I regard my blog as a place where people can find information. A place where people can ask questions. Where they can agree and disagree. I want to want to hear what people think. I want to hear what they want to know.
But last night one idiot tried to saturating my current poll by submitting repeat votes over half an hour. All the votes were that Sainsbury’s will be bad for Ludlow. I call the person an idiot because the votes could only have made by someone who thought a sudden surge in voting, and the pattern of voting, would not be noticed.
My blog was not hacked. The idiot was using a known work around to repeatedly vote. I have deleted the votes and closed the loophole but this may prevent people who share computers or internet connections from voting.
The imminent arrival of Sainsbury’s will have a major impact on our town. For better or for worse. I want to know what people think about the proposal. I hope you will vote. I am sure that you will vote honestly. You are not idiots.
The poll was launched at 7.00am yesterday morning. The voting was slow and just 99 votes had been cast by nine in the evening. To be honest, I thought there would have been more. But after I had retired to bed, the number of votes had leapt to 334. This was due to an idiot repeatedly deleting cookies on his or her computer allowing repeated voting. This person must have been very bored to spend half an hour doing this. Wasn’t there anything on TV?
The graph below shows the hourly pattern of voting yesterday.
Compare that the pattern of visits to this blog which hosts the poll. Did anyone think this difference would not be noticed? One idiot who lives around here did.
Did the idiot think I don’t have software to detect this sort of scam? The duplicate voting began at 21:35 and ended at 22:05, after more than 226 votes against Sainsbury’s were cast from the same IP address.
My blog was not hacked. The cookie record of voting had been deleted from the voter’s machine 225 times. Deleting cookies is not rocket science. Most web browsers offer this function. I have now added an extra layer of security which bans multiple votes from the same IP address.
This layer is not normally in place because it prevents people who share a computer or an internet connection having a vote. I don’t think that is fair but I need the extra security because one idiot decided to try and distort the vote. If you have trouble voting as a result, email me and I’ll add your vote.
There are several days to go on this vote. Please vote. We need to know the town’s opinion.
It will be good for the town , bringing choice, jobs and entice more people from away to visit which is all good for the local economy . The fact that Argos is here is invaluable . Not everyone travels to other towns and not having to if you’re local helps the environment .
I think it will be great to have a Sainsbury’s as I go to Kidderminster regularly to shop at Sainsbury’s.
Fantastic news.
There is always one person or group in ludlow who think they know best. The same arguments were used to fight Tesco over eight years but the town centre hasn’t disappeared it just evolves and carries on