Hi All,
First of all I wanted to give a huge thanks to Phandroid and their supporters for hosting this contest. The opportunity to win the prizes that are up for grabs is awesome.
If you all were active in yesterday's contest you might have noticed that the user: andpol, was the first person to post the correct answer for Contest 12/6. His post was as follows:
Suspicious Items:
As the runner up, I don't like to give up on fights that I believe in (and of course giving up on the prize as well heh), so I'm asking you all please, if you believe that andpol did in fact cheat to win Contest 12/6, please post here/report his original post (http://androidforums.com/lounge/458361-happy-holidroid-contest-12-6-secret-phrase-5.html#post3592830) and let Phandroid/Android Forums know!
Thank you all for your time. Good luck in the remainder of the Contest, and happy holidays!
Projeqht
[Note: Sorry for calling you out andpol, and if you really didn't cheat then Congratulations...]
*Edit
The only requirement to win this contest was to post the single link to the forum. Why would someone who knew the contest was about speed go out of his way to retrieve MORE than enough information to win the contest? I think everyone of us would get the bare requirement (1 link) as fast as possible and post it as fast as we can to win, not grab all 4 details "manually" and post it the fastest out of all of us.
This fact points closer and closer to the direction that andpol indeed had some sort of script/bot to help him win the contest. The official rules state that users trying to circumvent the system will be disqualified.
I think botting for sure is a disqualification. Should pre-scripting a program to search for the Secret Phrase and copying the winning details count as "circumventing the system"? I think in this case, since the Contest was about "Seeing the Secret Phrase in the Post First" and "Copying the link and posting it onto the Forums First", having a script that automatically does this for you is "circumventing the system". In that sense, a user using this script in no way "Saw the post first", only that he had everything done for him, all he had to do was post. Is it cheating? It's everyone's own opinion.
Again, thanks for the read everyone!
*Edit test What is in here is not important at all
First of all I wanted to give a huge thanks to Phandroid and their supporters for hosting this contest. The opportunity to win the prizes that are up for grabs is awesome.
If you all were active in yesterday's contest you might have noticed that the user: andpol, was the first person to post the correct answer for Contest 12/6. His post was as follows:
The elephant man ran out of peanuts
Verizon Takes Top Spot, AT&T Ranks Last in Consumer Reports Carrier Satisfaction Survey
Verizon Takes Top Spot, AT&T Ranks Last in Consumer Reports Carrier Satisfaction Survey
Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:03:27 +0000
Suspicious Items:
- The speed it took to post 4 perfectly accurate lines specified by the Contest Rules (Happy Holidroid Contest: Secret Phrase Challenge) for a new user. (Note: I manually copy/pasted 1 single line of the URL and was still beat).
- Exact time stamp pulled from RSS.
- I know this might not help as much (especially since I have a GitHub account too) but andpol (Andrey Polyakov) also has a GitHub account https://github.com/andpol which means he is dev saavy.
As the runner up, I don't like to give up on fights that I believe in (and of course giving up on the prize as well heh), so I'm asking you all please, if you believe that andpol did in fact cheat to win Contest 12/6, please post here/report his original post (http://androidforums.com/lounge/458361-happy-holidroid-contest-12-6-secret-phrase-5.html#post3592830) and let Phandroid/Android Forums know!
Thank you all for your time. Good luck in the remainder of the Contest, and happy holidays!
Projeqht
[Note: Sorry for calling you out andpol, and if you really didn't cheat then Congratulations...]
*Edit
The only requirement to win this contest was to post the single link to the forum. Why would someone who knew the contest was about speed go out of his way to retrieve MORE than enough information to win the contest? I think everyone of us would get the bare requirement (1 link) as fast as possible and post it as fast as we can to win, not grab all 4 details "manually" and post it the fastest out of all of us.
This fact points closer and closer to the direction that andpol indeed had some sort of script/bot to help him win the contest. The official rules state that users trying to circumvent the system will be disqualified.
I think botting for sure is a disqualification. Should pre-scripting a program to search for the Secret Phrase and copying the winning details count as "circumventing the system"? I think in this case, since the Contest was about "Seeing the Secret Phrase in the Post First" and "Copying the link and posting it onto the Forums First", having a script that automatically does this for you is "circumventing the system". In that sense, a user using this script in no way "Saw the post first", only that he had everything done for him, all he had to do was post. Is it cheating? It's everyone's own opinion.
Again, thanks for the read everyone!
*Edit test What is in here is not important at all