I am disappointed to say that several folks out there are more than bending the rules on the site give away. Aside from some spam created in several threads outside the contest folder, we have been dealing server stability issues that have impacted the user experience of the entire commuity.
The root cause has been identified as that several individuals have setup automated scripts and processes to re-read a particular thread thousands of times a day.
While not spelled out in such way, this clearly represents a violation of the general usage terms of the website as can be found here:
www.starvmax.com/FAQs/About-Us/Terms-Conditions.html

In particular I am referring to the portion about wasting server resources.

We have started to block IP addresses from those users that are artificially inflating usage counts on particular threads. In addition these threads will get their usage counts corrected possibly even reset.
It is unfortunate that some of the members have to resort to clearly shady practices to boost their chance of winning the site give away.

We will review the amount of manipulation that has been taking place and reserve the right to remove certain threads as contenders from the contest all together.

Right now would be the time for some of the offenders to step forward and contact me or the Moderators by PM or email and do a BIG MEA CULPA!

If we find that folks will try to start cover their tracks ... well that would not be good.

Whats big mea culpa?Man ignorance is bliss.when do i get my watch?
i figured out what mea culpa is never mind.

Things some persons will do for a free hat or watch HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Well, the Boss is riled up and that's never good. It is dissappointing to know that some members would "cheat", but from the beginning i thought this exact situation could happen. Hopefully those responsible will come forward (even in private) to resolve this. May need to rethink better ways to have a site contest.

FYI, Mea culpa is a Latin phrase that translates into English as "my fault", or "my own fault". In order to emphasize the message, the adjective "maxima" may be inserted, resulting in "mea maxima culpa," which would translate as "my most [grievous] fault."

Check out the big brain on Braaad! (Pulp Fiction 1994)
/clap Bad_Max

Seriously though folks, we are sorting this thing out and we will get this figured out in the next few days.


More to come...




Nick

Karma to you Kodiak for stepping up as moderator and being one of the guiding lights here.

You're doing a Great Job!

If my crossposting has offended anyone or if my asking members of other fora to look here caused problems, I am deeply sorry.

That was never my intention. I can assure you none of my Dutch friends (the few that wanted to keep the topic alive) used ANY program or scripting.

In a sense I only followed your advice to get and keep an interest in my thread. And yes, that led to a great number of views. Especially in the last few days, some of them have clicked multiple times on my topic.

It was never my or their intention to severely clog up the server of this board!

Maybe the many photographs did a lot of damage as well. You can remove as many of them as you like to get this whole show properly running again.

I just wanted everyone to share in the great fun and also the not so funny events of what we all experienced on our holiday.
And no, I like winning as much as the next one, but the sole idea was having fun with lots of other folks on this forum.

Thanks for your honesty vmaxbabe. I doubt anybody thought it was you doing this tho.

Bad_Max wrote:


thanks for your reply. But my opinion of this all still stands. If anything in my topic is clogging up the server of this board, get rid of it! That applies to everything else that went wrong.

Thx guys.

I was taken a bit by surprise and it does not help that I was out of the office for the past two days on a business meeting. In between sessions, dinner and other activities I tired to restore the server issues and get everything back on track. It took me a little to find our what had happened.

I received a PM from a member who received some help. I have since enabled the IP addresses of that member.

Here is my dilemma: Somebody got too many page views. - That's the easy part to figure out.
Others got inflated numbers too as the members help also added pageviews to pother threads to avoid.

The good news is that the server is back to normal.

I might have no choice but to keep the result to unique replies and the random porting and to eliminate the page view componeny,