Dear readers,

I’m sure you have read about how groups of users have formed cross-voting cartels – wherein each user votes blindly for his/her friends’ stories – regardless of whether they have anything within or not. You’ve fumed and fretted but were unable to actually do anything tangible. Relax, you are not alone – read on, you’ve hit the right post.

In the recent past, several seniors have tried to stop this from happening by voicing their anger and frustration against this practice. So far, all that they have is a promise from IndianPad mods that the matter will be looked into and the algorithm will be changed. They also have a whole lot of ill-will from the cartel members too.

While the mods are looking at the change in the algorithm to be made, I felt that maybe we can help by suggesting an approach (see mine below). Feel free to criticize and think outside the box and throw in your ideas into the pot. Hopefully, mods will see the thread and pick out the best ideas for the final solution. Well, enough talk. Let’s see what we’ve got. Let’s get to it now.

Proposed Solution: Let’s assume that there are users with ids u1, u2, u3, u4 and u5 who indulge in cross-voting. They vote for others’ stories also, but they always vote for each others’ posts blindly. For this example, assume that user u1 on average votes for 100 posts from user u2.

Now, I’m not privy to the karma algorithm, but I know that if you have a karma of xxx and vote on a story that has karma yyy, the resulting karma on that post becomes yyy + xxx. I also know that the IP website tracks who has voted for whom how many times and on what posts.

The solution that I am proposing is that the IP website keep track of the number of posts given by a user to another user. In my new approach algorithm, on a given day as you go on voting for a user, the karma boost you give will reduce by 10% each time. Therefore:

1. When u1 votes on the first story of u2, the karma of that story will jump up by: (value of karma of u1 minus 0).
2. When u1 votes on the second story of u2, the karma of the story will jump up by: (value of karma of u1 minus 10%).
3. When u1 votes on the third story of u2, the karma of the story will jump up by: (value of karma of u1 minus 10%) minus 10%)
4. When u1 votes on the fourth story of u2, the karma of the story will jump up by: (value of karma of u1 minus 10%) minus 10%) minus 10%)
5. When u1 votes on the fifth story of u2, the karma of the story will jump up by: (value of karma of u1 minus 10%) minus 10%) minus 10%) minus 10%)

and so on. Finally, a stage will come in when the cross-voting of u1 on u2’s stories will have no effect at all.

Ah – that’s all theory and maths crap. Let’s get some numbers out there.

So, if you are user u1, your karma is 10 and you keep voting from your friend and cartel member u2, then:

1. Your first vote for a story by u2 will add 10 karma points to the story
2. Your next vote for a story by u2 will add 10 – 10% = 9 karma points to the story
3. Your next vote for a story by u2 will add (10 – 10%) – 10% = 9 – 10% = 8.1 karma points to the story
4. Your next vote for a story by u2 will add ((10 – 10%) – 10%) – 10% = 8.1 – 10% = 7.29 karma points to the story
5. Your next vote for a story by u2 will add (((10 – 10%) – 10%) – 10%) – 10% = 7.29 – 10% = 6.561 karma points to the story

and as you go on, your karma contribution to user u2 will go lower and lower till it becomes negligible.

What I liked about this approach is:

1. No one is restricted from voting for stories of their choice
2. Group voting earns you nothing
3. Avoids IP website resource hogging in terms of keeping track of voting patterns

What I did not like about this approach is:

1. There is an additional component of load on the IP website where the site needs to keep track of the number of votes given by a user to other users on a daily basis. But at least this data can be purged at the end of the day.

Let the (constructive) commenting begin.