Perhaps Trax in Space's first major failure was revealed yesterday when for the first time in six years TiS generated a new set of charts.
xerxes's "emmy" debuted at number one. Having listened to the song, it is very deserving of the spot, although I think this one got some extra attention and perhaps a couple of extra stars out of the fact that, well, it's xerxes. Still, though, a great musician, and I'm not going to argue over that.
Number two, however, was a gag song (classified as rock instead of humor) that, well, maybe some people find funny, but many musicians are serious about what they do, and to find that such a ridiculous song so high in the charts is disturbing.
How is it possible that something so bad can climb so high on to the charts? What's happening here is known as "gaming the system". Basically, a bunch of people get together to manipulate the formulas used for the charts by giving it high ratings and reviews, usually in protest of something, or perhaps as an attempt to prove a point. It's difficult to peg the reason why this happens, but when you attract a large enough audience like Trax in Space does, something like this is bound to happen, and websites have to eventually deal with this.
Thus far, it doesn't look like Trax in Space is capable of dealing with this.
Granted, the site is young. The song in question had two ratings (a 1 and either a 4 or a 5) and a 5-star review that clearly exists for the sole purpose of gaming the system. The review did not have any feedback on it, neither from the artist nor other users who wished to agree or disagree with the review. There just wasn't enough data to provide the charts with accurate information that would have placed this song more appropriately, like off the list entirely.
But on the flip side, more people can come along to game the system even further by providing more empty 5-star reviews and ratings. Trax in Space needs a better way to handle this type of abuse, and hopefully they will come up with something soon.
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In California, truck license plates are 7 characters, all numbers except for one letter in either the second or the sixth position. Whenever that letter is an X, I get nerd snipped into treating it as a multiplication problem and solving it in my head.
we should have paid more attention to the cats who, for decades, put their bodies on the line to walk on keyboards and sit on laptops and prevent us from programming
Former 2 time world champion DogPlayingTetris becomes the first player to ever rollover the level counter in NES Tetris, performing what's known in the community as "Rebirth". Final score: 29,486,164, 4216 lines, level 347 (256 + 91)... all huge world records. #tetris
I'd also love a 6 hour layover overnight instead of taking the red eye I was going to take and be 7 hours later getting into Cleveland than I wanted, why do you ask? #airporthell
Why yes, I'd love to leave at 4:40 to get to the airport at 6:20 for an 8:20 flight that got delayed to 9:05 which is too late for my connection so now I'm on a 10:20 flight instead. Why do you ask? #airporthell
@shanselman Who at Microsoft do I have to bribe to fix ADO so that those of us on dark mode who copy/paste text from one task to another can do so without our friends on light mode seeing dark text on a dark background?
I updated the blog post with a statement from Revival. While I'm not particularly happy with Revival's decision, I understand their motives. It's just a shame that it was someone from Interplay that had to go and do this. "By games for gamers" my ass.
Damn, got another Tetris world record! This time in the arcade variant developed by Atari. 6,008,005 points, 5,386 lines, round 363. Be warned, it's nearly FIVE HOURS. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2131759212