Toronto's own Monopoly spot

[rpgr]

Well, the big money put into advertising this around the world makes it a hot target for savvy coders and hackers.

The majority of these talented "rascals" live in Europe and Asia, although I give the nod in terms of engenuity (basically the best hackers) to the Europeans. Heck they even hold shows there annualy. The hacker culture is pretty big. The .jpg / picture numbering system that is supposed to prevent this has long since become obsolete. Hackers now have the ability to scan pixels displayed on screen (thanks to more new powerful hardware and graphics cards) fairly quickly.

 

[Disparishun]

Actually, no, it's you that don't seem to understand what's going on. The vote is currently being botted.

So it's a contest for the cities with the most patriotic (or ingenious) hackers?

 

[Jonny5]

I noticed when voting today that they have added a word verification feature to the voting process. That should eliminate the majority of the botting. Toronto is now out of the top 20.

 

[CDL.TO]

I noticed when voting today that they have added a word verification feature to the voting process. That should eliminate the majority of the botting. Toronto is now out of the top 20.

That's always been there. To quote rpgr: "The .jpg / picture numbering system that is supposed to prevent this has long since become obsolete."

 

[rpgr]

So it's a contest for the cities with the most patriotic (or ingenious) hackers?

I wouldn't call it patriotic. Given the mischief making intent of most hackers, it'd probably be more like promoting bottom tier cities just for a laugh. Probably only takes one or two computers running the script to do that.

Yeah, it costs Parker Bros. a good chunk of cash but you can't deny from a genious pranksters point of view, it'd be quite a riot!

Here are my pics for bot potential judging by the time it took to rocket up:


High:

Istanbul -- bottom tier for over 3 weeks then shoots to one in less than a few days

Cape Town -- Rockets up in less than a week

Jerusalem -- rockets up in less than a few days

Riga -- rockets up in just a few days

Medium:

Montreal -- This one has been high for quite awhile but suddenly rockets to first / second. Very likely a combination of vote stuffing and real votes though.

Depending on how well they managed to tweak the recognition pattern on the picture/numbers to scan and complete a guess could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 min (I've seen two really talented programmers in my life do similar things, 1 from work (he generated auto-code from image scans) and 1 who was a hobbist (hacker/cracker).

If Parker Bros. was seriously trying to prevent vote stuffing, each day would have it's own unique pattern instead of recycling the same 3 or 4 patterns.

 

[maciej]

Actually, no, it's you that don't seem to understand what's going on. The vote is currently being botted. Something doesn't lead for several weeks only to have that lead shrink to cities that were not even anywhere near the top in just a few days or a week. I never really cared if Toronto was on the board or not but cities like New York, London and Paris don't get bumped off by Istanbul in a total of 3 days. In fact, where was Istanbul 5 days ago? Not even in the top 20.

The vote is botted.

Oh yes... this old conspiracy theories are doing well as I see....

oh my, oh my... you realluy lives in world of fantasies

why there were no action at the beginning? The answer is VERY simple - I do not know from where you've got the information about this voting, but I as many others, got it when it was going on for many days - and at that point (different in different countries) some get organized more in some places

it'd be interesting to know how it was publicized (in any meaning) in different countries, because strangely enough this information (as I can see in some forums - looking at days of publication) first appeared in 'americanized' world like Canada, not in Europe or Asia or whatever it could be

so do not be so surprised, that suddenly some cities got kick and get high enough to get rid of many well known cities

you can blindly believe me, because my city (Gdynia) is currently first on nomination board, and it skyrocketed when everyone started to vote, when the first information appeared in media, that it was qualified as the last in this category

conspiracy... no my dear - just simple local patriotism and power of common will to push a piece of your country up, showing that we DO care

as regards toronto - it simply shows that YOU (Torontonians) simply do NOT care - as always

 

[MetroMan]

^ Possible but I think improbable.

It looks like Parker Bros. have caught on to this rigging and have removed the Leaderboard:

... then again, they might have planned this "secret vote" thing all along. Nonetheless, I think removing the Leaderboard comes at a coincidental timing...

 

[St. Even]

At the end of the day, it's just a game.

It's not a global city game. It's not a best looking city game, or most romantic, or most powerful, or most uber urban.

Mr. Monopoly chose "68 great cities" with zero scientific criteria. And in true democratic tradition, Mr. Monopoly also encourages you to vote early and vote often. And you can even vote for different candidates. Why? Because it's a game.

The "winning" cities will occupy colourful places on a board game -- with fake money, plastic houses and a car with no engine that everybody wants to drive. It's just a game.

 

[rpgr]

Oh yes... this old conspiracy theories are doing well as I see....

oh my, oh my... you realluy lives in world of fantasies

why there were no action at the beginning? The answer is VERY simple - I do not know from where you've got the information about this voting, but I as many others, got it when it was going on for many days - and at that point (different in different countries) some get organized more in some places

it'd be interesting to know how it was publicized (in any meaning) in different countries, because strangely enough this information (as I can see in some forums - looking at days of publication) first appeared in 'americanized' world like Canada, not in Europe or Asia or whatever it could be

so do not be so surprised, that suddenly some cities got kick and get high enough to get rid of many well known cities

you can blindly believe me, because my city (Gdynia) is currently first on nomination board, and it skyrocketed when everyone started to vote, when the first information appeared in media, that it was qualified as the last in this category

conspiracy... no my dear - just simple local patriotism and power of common will to push a piece of your country up, showing that we DO care

as regards toronto - it simply shows that YOU (Torontonians) simply do NOT care - as always

"My dear"? LOL Bud, you're obviously trolling here. The sudden take down of the leaderboard does support and it and this is not a conspiracy theory. It's a prank through and through and an obvious one.

People have pranked lesser stuff before and it is a great target.

And where did I ever say I cared if Toronto appeared on the board? It was never about Toronto but the huge cut into New York, London, Paris. Three of the big "no duhs".

As I said, obvious troll.

 

[Calrissian]

This is good because now, it gives Parker Bros the freedom to re-asses at the end of the competition and disqualify or toss away the nonsense entries (kyiv/riga/montreal hehe) and no one on the outside would know any different.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

This is good because now, it gives Parker Bros the freedom to re-asses at the end of the competition and disqualify or toss away the nonsense entries (kyiv/riga/montreal hehe) and no one on the outside would know any different.

Those aren't the nonsense entries...New York, London, and Paris are the nonsense entries. Why bother holding a huge international contest if New York and London are going to be at the top?

 

[Jonny5]

To quote the rules:

Editorial Control
Hasbro retains final editorial discretion and control over all editions of the MONOPOLY game and reserves the right to disqualify cities nominated or selected through voting misconduct, or mistake or error, with names which may be deemed offensive, or for other reasons which Hasbro in its discretion deems appropriate.

We shall see in a week if things changed!

 

[rpgr]

Those aren't the nonsense entries...New York, London, and Paris are the nonsense entries. Why bother holding a huge international contest if New York and London are going to be at the top?

To determine the order in which they appear.

As I said before, I would have preferred each spot to have nominations that you vote for rather than every city for itself.

New York should not have a chance to be spot 20 while Istanbul be spot 1.
Basically New York should be in spot 1-5 as would other top tier cities. If it does not make the top 5, it is not in there at all.

Similar ranked cities should compete with each other.

In this way you don't have the ludicrous placing you have now, in a simialr vein, that also means that cities where the population distribution vs. internet
users get a fair shake as well (all things being fair without vote stacking).

 

[scarberiankhatru]

If it was just to determine order, there'd only be 22 cities to choose from. A Monopoly board with nothing but New Yorks and Londons and Tokyos on it would be boring and useless.

 

[rpgr]

If it was just to determine order, there'd only be 22 cities to choose from. A Monopoly board with nothing but New Yorks and Londons and Tokyos on it would be boring and useless.

There would be more than 22 cities.

Example of how i would instill a vote system:

The "Boardwalk (400), Park Place (350)" would be a choice of New York, Paris, London, etc. i.e. High density, "World class cities". These cities would not be available to be located anywhere else but these places.

The pre-screened selection would be made by a panel actually looking at the cultural, historical and economic impact of the city in the present day world to determine elegibility.

Some spot like "St. Charles Place (140)", I would estimate would be somewhere like Montreal, Chicago, etc. would populate.

In other words, the 400 dollar spot could never be populated by someplace like Kyiv. Likewise New York, even if it got the 6th most number of votes would not make it on the board at all.

Basically it's like thinking of our democratic system. Political partys place and nominate certain individuals for a riding. We vote for these pre-screened nominees.

Does it cause "elitism"? Sure.

Doesn't make it wrong though and would better reflect the world stage "here and now".