The perfect as the enemy of the good
Voltaire once said, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." While it is also possible that the good may be the enemy of the perfect, I believe the former situation is much more common. In software engineering, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good when nobody wants to implement a reasonably effective solution, just because it's not perfect.
This recently came to mind when I made a recommendation to the FanLit admins that they implement a dial-in account verification system, similar to the kind credit card companies use to activate new cards. You supply them a phone number when you sign up, and you must call from that phone number to activate the account. Their answer was that a) it might reduce the number of participants and b) it's not a 100% solution. Uhh, yeah, it's gonna reduce the number of fraudulent accounts. And it may be too much trouble for some honest people to mess with. And no, it won't completely eliminate fraud. There are ways to finetune such a system so that the number of fraudulent accounts would be significantly reduced.
Unethical behavior in FanLit is their biggest problem, in my opinion. They've done a poor job of enforcing account integrity, and that hurts everyone, including the people who are cheating. Their lax approach to voting integrity is like a petri dish for growing dysfunctional behavior. For some people, simply doing the right thing isn't sufficient motivation. They have to fear being caught and punished. It's a sad fact, but there it is. By fostering an environment where cheating not only isn't punished but could possibly even be rewarded, FanLit is dangling a temptation too great for some to resist. There are writers who are so desperate for attention that the possibility of being a top ten finalist or winner is more important than integrity or self-respect.
And if FanLit doesn't think this is a problem, they need look no further than their own forums and the hundreds (maybe thousands, for all I know) of messages where people are complaining about unscrupulous voting practices. If they want to create a fun, positive environment, they need to fix these voting integrity issues NOW.
Posted: October 11th, 2006 under Tech, Writing.
Comments: 8
Comments
Comment from James
Time: October 11, 2006, 11:21 pm
As Larry Wall (father of Perl) might have it, the perfect is the enemy of a really clever hack.
Have the Avon people never seen the pathetic depths that desperate authors will stoop to in Amazon’s customer reviews? Oh well, the best thing to do is to not take it any more seriously than they are.
In this episode, whoever-the-chick-is and whoever-the-guy-is settle their differences with a knock-down drag out fight, each going through all six increasingly powerful boss forms before one of them finally gives in. Who will it be! Buy hundreds of dollars of Nintendo gear (please?) and find out!
Comment from James
Time: October 11, 2006, 11:23 pm
Your anti-spam thingy no worky.
It’s only giving me the first seven characters of the nine-character word that it wants me to enter. Obviously I’ve correctly guessed the last two, but I’m not sure that’s an intended policy? (It would certainly cut down on spam…)
Comment from Lynne
Time: October 11, 2006, 11:28 pm
James, you’re brilliant. Someone should write a FanLit entry that really IS a video game. Heh. During our drive in the mountains this weekend, we brainstormed a raunchy, goofy, and — we hope — wickedly funny science fiction story (but completely compliant with the premise!) that I’ll probably enter for Round Five. I will definitely send you a copy of that one.
Avon’s not really running this thing, as far as I can tell. A company called FanLib is doing it. Their web server reports as a Windows box (yeah, really!), and I think this is by far the biggest event they’ve ever run.
Comment from Lynne
Time: October 11, 2006, 11:28 pm
Hmm! Well, let me go change those to shorter words, then!
Comment from Michelle
Time: October 12, 2006, 6:40 pm
When you say shorter words, you really mean it, LOL.
I haven’t been following FanLit as closely as I thought I would and your post just blew me
away. Writers cheating to win? Sure, we’re all human, but it’s an insult to your fellow
writers to edge them out by cheating. You could never sleep easy again. Shame on them. Shame!
And Avon was probably taken as much by surprise as I am, and now they don’t know how to handle it.
What a mess.
Comment from Lynne
Time: October 12, 2006, 7:12 pm
Hi, Michelle! I guess I found a limitation of the anti-spam plugin. “Humperdinck” was too long for it. (Yes, there’s a Princess Bride theme to the words this time!)
I thought about what to do about FanLit for a long time, and I ended up deciding not to participate further. I just emailed their tech support to ask them to delete my account. I can’t stay involved with something so riddled with dishonorable activity, no matter how much fun I’ve had or how many really wonderful people I’ve met. I just can’t do it.
I’ve got some much more fun blog posts queued up to change the subject. :-)
And James and Phil will be glad to hear it! ::waves::
Comment from John
Time: October 12, 2006, 7:26 pm
Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam [ http://www.theblog.ca/?p=21 ] can be tweaked, it turns out. I had an eleven-letter word in my list, so I’ve increased the default image size from 140 to 240. Lemme know if you notice any problems.
Comment from Lynne
Time: October 12, 2006, 10:35 pm
Aha! I knew I should’ve read the instructions!
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