[Discussion] Bitcoin Pizza Day on Bitcointalk 🍕

[Ale88]

What I find funny is that you and other users from your local board are constantly trying to minimize what we are discussing here, it's quite interesting, don't you think? We're just talking about the process at the end, you guys look somehow uncomfortable using phrases like "I'm trying so hard not to laugh", like we're all crazy

This is incredibly funny even though I'm trying so hard not to laugh so I don't appear weird where I am now. Wait you mean someone can decide to pay people to vote for a contest open for the entire globe and in which winning is not even guaranteed? Such investment decision is worse than these terrible historic investment decisions.

You can simply promise a share of the cake in case you win, of course you don't have to pay in advance. And even the link for the worst investment decisions in history? Seriously?

I keep wondering where some of these hypothesis are coming from and why so much hypothesis for just a pizza contest.

In the first 8 places there are 4 pizzas from the same local board, pizzas that are not very good looking (and actually one is more an omelette than a pizza), and at least 40+ users from the same local board voted for those 4 not-so-nice pizzas. Do you understand now why there are concerns? Don't you think the situation is kind of suspicious?

There is no perfect system of voting in the world and no matter how hard we try in this, there will always be room for improvement. Nevertheless, there will always be dissatisfied people no matter how fair a voting system is... those who feel they deserve to win but are unable to will always conjure something to discredit the voting system.

And those who abuse the system always try to find excuses. That's how it works, both ways.

Let us just allow Icopress to take his decisions since he is the only one with the power to shift the goal post.

Absolutely, I'm sure icopress knows what to do, in the meantime there is nothing wrong showing some concerns, at the end this is a forum, we're just talking.

Another hypothesis.. they are paid votes : The message they get in some private messaging looks like: vote for pizzas < #x #y #z #T #NT > to get the reward!  So there is copy-pasting

Judging from a statistical point of view of the total number of active users been said to be over 745,000 (i.e according to bpip.org), then I actually think it will be insane for any participants of this noble Pizza contest to have thought of paying for a vote, when he/she bearly knew the probability of winning in a forum of over 745,000 active users. Hence, I think the only logical reason that might have resulted to the similar voting pattern as claimed above is exactly what Odohu stated above, regarding people voting simply because they saw a certain user they respect on the forum voting too. While secondly, maybe they saw those pizza to be worth voting for and decided to vote to. Which is literally not against the rules of the contest.

Guys, seriously, I understand you're all from the same local board and you're trying to help each other but don't think we're all stupid: nobody ever thought to pay 745.000 users, please, the votes come all from the same local board and we're talking about 40-50 users, that is enough to get some money and share it.

[Odohu]

What I find funny is that you and other users from your local board are constantly trying to minimize what we are discussing here, it's quite interesting, don't you think? We're just talking about the process at the end, you guys look somehow uncomfortable using phrases like "I'm trying so hard not to laugh", like we're all crazy

No need of continuing this baseless arguments with you because it is obvious you have made up your mind to be impossible, unsatisfied and not willing to accept the result of the contest because you perceived that you or your interest have failed. For a minute, I have put myself in your shoes and I now understand your position but I will encourage you to take it easy on yourself, there will always be more contests and perhaps you will win someday.

For the records, I did not submit a pizza for this contest, I voted just like many other people so I have no interest to protect. If you submitted a pizza and  you have already planned how to spend the money you will win from the contest but it now dawn on you that you may not win, you shouldn't vent your frustrations on others, instead you should do better next year and people will vote for you.

Note: This is my last reply to you, you can think whatever you want, if you like propound whatever hypothesis, even if you say I was promised 10 BTC to reply you, that is entirely your headache.

[Ale88]

What I find funny is that you and other users from your local board are constantly trying to minimize what we are discussing here, it's quite interesting, don't you think? We're just talking about the process at the end, you guys look somehow uncomfortable using phrases like "I'm trying so hard not to laugh", like we're all crazy

No need of continuing this baseless arguments with you because it is obvious you have made up your mind to be impossible, unsatisfied and not willing to accept the result of the contest because you perceived that you or your interest have failed.

Baseless arguments? You know, the nice thing about this contest is that it's all about numbers so it's very easy to see who voted for who. The fact that every single time you and your buddies try to brush off any observation is quite interesting.

For a minute, I have put myself in your shoes and I now understand your position but I will encourage you to take it easy on yourself, there will always be more contests and perhaps you will win someday.

I actually won last year's contest without cheating so, yes, I'm pretty happy with myself. I don't care about winning again, I try to do my best of course but what I do care about is the fairness of the contest because the main point is to bring the community together and make some nice pizzas, and right now some of the winners don't make any sense if we look at the pizzas and the votes so some users are asking questions but it doesn't look like you are happy about this. We are just talking here.

For the records, I did not submit a pizza for this contest, I voted just like many other people so I have no interest to protect.

For not having any interest you are extremely involved. I just checked your votes and, by coincidence, you are part of those 40+ users from the same board who voted for the same pizzas.

If you submitted a pizza and  you have already planned how to spend the money you will win from the contest but it now dawn on you that you may not win, you shouldn't vent your frustrations on others, instead you should do better next year and people will vote for you.

And here we go again with crazy assumptions like "you already planned how to spend the money", "you can't pay 745.000 users", etc, I am telling you, the more you keep posting like this, the more you bring attention to what is going on, trust me.

Note: This is my last reply to you, you can think whatever you want, if you like propound whatever hypothesis, even if you say I was promised 10 BTC to reply you, that is entirely your headache.

As I told you, we're simply discussing about a situation that is raising a lot of red flags, that's it. You guys, for some reason, are being very defensive.

[JayJuanGee]

If we're recommending stuff, please just make the rule that you can't vote for your own entry (pizza, pumpkin, whatever) official going forward.

My blood boils a bit after every 'can I vote for myself' question. No, you can't, not sure what sort of a contestant even asks something like this.

Let the blood boil.   That seems to be on you.
We can agree to disagree.

i don't see anything wrong with a participant voting for his own pizza, if he were to have a pizza in the contest, if he were eligible to vote, and if he were to choose to vote for his own pizza.

Yeah, you can say that - but we as a community should look to eradicate any kind of 'dicky' behavior and not support it.
I hate to see great ideas being ruined by shitty behavior - it is detrimental to any fun contests that can be done for the benefit of us all in the future.

Make your pizza, let people vote, if it's great you should get the reward. If people group up to vote, punish them because they don't work towards improving the contest but towards personal gain.
If a person votes for himself, well, he's a dick that thinks only about his own benefit - it's as clear as that.
Allowing people to vote for their own pizzas basically means that you reward dicks with 1 extra vote, and if fair players want to reach even ground they need to become dicks as well. Not great, don't you agree?

Your further explanation does not help to convince me.  I see no materially significant problem with voting for your own pizza... and yeah, since we can see the votes, maybe there could be a bit of irony if the person who won and the person who got second place had ONLY a 1 vote spread and the one who one had voted for himself while the one who got second place did not vote for himself.  That might constitute a bit of "awkwardness," no?

On the other hand, I see problems with other kinds of behaviors, such as colluding votes.

It is harder to have fun, if some of the intention of individual votes is being manipulated, since many of us likely consider voting about favorite pizzas is more subjective rather than group-think and/or politics.., or even accusations of colluding for financial benefits.   

I surely don't claim to know the answers regarding the various balances, yet I hardly consider voting for yourself (at least in this pizza context) to be a sufficient enough of a problem, including that the remedy of disallowing such a self-voting thingie might be worse than any arguable problem in allowing such self-voting abilities.

PS: At this time, I have zero knowledge of whom the protagonists of this story are and neither which local board it is!

Personally, I believe that voting in the pizza preference context should be individually subjective rather than political or group-think, and I don't understand the specifics of such claims of colluding either.

Wait you mean someone can decide to pay people to vote for a contest open for the entire globe and in which winning is not even guaranteed?

Yes. It isn't even that far-fetched. I wouldn't say voting is open for everyone: only 3709 users have earned enough Merit to be eligible to vote.

Interesting statistic in terms of the total possible number of voters, even if everyone were to attempt to vote.

If this is true, the competition will unfortunately no longer be of any interest.

Agreed. The current format of this competition feels disconnected from the spirit of the original event.

One could reshape it similar to this:
1)Order pizza and pay with BTC anytime during the year*.
2)Share proof of your purchases during "Bitcoin Pizza Day on Bitcointalk" by placing relevant receipts and photos.
3)Users who’ve bought the most pizzas with BTC^{and eaten them} become the winners.
*) Subject to discuss.

I like the idea of making a pizza, submitting photos and a description of the process and then voting to be better than having a contest over the buying of pizzas with bitcoin and eating such pizzas.

[dkbit98]

What is the probability that, given 144 pizza options, 5 users from one local section vote for 5 identical pizzas, placing votes in the same order?

I didn't examine exact time when they all posted, but it's unlikely to happen if they posted exactly the same votes in totally different time.
I am not surprised to see cheating in this competition, and I remember something similar happened with voting in discord.

Gut feeling: this doesn't sound like a coincidence, it sounds like copy/pasting.

This is just a speculation, but it could happen that someone made an incentive and suggested this members should vote in exact same order.

Make your pizza, let people vote, if it's great you should get the reward. If people group up to vote, punish them because they don't work towards improving the contest but towards personal gain.

I think voting for anything is full of flaws, we can see that in political elections all the time.
Maybe we should have random pizza winners selected next time, after we first vote for worst pizza designs that should be eliminated 

[JayJuanGee]

I think voting for anything is full of flaws, we can see that in political elections all the time.
Maybe we should have random pizza winners selected next time, after we first vote for worst pizza designs that should be eliminated 

I kind of like some variation of this randomness idea.. but instead of eliminating the worst pizzas.. to allow for some counting (some weight) to the votes, so maybe the first stage would be to merely eliminate somewhere around half of the pizzas (or maybe 2/3rds or some other reasonable number?), so in this case half would be around 70 pizzas or 1/3 would be around 47 pizzas... .. So then maybe the second stage ends up with randomness or even picking out 10 pizzas.. so then the financial reward ends up getting spread out more..

I don't know.. but I like the generation of randomness if there is no real meaningful way to sort out the voting collusion problem.

[Danydee]

I think voting for anything is full of flaws, we can see that in political elections all the time.
Maybe we should have random pizza winners selected next time, after we first vote for worst pizza designs that should be eliminated

I kind of like some variation of this randomness idea.. but instead of eliminating the worst pizzas.. to allow for some counting (some weight) to the votes, so maybe the first stage would be to merely eliminate somewhere around half of the pizzas (or maybe 2/3rds or some other reasonable number?), so in this case half would be around 70 pizzas or 1/3 would be around 47 pizzas... .. So then maybe the second stage ends up with randomness or even picking out 10 pizzas.. so then the financial reward ends up getting spread out more..

I don't know.. but I like the generation of randomness if there is no real meaningful way to sort out the voting collusion problem.

Yes, making the voting in two or three stages is a very good idea ! 👍

What of making the voting on the firsts stages to the discretion of a selected jury.. first stage for nominating qualifyed pizzas and second to jury voting to keem about 10 or 20 pizzas for exemple !  Then for the final stage open the voting to everybody ??  

[changaa]

Base on the statement of Becassine, it is the prize money divided by 40. From last contest, the first winner got about $1,000 which if divided by 40 will give $25. Are you saying this is enough to order 40(double) pizzas? In my country, this is rarely enough to order three large pizzas, maybe enough to order the "Papa John's pizzas" ordered by Laszlo Hanyecz, then with some bottles of soft drinks to push it down.

I don't understand what you mean, i tried to read and understand but i couldn't, can you please explain again?

[Rikafip]

I am not surprised to see cheating in this competition, and I remember something similar happened with voting in discord.

Ah yes, the good old discord bitcointalk pizza day voting where some guy brought bunch of brand new Discord accounts to bitcointalk server (that have nothing to do with bitcointalk) just to vote for him, those votes were accepted and he shared the 1st prize. 

Anyway, not a surprise to see such drama and cheat attempts cosidering the hefty prize pool.

[dkbit98]

I don't know.. but I like the generation of randomness if there is no real meaningful way to sort out the voting collusion problem.

Only if randomness can be proven, and I think we already have a nice tool for that made by member Bitmover:
https://bitcoindata.science/giveaway-manager/

I am not surprised to see cheating in this competition, and I remember something similar happened with voting in discord.

Ah yes, the good old discord bitcointalk pizza day voting where some guy brought bunch of brand new Discord accounts to bitcointalk server (that have nothing to do with bitcointalk) just to vote for him, those votes were accepted and he shared the 1st prize.  

It's much easier to create discord account than bitcointalk account, so it was much easier to cheat back than.
Current voting system in bitcointalk forum is better but we can see similar cheating behavior when money is involved.

[JayJuanGee]

I think voting for anything is full of flaws, we can see that in political elections all the time.
Maybe we should have random pizza winners selected next time, after we first vote for worst pizza designs that should be eliminated

I kind of like some variation of this randomness idea.. but instead of eliminating the worst pizzas.. to allow for some counting (some weight) to the votes, so maybe the first stage would be to merely eliminate somewhere around half of the pizzas (or maybe 2/3rds or some other reasonable number?), so in this case half would be around 70 pizzas or 1/3 would be around 47 pizzas... .. So then maybe the second stage ends up with randomness or even picking out 10 pizzas.. so then the financial reward ends up getting spread out more..

I don't know.. but I like the generation of randomness if there is no real meaningful way to sort out the voting collusion problem.

Yes, making the voting in two or three stages is a very good idea ! 👍

What of making the voting on the firsts stages to the discretion of a selected jury.. first stage for nominating qualifyed pizzas and second to jury voting to keem about 10 or 20 pizzas for exemple !  Then for the final stage open the voting to everybody ??  

My reason for putting the randomness at the final voting stage was an attempt to lessen the impact of the colluding - and yeah my suggestion might not completely resolve it, just like your keeping voting in as the final stage still seems to leave advantage for colluding, and perhaps even would help the colluding to be on fewer pizzas, so less diluted if if ends up focusing on fewer pizzas.   

I don't know.. but I like the generation of randomness if there is no real meaningful way to sort out the voting collusion problem.

Only if randomness can be proven, and I think we already have a nice tool for that made by member Bitmover:
https://bitcoindata.science/giveaway-manager/

I am not surprised to see cheating in this competition, and I remember something similar happened with voting in discord.

Ah yes, the good old discord bitcointalk pizza day voting where some guy brought bunch of brand new Discord accounts to bitcointalk server (that have nothing to do with bitcointalk) just to vote for him, those votes were accepted and he shared the 1st prize.  

It's much easier to create discord account than bitcointalk account, so it was much easier to cheat back than.
Current voting system in bitcointalk forum is better but we can see similar cheating behavior when money is involved.

Randomness and diluting the monetary incentive by having more winners.. that way the spirit of participation and even  trying to make something that guys remember.. even though surely some might get badly motivated by money and status... so it may be difficult to create some potentially neutral ways of still allowing for winners..but to dilute and/or disincentivize cheating.. and  it is not easy to identify some ways it could still work to inspire participating.. and 144 pizza submissions is not a bad thing. 

[babo]

then all the problems converge on icopress
everyone looks to him as the one who solves problems
It's really a huge pain to organize this kind of event, I understand very well the pain in organizing and managing

Surely there are ways to avoid hassles.

[icopress]

I am pleased to announce that in addition to cash prizes, Sportsbet has also provided 10 free bets that will be raffled off among voters. I will announce this a little later, in the meantime, 40% of the votes have already been counted and patterns of pressure on the voting system have been identified.

[Lillominato89]

so many users who have discussed these days were right! there was something anomalous in the voting, and someone even advanced the hypothesis that those who pointed the finger at us were a bit out of their minds. we await the final results of this contest and in the meantime thanks icopress for the news, a small tribute also to the voters is a nice gesture on your part

[fillippone]

I am pleased to announce that in addition to cash prizes, Sportsbet has also provided 10 free bets that will be raffled off among voters. I will announce this a little later, in the meantime, 40% of the votes have already been counted and patterns of pressure on the voting system have been identified.

I guess the voting this year will be particularly laborious.
You had some helpers last year: are you alone, counting this year? Did they run when they saw the amount of work a contest like this requires behind closed doors?

[Becassine]

Agreed. The current format of this competition feels disconnected from the spirit of the original event.

One could reshape it similar to this:

1)Order pizza and pay with BTC anytime during the year*.

2)Share proof of your purchases during "Bitcoin Pizza Day on Bitcointalk" by placing relevant receipts and photos.

3)Users who’ve bought the most pizzas with BTC^{and eaten them} become the winners.

*) Subject to discuss.

Does that mean we should eat pizza all year round? There's no way I'm gaining weight for a contest 

[fillippone]

Agreed. The current format of this competition feels disconnected from the spirit of the original event.

One could reshape it similar to this:

1)Order pizza and pay with BTC anytime during the year*.

2)Share proof of your purchases during "Bitcoin Pizza Day on Bitcointalk" by placing relevant receipts and photos.

3)Users who’ve bought the most pizzas with BTC^{and eaten them} become the winners.

*) Subject to discuss.

While I like the idea of using, I.e. spending, Bitcoin in a pizza day contest, I am afraid this would cut out people with less bitcoins, and also would have not trivial implications in terms of privacy.
Probably a no go for me.

Does that mean we should eat pizza all year round? There's no way I'm gaining weight for a contest 

Also, a sensible point. As I wasn’t constantly menaced by my scale, last thing I need is an excuse to indulge in dough and mozzarella.

[pawel7777]

Friends, who is good at math?

What is the probability that, given 144 pizza options, 5 users from one local section vote for 5 identical pizzas, placing votes in the same order?

The probability is high and I will explain how it can happen. The first vote can come from a particular member of a local board who have earned the respect and trust of other local board members, others coming to vote, sees his/her choice and decide to vote in same direction. It happens even  in circular politics  in which case people simply vote for a candidate because a certain individual supports the candidate. I don't think this breaks any rule hence, taking any action because some people voted the same numbers and in the same order may not seem fair to the competition entirely. Like some people already suggested, these are areas of improvement that can be discussed after a winner have been announced based on the rules set for this year's contest.  

That's bullshit. One could follow a trusted person's advice for electoral voting (as it would affect their lives, so they have an incentive to vote), but why would anyone even bother voting for pizza if they had no opinion of their own? How does this make sense?
Even if they decided to act like mindless drones and copy/paste the vote of the "leader" - that's still a manipulation. It's shameful and should not be tolerated.

It's not against the rules, but neither is leaving those who voted that way red trust ratings or discarding their votes (I believe Icopress reserved such option) + banning them from future voting.


I'm too retarded to calculate it myself, but just for reference here's AI-generated answer to the question:

Interpretation
The chance of 5 users randomly picking the same 5 pizzas in the same order out of 144 options is effectively zero under random conditions. Such a match would strongly suggest coordination or manipulation.

[Lillominato89]

Friends, who is good at math?

What is the probability that, given 144 pizza options, 5 users from one local section vote for 5 identical pizzas, placing votes in the same order?

The probability is high and I will explain how it can happen. The first vote can come from a particular member of a local board who have earned the respect and trust of other local board members, others coming to vote, sees his/her choice and decide to vote in same direction. It happens even  in circular politics  in which case people simply vote for a candidate because a certain individual supports the candidate. I don't think this breaks any rule hence, taking any action because some people voted the same numbers and in the same order may not seem fair to the competition entirely. Like some people already suggested, these are areas of improvement that can be discussed after a winner have been announced based on the rules set for this year's contest.  

That's bullshit. One could follow a trusted person's advice for electoral voting (as it would affect their lives, so they have an incentive to vote), but why would anyone even bother voting for pizza if they had no opinion of their own? How does this make sense?
Even if they decided to act like mindless drones and copy/paste the vote of the "leader" - that's still a manipulation. It's shameful and should not be tolerated.

It's not against the rules, but neither is leaving those who voted that way red trust ratings or discarding their votes (I believe Icopress reserved such option) + banning them from future voting.


I'm too retarded to calculate it myself, but just for reference here's AI-generated answer to the question:

Interpretation
The chance of 5 users randomly picking the same 5 pizzas in the same order out of 144 options is effectively zero under random conditions. Such a match would strongly suggest coordination or manipulation.

I agree with you! already with the fact that among the top positions there are certain "pizzas" that have little or nothing about pizza, I would ask myself a few more questions.
let's get serious, there are nice pizzas that aren't even in the top 10
there was definitely manipulation here, and I'm glad it came to light.
voting is free, and it is right that everyone votes for the pizzas they like most, but voting with copy and paste just to support a candidate in their local council makes you lose the concept of this competition

[JayJuanGee]

It's not against the rules, but neither is leaving those who voted that way red trust ratings or discarding their votes (I believe Icopress reserved such option) + banning them from future voting.

How do we know which names are implicated?  Is someone going to give a list?