Note About Voting Issue in the Garden Contest

It was brought to our attention today that there was a sudden increase in votes attained for an entry in the Celebration of Gardens Contest. While a surge in votes for an entry isn't unheard of given timing around when the owner of the entry will notify family and friends about their contest entry...we take every complaint seriously and perform due diligence to investigate it.

In this particular case, we found the following...
-There was a pattern of single votes for this entry one after another, typically within one minute of the previous vote.
- The member id's used to cast these votes were all created back in January and February of this year.
- The member id's used are valid email accounts, however, they were created in succession within minutes of each other....typically 10-20 at a time.
- When the id's are used to login, they are all coming from the same ip address.

Given the combination of all of this info, we have decided to do the following...
- Remove all votes cast by these member id's.
- Delete the id's from YardShare.
- We are allowing the entry that received the votes to remain in the contest. We are doing this because based upon the ip address location of the person logging in using the id's, and the location of the owner of the contest entry...we do not believe that the owner of the entry was responsible for the bad votes.

This situation is due to a prior member registration loophole that allowed members to register on YardShare without proving that the email used was truly theirs. I personally take responsibility for that oversight. On March 1st, we enhanced the registration process to close that loophole. Every member that joins YardShare must validate their email address. We also offer the ability to use your Facebook or Twitter accounts to register, which validates the member's identity.

Please let me know if anyone has any questions about this issue, or the contests in general. Our #1 goal is to provide a fun, friendly, and trustworthy community that you can enjoy...and we will never compromise on that goal.

Bryan

I am so sorry that someone has been using fake e-mails to vote for my entry.I am truly sorry.I am withdrawing my entry.Good luck to all who entered,please don't think I was involved with the cheating. sunbury, sandy:o

Thank you for your note Sandy. I'm sorry you felt you needed to withdraw your entry, but I do understand. You have always been a valued member of the YardShare community and have been helpful to others looking for ideas. I hope that will continue.

Bryan