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March 25, 2005
Cheating and the Truck Series Most Popular Driver Poll
So the assumption is that the Johnny Benson fans are cheating to have such a big lead in the TruckSeries.com Most Popular Driver Award poll. Last season Steve Park won this award by almost the same amount that Johnny is ahead by now. Was Steve's win only because his fans cheated? If the answer is no then it's possible that Johnny's fans aren't cheating. If the answer is yes then I guess more than likely Johnny's fans are cheating. I only know what I did last year and that was to vote for Steve fairly but there was at least one incident involving cheating (and I assume that more than a few driver's fans probably figured out the same cheat) which led to the poll having to be restarted. My assumption was that after the poll was restarted there was no cheating and all the drivers got votes fair and square within the rules. I sure hope that I was correct in thinking that because I would hate it for Steve's sake if even after the poll was restarted there was some funny business with the voting.
For the sake of fairness it should be mentioned that there is a direct link to the poll on Benson's fan club site, he has a very dedicated and organized fan club and Benson enjoys a lot of visiblity due to his appearances on Inside Nextel Cup so it is entirely possible that there are just a lot of people voting for him. Particularly when you think that if you have just 50 people voting twice a day (once at home and at work) his numbers can go up by as much as 100 votes a day. I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility considering that much of the fan voting is being organized through his fan club which surely has more than 50 people. It's quite possible that they have done email reminders or included a reminder to vote in a newsletter if they send one. If I recall correctly that is something that is included in emails I've seen from Michael Waltrip's fan club and that kind of prodding is probably one reason why he is always so high in the Cup series Most Popular Driver poll.
There most certainly is a cheat, because Jim told me how that would be possible. I didn't ask him for details on how to actually do it, I would never do and I would never share with anyone else how to cheat the system. But it is certainly possible that someone else with a background in computers like Jim figured out the cheat. I really hope that's not what's happening because as I discussed here because this is a way for fans to show their support of their driver. And as I mentioned previously internet polls aren't taken seriously by many people so the more cheating that goes on in these polls, the less people are willing to pay attention to the results.
Which is a real shame in the case of the TruckSeries.com Most Popular Driver poll given that Steve won it last season and Travis Kvapil won it two years previously. So the more that people float the idea that the driver who is ahead is only there because their fans are cheating, the more it takes away from the value of this award. Because already there are a significant amount of people who don't think much of this award considering the past problems with it and futher accusations of cheating only reaffirms in those people's minds that this award is simply a measure of who can cheat best rather than it is a real honor.
So what is the solution particularly if there is in fact some cheating going on? There isn't a great one really. TruckSeries.com has tried to come up with the most secure way possible to run this poll to prevent a lot of cheating, by tracking votes by IP and only allowing one vote per unique IP in a 24 hour period. If the Benson fans or anyone else are in fact cheating and that is discovered by TruckSeries.com I wonder if they will even bother with this award in the future? Surely they've got to be monitoring what's going on given the past problems and if there is cheating it will most likely be discoverd. And it's got to be discouraging to put all this effort into trying to keep things as clean as possible and find out that people are still looking for a way around the rules.
In the case of Steve Park what would really help is if there were a banner on his own website and the Orleans Racing site to encourage people to vote. Because right now if fans don't visit Steve Park Central or TruckSeries.com they wouldn't see any reminders to vote, if they even know voting is open in the first place. Beyond that voting as often as possible within the rules and encouraging others to do the same is the only other thing to do. In the end fans really only have control over their own actions.
Posted by silverdsl at March 25, 2005 06:34 PM