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Conspiracy by Dennis Peterson

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Arnab Mandal

Nov 15, 2011
01:23

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I would like to bring this issue to the notice of the MIT Climate CoLab Community. Dennis Peterson, one of the winners of 2010 contest, is owner of two final proposal this year. One is "2010 Winners Combined" (Global category) and "Cycling Carbon" (National category). He does not have sporting spirit. He is not playing a fair game. For, last two days he has been continuously voting after creating bogus accounts. One can easily guess so after seeing the usernames of his voters. He is behaving in a crazy way to hold the first position in both the categories through voting. The selection of popular proposal has both pros and cons. I would urge the MIT Climate CoLab Community to raise voice and make Dennis Peterson out of the contest. We are looking for "crowd sourcing" so, monopoly of a single person cannot be tolerated.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 15, 2011
01:46

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I haven't made duplicate accounts. I made several posts to reddit and ended up on the front page. Here's my most successful post, with 1200 upvotes and over 400 comments: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/mc712/i_have_a_chance_to_present_thorium_power_to_the/

Rob Laubacher

Nov 15, 2011
08:30

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We have carefully reviewed voting patterns on the Climate CoLab and have concluded that Dennis Peterson is not using unfair methods. There are two ways we can check on whether registered members are real or bogus. First, after every member registers, we send them a welcoming email. This message bounces back to us if a new member does not have a valid email address. Messages that bounce back and where the new member does not a first or last name could potentially be bogus. The second way to check is see if a large number of members register from an identical IP address. We have checked using both methods and have found that far fewer than 5 percent of the voters in the national contest fit these characteristics. And only a small percentage this small minority of voters favored Dennis's Cycling Carbon proposal--more than three-quarters of these voters favored other proposals. Based on our examination of voting patterns, we see no evidence that Dennis has registered multiple members using invalid emails or from the same IP address. We are inclined to agree with the explanation provided by Dennis above. It seems likely that a large number of people have voted for his proposals after seeing his recent posts on reddit. Robert Laubacher For the Climate CoLab team