Hey, I think there is an extreme abuser in the last Moonspell album. There are eleven 1's all registered in some PL e-mail, and another one in themix, whose only 1 vote is the 1755 album. The PL guy has 1 10 vote in some Moonspell album, and then an 1 in 1755.

Album votes: http://metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=177329

http://metalstorm.net/users/keiots/profile
http://metalstorm.net/users/cenrin/profile
http://metalstorm.net/users/wolfheart6/profile
http://metalstorm.net/users/irreligoius/profile
http://metalstorm.net/users/dupa2/profile
http://metalstorm.net/users/dupa/profile
http://metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=159963&r_order=year
http://metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=159963&r_order=year
http://metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=177334

Written by D.T. Metal on 02.12.2017 at 00:38

Written by cobrapel on 13.11.2017 at 13:40

Should be avoided to rate to new users for at least 2-3 weeks. Could be reduced thousands of multi-account.

Good point... I am looking into this if we can implement this

Yes, it is indeed a very good idea. It won't eradicate the stupidity completely, but it will definitely reduce it.

Written by Nicko's Nose on 11.11.2017 at 02:00

Looks like we have a serial downrater: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=176587

Total votes: 374
1/10 votes: 289

Bump.

Written by Nicko's Nose on 06.12.2017 at 12:31

Written by Nicko's Nose on 11.11.2017 at 02:00

Looks like we have a serial downrater: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=176587

Total votes: 374
1/10 votes: 289

Bump.

Fixed And he/she did that ALL in one day and never came back Good catch

Here comes a hater. If he doesn't like an album, straight 1. http://metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=167048

Half of his votes are 1's. Surprise! http://metalstorm.net/users/album_votes.php?user_id=167043

Wouldn't it be better if we force metalstormers to have to justify, in a comment, when they give 1, 2 or 10's?

Written by Nick Carter on 05.01.2018 at 23:07

force metalstormers to have to justify

nobody would vote, man

Written by Karlabos on 05.01.2018 at 23:10

Written by Nick Carter on 05.01.2018 at 23:07

force metalstormers to have to justify

nobody would vote, man

then we would avoid a lot of stupid 1's, 2's and 10's. I think that's better

I used to care about this, they used to call my Duke Nukem as I made this a task I invested some significant time into. i can honestly say i've nuked well over 100,000 votes, and, truth be told, probably getting close to the big 1,000,000 mark. i type that with a full comprehension of what those staggering values mean.

and i've received all the hate PMs my actions wrought. A Very Big Fuck To You all as well.

it's fucking pointless.

downvoting is easy enough to isolate and destroy, however time consuming, but upvoting? what's the point? we have a set system in place where a 7 is good... yet to most users that's an insult to the artist. In short, nearly EVERYONE over inflates scores. I believe I've used the analogy "the kind of person who could put a blindfold on, be turned loose in the metal section of their local record store and whatever they grabbed would be 8+" several times. As it's seemingly true. (unless the album they grab is untr00, of course. ) It's laughable the number of times someone has whined about another abusing the voting system... and when I look at the accuser they, too, are guilty.

I learned a long time ago that your scores mean nothing. With the exception of maybe 10 people or so around here, I couldn't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut how anyone scores anything.

hell, the only reason I use it is to track albums I listen to during the year to help recall impressions when the MSAs roll around.

there is more than enough for our staff and contributors to do without wasting time on this. might as well try and stop the tide with a bucket.

Yeah it's nice if you get to know some people's tastes and can scroll through their ratings to discover some new tunes but that's about the only purpose other people's ratings can have.

"Rating abuse"
Hhhhm, difficult issue -- in particular since we dont have a definition for this in the MS terms (or do we and I have missed it?).

"Fighting / elimintating rating abuse"
Careful, even more difficult -- in particular since we have neither a definition nor a rule for this in the MS terms (or do we and I have missed it?).
All I have found on this topic is from paragraph 1.1 - Rules and policies:
"When voting for an album, remember your vote must be fair and not influenced by what other voters have done before you. Please give realistic ratings and remember a 10 means the album is a masterpiece, an album that changed the way we listen to music nowadays."
So a "fair" vote ....

I have two things to add to this discussion:

1. I dont know if it would help to delay voting rights by some weeks or so.
People would probably just wait and spam the world with their votes later on.

One thing that could help eliminate "rating abuse" (in both directions!), and that would be easy to implement technically, would be a obligatory average vote for every user of 6.0 ("average", as the label says).
Everybody would be forced to distribute their votes in such a way (may it be with tons of 10s and tons of 1s, sure that would be possible then, but I still dont see why this is per se a problem, as long it averages out over all).
If you start with your first vote a 8, the next one has to be a 4 (so you better look out for an album you dont like).

2. The discussion has the tendency to mix another issue into the "rating abuse" topic, which is obviously related to it, but should be discussed (and dealt with!) separately, IMO.
I am talking about "Account abuse".
I think separating this from the discussion about "rating abuse" would be helpful, since for "account abuse" we do an explicit rule:
1.1 - Rules and policies
"No multiple accounts are allowed." (first phrase)
Not speaking of the practical challenges this approach has (and I am sure these are significant), dealing with "account abuse" is the preferable action to take, IMO, since it is based on the MS terms and thus more easily justifiable.

(All) That said, I can agree with what others have stated before:
Dont care too much about this issue. Fools can never be stopped, nowhere.

^ The average score idea is not good, it is too limiting. Some users only vote for the albums they care about, so of course their vote average will be high. And there's nothing wrong with that...

On the other hand, I firmly believe having a very dumb requirement for voting, be it "being user for more than x days" or "having at least one community point" or "having posted at least once in one thread" would reduce dramatically the number of rating abusers. For the people here who believe otherwise, you underestimate human laziness and forgetfullness.

Take a look at those posts with those sequential profiles created for the purpose of inflating a single album. Someone created some accounts because he thought he could simply cast the votes and get away with it. Now I ask myself, if he was required to gather a single cp with each of the profiles, would he still do it? Hell, nah... No way.
Perhaps he would still do if a post was required, all he has to do is spam. But some staffer would notice an avalanche of similar users spamming and then all you need to do is nuke the profiles...

The principle of forgetfulness goes for the being user for x days requirement. Suppose someone creates 10 profiles thinking he is going to votespam and pump up the rookie numbers his favourite shit album has. Then he realizes each of the profiles has to have at least a month before voting. Is he going to wait impatiently during the next month like "I can't wait to cast my votes for my band so that they can have a nice score on this site I don't even visit very much"? Or is he most likely to forget it? Definitely the last, I'd say. If he ever remembers say six months later he is like "oh, yeah there was that site things I created... What were the passwords again? Bleh, I forgot. Whatever... Nevermind"

Now of course, some spammers do have commitment and would still try to cheat, but I'd say less than 20% of the current amount... For such a simple measure of adding a requirement, I think it would be worth it...

Written by Karlabos on 12.02.2018 at 02:21

^ The average score idea is not good, it is too limiting. Some users only vote for the albums they care about, so of course their vote average will be high. And there's nothing wrong with that...

Well, I certainly believe in everybody's freedom to vote and not vote for any album they want to.
But with "Some users only vote for the albums they care about, so of course their vote average will be high." we are precisely at the core of the problem with this discussion, namely the definition of "rate abuse".
Where is effectively the difference between
1. people who create an account just to vote 1 on the album they hate and
2. people who create an account just to vote 10 on the album they adore?
For both groups of people it holds that they only "vote for the albums they "care" about".

The problem with it IMO is the inflation of votes it generates. If everybody only votes for the albums they like the most, there will be no variation in votes and thus almost no information at all (except that if you assume that they dislike all the albums they didnt give a vote for -- but that could also be because they never listened to the album yet).

Besides that I would probably vote in favour of some voting restriction of the kind you suggest.
It is still better than having no restriction on the voting at all.

An even bigger problem with the ridiculous average vote suggestion is this:

I'm a standard MS user.

I like Darkthrone. I give all 506 of their albums an 8.

Then move on over to Manowar and give all 6 of their studio releases and 500 of their live albums a 4.

Hooray. acceptable average score.

Just to suggest: to calculate the average vote, just remove the 10% of higher ratings and 10% of lower ones.
For example, 45 votes: remove from the calculation 5 of the higher and 5 of the lower votes. The showed average rating is done by 35 votes. For sure it will stop the haters.
Don't know if it is possilble.

Just having to wait for a month after registration to be able to cast a vote will dramatically reduce the percentage of abuse I think. cobrapel's idea is also good if it is feasible in order to diminish the vote abuse by longtime members.

Written by BitterCOld on 13.02.2018 at 01:32

An even bigger problem with the ridiculous average vote suggestion is this:

I'm a standard MS user.

I like Darkthrone. I give all 506 of their albums an 8.

Then move on over to Manowar and give all 6 of their studio releases and 500 of their live albums a 4.

Hooray. acceptable average score.

Sounds plausible (assuming there really were that many of these albums).
Where's the bigger problem?

Written by Redel on 13.02.2018 at 22:05

Written by BitterCOld on 13.02.2018 at 01:32

An even bigger problem with the ridiculous average vote suggestion is this:

I'm a standard MS user... (etc)

Where's the bigger problem?

The point is that users will vote for random bands they might have not even listened to just to reach the average and then keep giving random 10s and 1s as they please... And that would make things only worse...

Written by Redel on 12.02.2018 at 22:45

Written by Karlabos on 12.02.2018 at 02:21

Some users only vote for the albums they care about, so of course their vote average will be high.

" we are precisely at the core of the problem with this discussion, namely the definition of "rate abuse".
Where is effectively the difference between
1. people who create an account just to vote 1 on the album they hate and
2. people who create an account just to vote 10 on the album they adore?
For both groups of people it holds that they only "vote for the albums they "care" about".

What, so giving 10s to the albums you actually believe are worthy 10 is rating abuse?

The problem with the rating abuse is not the numbers 10 and 1 alone, it's the 10s and the 1s that are given without a proper listen of an album. There's nothing wrong on giving extreme ratings if you have listened to the album and believe for one reason or other it is worthy such rating. Some users have a couple favourite albums and give 10s to them and don't vote for anything else because they don't really have the time to do so. But the 10 should still count, because there is an user who believes those albums are worthy 10.

Written by Karlabos on 13.02.2018 at 23:19


What, so giving 10s to the albums you actually believe are worthy 10 is rating abuse?

I never said that.
I never tagged any behavior as "rate abuse".
I just want to emphasize that this is a sensitive discussion if not based on generally accepted definition.

Written by Karlabos on 13.02.2018 at 23:19

The problem with the rating abuse is not the numbers 10 and 1 alone, it's the 10s and the 1s that are given without a proper listen of an album. There's nothing wrong on giving extreme ratings if you have listened to the album and believe for one reason or other it is worthy such rating. Some users have a couple favourite albums and give 10s to them and don't vote for anything else because they don't really have the time to do so. But the 10 should still count, because there is an user who believes those albums are worthy 10.

Sure, it would be perfect if everybody just gave their votes on albums they know well.
And how are gonna implement that with the MS crowd?
Voting only allowed if you have written a thorough review?
Very well, this equals the complete elimination of the voting system. Votes would only remain on reviews.
Probably not what we want.

Written by Redel on 13.02.2018 at 22:05


Sounds plausible (assuming there really were that many of these albums).
Where's the bigger problem?

You are advocating forcing people with predilection to vote high to have to counter each and every high vote with a corresponding low vote... thus encouraging tanking, one of the behaviors people are clamoring to do away with.

It's not a fix. Not remotely. Just makes things even worse.

Again, the votes don't matter. No solution will fix them.

Even the "wait 30 days" concept others are pushing will just discourage growth of membership at a time when forums are already declining. Brilliant that. Let's throttle potential new member interest for bullshit numbers.

Written by BitterCOld on 14.02.2018 at 01:45

Written by Redel on 13.02.2018 at 22:05


Sounds plausible (assuming there really were that many of these albums).
Where's the bigger problem?

You are advocating forcing people with predilection to vote high to have to counter each and every high vote with a corresponding low vote... thus encouraging tanking, one of the behaviors people are clamoring to do away with.

It's not a fix. Not remotely. Just makes things even worse.

Again, the votes don't matter. No solution will fix them.

Even the "wait 30 days" concept others are pushing will just discourage growth of membership at a time when forums are already declining. Brilliant that. Let's throttle potential new member interest for bullshit numbers.

Well, rules by nature come along with restrictions on wildilfe behavior.
That may not be compatible with everybody's understanding of a freedom of voting on what and however they like.

I did not intend to proclaim that my suggestion of giving people a little help with distributing their votes would entirely "fix the votes" or totally eliminate a behavior that people consider "rate abuse" (whatever that behavior may be characterized by specifically).
I wonder what kind of "fix" you are thinking of that the votes on MS would need.

My suggestion should perhaps not be considered within the context of what many people may consider "rate abuse".
(So probably my bad for posting it in this thread.)
I was addressing it at the "inflation of votes" I observe on MS: people not using the entire rating scale but tending to allocate way more 9s and 10s than any numbers below 7 (a behavior I first think of when reading about "rate abuse").

That said, I do agree that the best way to address these issues we discuss is probably to leave all these numbers alone.

Written by BitterCOld on 14.02.2018 at 01:45

Even the "wait 30 days" concept others are pushing will just discourage growth of membership at a time when forums are already declining. Brilliant that. Let's throttle potential new member interest for bullshit numbers.

The vast majority of these "potential" new members just register, throw a few 10s and 1s on the day of registration and never show up again. Keeping things the way they are now just means that we are interested in bullshit numbers (the number of MS members, regardless of the fact that many are inactive as you have said in another discussion we had). Maybe one month is a lot since just one week of having to wait in order to vote would make a hell of a difference.

Mind you, I couldn't care less about album ratings but it is a distinctive feature in this site (if you don't think so, get rid of the rating system and delete all votes and we shall see how many of us will be left here). Many users are actually interested and the votes do matter for them, so if we want the fora to stop declining, maybe it's worth considering how vote abuse can be reduced. Active users are needed because they are the ones that write in the fora, not X band's fanboys who spend one hour here and then disappear forever.

Written by BitterCOld on 14.02.2018 at 01:45

Even the "wait 30 days" concept others are pushing will just discourage growth of membership at a time when forums are already declining. Brilliant that. Let's throttle potential new member interest for bullshit numbers.

Well instead of having a restriction for being able to vote make it so they can vote for themselves but just their vote doesn't count on the site average if the restrictions aren't met then... That way everyone is happy :3

Written by Redel on 13.02.2018 at 23:43

Sure, it would be perfect if everybody just gave their votes on albums they know well.
And how are gonna implement that with the MS crowd?

Well there is probably no feasible way of implementing that

But there is a way of addressing the problem of users creating multiple accounts and votespaming and that is the restriction system I mentioned earlier... And honestly this kind of vote abuse is far worse than single vote abusers because ten multiple accounts inflating a single album have much more impact on the average than the vote of a single dude who votes in a binary mode, because after all he is still just one user

The idea of new members barred from voting for a month is feasible as it will clean up a hell lot of useless numbers thrown upon. Sadly, if we not care about voting(as Marcel said), then burden is on the staff to invest time in cleaning all useless votes.

Written by Karlabos on 15.02.2018 at 02:40


Well instead of having a restriction for being able to vote make it so they can vote for themselves but just their vote doesn't count on the site average if the restrictions aren't met then... That way everyone is happy :3

Good idea.

Guys, there's voting abuse on every single top 10 album of 2018. Almost 12 to 25 users per album, low rating every single album that isn't its from its favourite band. This ends up lowering the average score of any album, because a 1 rating is more incisive that a 10 rating. Just saying. Btw, evaluating with decimals should be a thing, it makes it more easier.

Look at this example

Slugdge - Esoteric Malacology 10
Between The Buried And Me - Automata I 9
TesseracT - Sonder 9
Primordial - Exile Amongst The Ruins 6
Hypno5e - Alba - Les Ombres Errantes 6
Amorphis - Queen Of Time 4

This is a person who has 8.5 average rating in 200 albums. Evaluated 2 favorite bands as 10 and 9, then other goods good albums as 6 and 4.
Worse than the example above. This guy has 20 evaluations, Alkaloid is the only favourite band on the profile. Look at the voting from this year:

Alkaloid - Liquid Anatomy 10
Amorphis - Queen Of Time 4
Slugdge - Esoteric Malacology 3
At The Gates - To Drink From The Night Itself 2

I think I made a point here.

Just because someone doesn't consider the new Amorphis as the best album ever made and gives it a 4 doesn't mean it's vote abuse.

I'll give you an example of rating abuse: this user registered on June 1st, voted 21 albums with 1 and 5 albums with 10 and has not been on the site since. And he/she probably never will be again.

Written by nikarg on 20.06.2018 at 10:02

I'll give you an example of rating abuse: this user registered on June 1st, voted 21 albums with 1 and 5 albums with 10 and has not been on the site since. And he/she probably never will be again.

and all the votes have been deleted