Re: rating manipulations on www.vim.org have taken place

Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Nov 2011, Marc Weber wrote:
>
>> It happened to a plugin of tpope and to one of mine:
>>
>> 31 down ratings in sequence on 2011-08-06 between 18:234 and 22:05
>> 310 down ratings in sequence on 2011-08-08 between 10:39 and 22:25
>> 509 down ratings in sequence on 2011-08-08 between 01:39 and 18:30
>>
>> In between no neutral or positive voting for VAM.
>
> This sounds like the same issue that affected one of Dr. Chip's plugins:
>
> Thread on vim-dev, Subject: manpageview rating dive
>
> As I explained there¹:
>
> """
> ...some search engine(s) grabbed the down-vote URL when crawling
> www.vim.org. In this case, googling:
>
> site:www.vim.org inurl:unfulfilling
>
> (where 'unfulfilling' is the 'rating' value for a down-vote) comes up
> with exactly one result for me:
>
> ManPageView - [...]
>
> [...]
>
> Seems like the ratings should only use $_POST (PHP var), but they
> appear to be using $_GET, too.
> """
>
> Bram subsequently fixed the issue², but that didn't happen until after
> the timeframe of your downvotes.
>
> Perhaps downvotes from some period of time could be discarded (by
> whoever has access to the raw data and can see an overall pattern).
>
> ¹: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/-TVtxlNoi98/QqoPvye3bOIJ
> ²: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/-TVtxlNoi98/So-Bu1d_Ij8J
>
>
>> [...]
>>
>> community: What do you suggest?
>
> That you ignore the ratings, as most people seem to do (I never notice
> them, personally). Probably they're not very useful in general, so
> maybe removing them altogether is the right solution. As Erik writes:
> A corrupted voting scheme does not seem to be as helpful as no voting
> scheme.
>
> Although, I'm also likely not the right person to ask, since I'm much
> more likely to install things I find on github or directly on Dr.
> Chip's site than anything from vim.org. Most of the scripts I see on
> the scripts site seem to be abandonware, whereas the ones on github
> that come up in general google results usually have clear indications
> of recent activity.
>
After the GET/POST changes that Bram made, I have had several more
plugins receive barrages of -1s. I've been withdrawing these plugins
from vim.sf.net; that is, I put in a stub for a plugin, remove earlier
copies, and make a note that if one wants the plugin where to go on my
website to get it.

Regards,
Chip Campbell

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