ruin the whole apology, you provided a link to your Facebook page. That's really lame.

I always knew you were a piece of shit. Finally some conclusive proof.

Doubly awful because its in his Sig as well.

Casual summed it up. What sklar* did was a prime exampleof asshattery.

This really bummed me out.

#freemattsklar

The real issue is that he exploited it for monetary gain. He used Newschoolers and It's members to exploit money from the people that really deserved it. It's one thing to do this to get the cover photo which would I guess increase the rep you have and get your name out there into the limelight so you could rake in more dough from other means. But he was already lucky enough as it is to be making money of his photos through NS which is becoming more and more of a thing, then just abused the system to rack in more money.

It's like if I owned a business and was paying people to do work for my business. Then some guy I was paying strangled the other guy I was paying and takes that guys paycheck. (kinda)

And one more thing, in terms of the apology, this was legitimately forced from him to do. This wasn't him coming out on pure honor after this happened. Even the title screams "I was made to do this shit".

Taking the Internet seriously...

I think the fact that the Bonus was involved makes it a lot worse... I'm glad justice prevailed though

Too bad.

Lame all the way around.

Gaming an NS contest is like tripping your teammate but I know 3 or 4 internet marketing companies that would give this kid a job. Skiing and NS are pretty moral places, the rest of American business is not like that at all.

Threads for reading material

I don't understand why he's still here. So what he gave the money back and made a big apology, he's not sorry. Think about it, doing this benefits him more than the other path he could have taken.

I mean, NS's system was clearly ripe for some sort of exploitation and it seems that Sklar took the opportunity to take advantage of it, but I think NS handled it just as they should have. Sklar takes good photos, but the way this letter was written makes me feel like he's a smug little prick who is just upset that he got caught, not for what he was doing. He even fucking threw in advertising of his photos into his apology letter. And Landis, you may be right in that analogy, but no, that still doesn't make it ok and does justify some sort of action against him.

At no point did I imply that his actions were okay, nor did I dispute the fairness of Sklar's apology upon being thrown into the stocks for public ridicule.

The way I see it, NS introduced money to an exposure system that is notoriously flawed. On Reddit, the inherent flaw of the voting system results in little more than hurt feelings and democratic censorship. NS decided it was wise to bring money into this easily exploitable formula, which - let's face it - was just plain stupid.

Back when admins were talking of ripping off Reddit's hivemind construct by implementing an upvote/downvote system, I specifically recall telling them that it was going to bite them in the ass. I hate to say "I told you so," but...

Whoever said it above has the right idea: only allow upvotes. A purely additive system of exposure determination can only result in the fruits of excellence being rewarded, with the sub-par content being relegated to neutrality due to their lack of excellence rather than malicious sabotage. Vimeo is a great example of this.

Thought this was a troll thread at first

Very disappointing....

Sklar cheated and gave an apology. Are there those who havent? Im pretty sure that most photographers, or just anyone uploading content to ns probably upvotes their own work, so im not surprised to see someone with a few more. on any other website that involves karma and accounts, many users have multiple accounts, so of course it would happen here. mous said that not many users were found, but he didnt even mention sklar. i really wouldnt be surprised to see a few more apologies, or some missing orange names. Also, to those saying we shouldnt have a downvote feature, without it we would find a lot of shit uploaded to ns. one of the reasons people dont upload whatever the fuck they want is because of the pressure of being downvoted. every time one uploads something to ns they are sending it unto the power of ns, to downvote to oblivion, ore upvote to the top. that (fear) of having ones content downvoted assures they give it quality, and prepare it to be judged. also, without the downvote, comments would get a lot more harsh, to compensate for the lack of the downvote.

That's simply incorrect.

You couldn't be further from the truth.

In all honesty, the idea of simply allowing upvotes actually doesn't help much. We use a complicated formula to level out the up and down votes, which as long as people don't go crazy manipulating it - does a great god damn job. It even accounts for a little bit of fake stuff in either way.

Read about it here:

http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html

We run all the up/down votes through this equation -



What you're right about is that we didn't go far enough on the cheat detection when money was involved. We went pretty far, and as such we have had about $700 worth of fraud on approximately $55,000 that has been paid out.

So I'd actually say "I told you so" back to you if I wanted to be childish, because if you ask me so far as a pilot program this whole monetization idea is going fucking fantastically. Guys are getting top rated, getting paid for it and are subsequently joining our programs and getting contracted by our clients to product custom NS content.

The system is absolutely amazing - and its a truly revolutionary and open take on anyone's progression through the media landscape.

The sad part was the decision to game such a small part of the system, when we're building such a big thing that we want people to partake in.

As for the comment that we should take some responsibility in this, I absolutely agree with you. We were pretty good at policing the system, we've put an immense amount of work into revamping from the 1-10 rating system (which is where most of the 'NS has always had cheating' idea is from) and we've been working tirelessly to improve our tools to figure out who is playing fair and who isn't.

In this case, Jason developed some new policies around researching this stuff, and we received a few more than normal complaints and ended up unearthing a large-scale vote manipulation system.

The case of Reddit having this issue has a similar tone. The system didn't collapse, the guy that was committing the fraud was banned and his business is now irrelevant. See quickmeme's popularity on the internet now:



Just like any new system, there will be people finding exploits and taking them. Those who are caught must own up to what they did, and help us build a better system. If they have malicious intent, they must be ousted and rules must be erected to prevent those things from happening ever again.

Mark our words - no matter what history has said about cheating, it ends here and now. We will tirelessly defend our system, and we will ensure both its ability to pay and its security are healthy and long-lasting.

I also want to point out that the last thing we want is for Sklar to be completely blacklisted. His content is fantastic, and we want it to be a part of our community. The problem is right now we're facing a situation where he's like an athlete getting caught using steroids - we have no way of knowing if his success was truly legit or not. I'm positive that he would have had almost as much success without this, and even though he was unhappy when we confronted him - he did take the right course of action and apologize.

He's taken his licks, he's had his records stripped and he has returned the ill-gotten gains. He is now welcome to come back to the system and prove his prowess once again - and I want everyone to give him an honest chance.

The most important thing we can do with our up/down/ignore votes is to make them represent your legitimate opinion. Don't upvote your buddy if he doesn't deserve it, and don't downvote something that has some merit.

Upvote Quality
Downvote what you don't like
Everything else just leave it be.

Together, we can make this work.

Or you can look at it like this... We poured glasses of milk for our top content producers, and Matt decided to punch all the photographers in the face and drink their milk.

because his profile doesn't have the changed name log, so it would appear he wasn't the one that changed it, but I could be wrong. When you change names it lists when you did and what it was.

Can you back up this claim? In my experience sketchy Canadians despise milk.

I know, but we need to do our absolute best to separate our feelings around who created the content and how good that content is. How good that content is should be all that garners voting judgement.

A few haters?

Oh? Who else's fault is it? I'm curious.