Just a quick update on the blog contest that Seattle Bubble is in over at Metroblogging Seattle.
As of this post, it’s a dead heat, with Seattle Bubble trailing by one vote, 924 to 925. Many thanks to everyone who has voted so far, and special thanks to Rain City Guide and Seattle Real Estate Professionals for the plugs.
The Lookout Landing crowd seems to think that they will get a surge of votes this evening surrounding the Mariner’s first game, so we need your vote now more than ever.
If you’re reading this on a computer that displays poll options instead of poll results over on the right sidebar, then click the little bullet next to “Seattle Bubble” and click “Vote.” I’m talking to you too, RSS subscribers. Take five seconds to load either Seattle Bubble or the contest page, and vote for us.
This concludes today’s episode of “Shameless Begging.” We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
[Update:] Seattle Bubble has withdrawn.
I’ve been voting as often as I can remember. I have to vote from your page while at work because our firewall blocks the actual contest page.
Someday they may get wise and block this page too, but until then – I’ll be here :)
Well don’t anybody go overboard. Apparently “voting more than once” is okay, but “ballot stuffing” is not. This has been explained to me by the contest organizer as “people voting 30-40-6,000 times,” which actually happened in the previous round between Huskies Fan and Lookout Landing.
I don’t even know how I could vote more than once. Clear cookies?
This will be won by the most tech-savvy readership who don’t go overboard and tilt the pinball machine.
Yes, all it takes is clearing cookies, or denying the cookie from Toluna in the first place.
For what it’s worth, yesterday afternoon I set up an automated log that saves the poll counts to a file every fifteen minutes, so if someone suddenly dumps dozens or hundreds of votes in, I’ll be able to tell. And even though Seattle Bubble would get kicked out if someone else is discovered cheating, I’d rather be dropped from the contest than have someone that’s blatantly cheating advance. I won’t hesitate to show any evidence of such cheating by any party to the contest organizers.
So anyway, what I’m saying is, cheating is bad. :^)
Been away from the office most of the week.
You got my vote, Tim
If you win by one (1), how about you buying me lunch?
Greg–Buy YOU lunch?? I’m the one that plugged him!
But I wouldn’t want to stand between anyone and a free lunch, so how about he treats us BOTH to lunch? :-)
Now how would that look, Mr. Seattle Bubble taking a couple of real estate agents out to lunch?
Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction……
For what it’s worth, yesterday afternoon I set up an automated log that saves the poll counts to a file every fifteen minutes, so if someone suddenly dumps dozens or hundreds of votes in, I’ll be able to tell.
You should check your most recent log for a large bump in your own vote total.
Well, there are a ton of votes pouring in on both sides today. I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s definitely some sort of serious funny-business. And now the Lookout Landing crowd has pretty much come right out and said that they’ll do anything to win.
I have a feeling we’re all going to get booted from this thing. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. It would have been nice to win, but I’d rather one of the (apparently) fair-playing teams from the Coyote bracket win than allow cheaters to get away with it.
If I vote from my computer at work, then my co-worker votes, will only one vote be registered because we’re on the same network?
If I were in the Coyote bracket I might stuff the ballots of all the blogs in our bracket.
Hah, that’s funny. That would indeed be a nefarious strategy. Personally, while I’d obviously like to win, I think some of the people over at LL are getting way too serious about this.
What ever happened with the February meetup?
The general feel I got from the comments was that there wasn’t really that much interest, so I put it on the back burner.
Tim: You’re up against a bunch of hyper-competitive baseball fans. Of course they want to win. But keep in mind, they aren’t posting on your blog to complain. Nor are they keeping a log of vote counts. Nor are they recruiting other blogs to help them out.
Remind me again who is getting way too serious about it?
For what it’s worth, Seattle Bubble is great. You do great work and I’m glad you’ve made it this far.
But man…
Who’s complaining? I posted two comments over there, in order to provide a simple explanation for how we are able to get a good volume of votes, since there were some wild accusations flying around.
And so what, I’m a data addict. I would think that would be obvious from the content of this site. I spent five minutes to modify the script that I wrote to grab the sidebar inventory so it would grab and log poll data instead.
Of course I’m going to recruit other blogs to help us out. Why wouldn’t I? Especially when, as you admit, my opponent is “a bunch of hyper-competitive baseball fans.”
I’ll concede the point.
I read some of the comments over there. those guys crack me up.
then I came back here and voted again!
It’s gotta be fixed. Every time I vote (for you) it’s showing a dead heat. No way…I don’t buy it.
Agreed, Rhonda. The stuffers are just being more subtle this time, is my guess.