found the millions of stars bug... but...

Okay. Found it.

I don't fully understand my whacked-out code from 2005-ish, but apparently there's some conditional logic I put in for displaying the stars, that indicates if an account ever received even one star. It probably made sense back when some people didn't have stars, dunno now.

Anyway...

The code error looks like a rare thing that when someone get's starred, the logic will do something odd, and instead of adding +1 to the star total, it ads the post ID... currently in the millions.

Down side is that there's no way to know the baseline of how many millions of errant stars someone received. Upside, it's not going to happen again.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Is there an algorithm that you can use to generate an average and adjust based on that?

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Have you ever considered star trackers, that you as a user could see a miniature profile of the people who starred you, of course if they want to be seen? There's some pros and cons to such I thing..

a reply to: TechniXcality

It would become too much of a popularity contest or a quid pro quo in my opinion.

Maybe just zero everybody out and start fresh?

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Yea it certainly could create more divisiveness and clicking and ats gang activity

originally posted by: TechniXcality
a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Have you ever considered star trackers, that you as a user could see a miniature profile of the people who starred you, of course if they want to be seen? There's some pros and cons to such I thing..

You would destroy the idea of God forms actually existing (I say NO) LEAVE IT as for some of us to be able to continue dreaming of an idea experienced as *wonderment* is possible in the most illogical of manifestations: too many stars attributed...to a human that created the initial glitch in an algorithm (deserved).

So you're saying you crushed my dreams of ever getting that glitch

Not really though, cool that you found it.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I could think of a few things that might possibly (there's no way I could actually know without seeing code) allow you to 'step back through the process', but is it really that much of an issue for us?

I mean, the amount of work would probably be fairly major and it could break something else. Best to just perhaps truncate the numbers to a cap for the ones that are most obviously caused by the bug (and then only if the bug will cause your variables to overflow at some stage) and leave everything else.

Just my 10c.

Less than 1300 people have more than 1 million stars, that's less than 0.5% of the total amount of members so why you just don't ban them all and that way fix the problem, it's only fair for the newer members



Also the cup number in the list of members is not the same than theone in the profile, at least with the person with most flags

I love seeing that, after all this time and ATS success, you are still taking your personal time to troubleshoot these things....


Shows your humility and honest affection for what you have built.

If I could million star that post I would 😊

a reply to: CIAGypsy

a reply to: SkepticOverlord
Just be glad the glitch didn't affect you. You already have over 9 millions stars; or did it affect you, too? You want some planets so you can start your own mini universe?

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Am totally impressed you were even looking.

There were what ... 4 legit crossings of the 100K threshold? Running a re-count on the accounts that were erroneously credited shouldn't be so difficult.

Finding the folks who intentionally bugged their 'scores' would be really interesting. ;-)

a reply to: Snarl

it has been pretty obvious for a while that deliberate staring for the purpose of skeking the stats was occurring [ 10 page threads from before the star system was introduced - with only one member having 1 star for every post - but none for any other member in the thread . ]

that it was happening - was easy to discern -

i never did work out how it was deliberatly done

i know from watching my own profile - that " big changes " happened over night on 10 or so occassions - i never figured out how the perpetrators knew which posts belonging to wich members to star to create the glitch

originally posted by: chr0naut
I could think of a few things that might possibly (there's no way I could actually know without seeing code) allow you to 'step back through the process', but is it really that much of an issue for us?

There's really no way to tell which PostID caused the errant millions.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Sometimes I see older threads and star a comment I like, whoops

a reply to: Indigent

i am not critisising you - but i have to question the motive of who ever goes back to a thread from 10 years ago - and stars EVERY post by a SINGLE member - and NO others - thats suspicious IMHO

Rats, you fixed the problem. My dream of being millionaire has gone down the tubes.