Over the weekend, a couple of users sent me messages to point out two separate instances of vote-manipulation going on in /r/Games, related to two different projects. This prompted me to look into a few other things as well, and I found a couple more that had been abusing the system to try to increase attention for their projects/sites. So today I want to talk a little bit about what I've been seeing, and why it's not allowed on reddit (it's actually one of the few things against the site-wide rules).

What is vote-manipulation, and how can you spot it?

Let's demonstrate with a particularly egregious example. Here is a screenshot of some of the comments that one user posted on Kickstarter over the weekend (a regular user, not a project creator), and he's even posted many more similar comments since the time this was captured. A few aspects of it that make this not just innocent sharing of links:

• Specifically telling people to go upvote something you're associated with (especially if it's your own submission).
• Even worse, telling people to register a new account just to upvote.
• Saying things like "Please help defend" and "Keep an eye on the naysayers", asking people to help suppress any criticism.

This is obviously an extreme example, but even less blatant ones can be noticed by looking at the intent behind why someone is sharing a reddit link. Unless it's a self-post, there's generally not a lot of reason for people to be sharing the reddit submission instead of the destination link itself, unless they specifically want to point out something in the comments.

So for example, if you see someone tweet something like "Getting a lot of great feedback about my game on reddit here: <link to reddit>", that's perfectly fine. But something like "Take a look at the new trailer for my game! <link to reddit>" probably means they're fishing for upvotes, since they could have just linked the trailer directly. And of course, if they directly ask for upvotes there's really no question about it.

Why is vote-manipulation bad?

When people have their submission removed due to vote-manipulation, they often respond quite angrily and pull out all sorts of strange arguments like, "reddit should be happy that we're bringing in extra traffic!" So I want to address why exactly it's a problem and isn't allowed.

First of all, it's important to understand How reddit Works. reddit is "an engine for creating communities", and the idea is that submissions inside each community (subreddit) will be ranked based on the community's opinion of them, expressed through the voting system. But when a group of people do a drive-by on the votes for one particular submission, that's not really the community participating any more, just random people with reddit accounts. One of the greatest things about reddit is how easy it is to join and start participating immediately, but unfortunately this also makes it just as easy for people to join for the sole purpose of abusing the system.

Another major factor is how the ranking system on reddit works. Submissions are ranked on a combination of two factors: their score (upvotes - downvotes), and how long ago they were submitted. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that the score factor is logarithmic. That is, in terms of effect on the post's ranking, the first 10 points are worth exactly the same as the next 90, and then the next 900 after that. So the first few votes on a submission are the most important by far. Also, each order of magnitude in score is equal to a 12.5 hour difference in submission time. So a post with 100 points will have exactly the same ranking as one with 10 points submitted 12.5 hours later.

Combined, this means that if a post receives a burst of upvotes shortly after being submitted, it will rise extremely quickly. By submitting a post and then immediately soliciting upvotes via Twitter, Facebook, etc., someone can cause that submission to shoot up the ranks much faster than would normally be possible. So not only do you have people not involved in the community influencing the ranking, but their influence will be especially powerful.

If you notice it, please report it to the moderators

Hopefully now it's fairly clear why vote-manipulation is an important issue. The combination of reddit's almost-nonexistent barrier to entry along with the ranking system makes it quite straightforward for outside forces to try to influence post rankings, so we need to keep an eye out for this sort of thing happening if we don't want subreddits to have their content chosen by people that don't even participate in them.

Please look out for anything that appears to be vote manipulation, including:

• Someone sending out links to reddit submissions, especially if they're directly asking for votes.
• A submission that appears to be getting voted up at an unusually high rate right after submission, especially despite negative responses in the comments.
• A submission where the comments are quickly flooded with new users making suspiciously supportive comments like "Looks great!", "Wow, this is awesome!", etc. (and these comments being upvoted quickly).

If you notice anything like this, please send a message to the moderators and ask us to look into it. If you actually saw the vote-solicitation somewhere, please take a screenshot of it and send that as well, since these are often deleted.