One of the goals at Alpha Coders is that each piece of content gets fair visibility. A higher rating count implies that our community found a piece of content more exceptional than a piece of content with less ratings, and that content will generally be easier to find, show up in more places, and get more views.
Due to this dynamic, it's an area that people try to abuse, or maybe just take advantage of.
The goal: We want ratings to be a clear representation of how much our community likes a piece of content.
There are things that we don't allow, since they don't line up with our goal around ratings:
- You cannot rate your own content
- You cannot rate your own content from an anonymous account
- You cannot create multiple accounts to rate your content (this applies to favorites too)
- Members of your household cannot rate your content
The three above things give content unnatural ratings compared with other content on Alpha Coders
FAQ:
So my mother/brother/sister/father/pets can't rate my content?
This is correct. It's impossible for us to know whether it is you, or another member of your family rating your content. Rather than try to parse each situation indivually (an impossible task for us), we simply don't allow ratings from members of your household.
What about my friends rating my content?
For this it depends a little. If your friend is over at your house - from our end it'll just look like you are using two accounts to rate your own content. Just like in the situation above, we can't know whether it's a friend or you, so this would not be allowed. A friend down the street, in another city, etc that sometimes rates your content will be fine. But it won't be fine if that friend rates only your content every day. It just looks like abuse at that point.
Let me know if you have questions!
David West
Alpha Coders