Earlier today, we started the annual process of voting in our top-20 prospects. Things did not go smoothly. The details are provided on that post, but to recap:
- We attempted to use the SB Nation polling system. Typically only one vote per visitor is allowed, but this is easily circumvented by things such as incognito mode.
- The poll's results swung dramatically in a short period of time.
- During that same period of time, non-unique page views spiked for the vote, showing that a wildly unusual number of people were returning to that page a second time, or that one or a small group of people were returning to that same page over and over. This is the sort of thing our analytics page could recognize as a returning visitor even when the poll could not.
- The implication is clear: someone or some group decided to spend their time stuffing the ballot. I couldn't tell you what would compel someone to use their time that way, but hey, the internet is the internet.
With that in mind, we've restarted the top prospect vote using the old system of comment recs. If you voted in the original poll, that vote isn't being counted anymore, and you'll need to vote again using the new (or, well, old) system in the comments. Sorry for the inconvenience, and I hope this catches the attention of most of you who voted before.