How to win in Vkontakte contests? Another approach

Hi, Habr!

To write this post in many ways we were prompted by one article published a couple of weeks ago on Habré. Namely, " How to win in the contests repost Vkontakte "?



The author believes that the answer is obvious.

“We must participate in all contests and according to the theory of probability, the more contests, the greater the chance to win at least something”

As a result of the experiment, the author managed to win several contests in which the prizes were cheap Chinese souvenirs. For many skeptical people, the question arises: are competitions being conducted by participants of social networks honestly? Let's think and describe this risk (the possibility of fraud).

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The main type of selection of the winner is the selection using the program-selector. There are many modifications. The published contest informs the day when the winner will be selected and afterwards it places a screenshot from the screen on which the result of the selection is indicated.



- One screenshot?

- Yes, one screenshot.



- Can the dishonest organizer click "Choose a winner" in such a program until the participant he needs is selected?

- The opportunity is there.



- Will there be a registry of the number of winner selections in such a program?

- About such cases is not known.



As we can see, there are a lot of holes in the contests algorithm. The probability of winning something worthwhile drops sharply due to the risks of fraud, the probability of which increases with increasing motivation. Specialists in this field have described the so-called triangle in which such a situation may lead.







There are cases when the winners were chosen during a live broadcast on YouTube. Such methods also leave the possibility for scammers to influence the results of a competition by simulating the work of, for example, a random number generator on a fake website. Although it is much more difficult to do.

Reject - offer

A reasonable solution is to create certification centers for competitions in a social network. Application in which the organizer must record the mechanics of the competition at the time before its publication.

1. The terms of participation
2. The exact time to determine the winner (at this point, the program must choose the winner according to the conditions of participation).
3. Publication of the results of competitions in the registry.

- Can the dishonest organizer choose the winner of the participant he needs?

- No, it is possible to make changes to the register of results only for administrators of the competition certification center.



The form of interaction with the certification center can also be implemented through the application in a social network, the ability to choose another winner - upon request with an indication of the reason. Registration in such a center will raise the popularity of the competition compared to the unregistered, with sufficient information on the function of the certification authority.

We work with what is, but otherwise

What to do if the desire to wait for order in the organization of competitions is not, but you need to hold it?







In search of the best, the mechanics of the competition were rethought.



- What if you add to the contests game mechanics?

- No one will understand the new rules of the game! This is the "strength" of the repost contest - everyone knows what to do.



- Then we will add the well-known mechanic of the game “Sea Battle” from childhood!

- Well, on the grid 10 * 10 we place the prizes before the publication of the competition. Participants must in the comments to the post indicate the coordinates of a single cell, for example, B8. Caught in the cage behind which the prize is hidden - the winner. Different players may call the same coordinates. You can learn about the victory only at the end of the competition.







- Stop, and how to prove that the prizes were located before the start of the competition and their location did not change?

- Let's record the video from the computer screen. In the recording, we will visit the Yandex home page, which will contain news, and the yandex.ru/time page. Then we go to the social network in which we will hold a rally. Leave a comment under any entry. This comment will also have a time stamp. In the end, we will show where on the grid we “hide” the prize. In terms of participation, we will describe at what time the video was recorded and leave a link to the comment. When the contest is over we will post this video.



- Everything?

- If the competition for a wide audience - yes.



- But what if you hold a contest at Habrahabr?

- Then for the recorded video, we will find out and pre-publish the hash sum of the video file. We will be helped by the CertUtil utility by default included in the Windows kit. To find out the hash of the file, go to the command line: (Win + R keys and type cmd) and execute the command

certutil -hashfile c:file SHA512



where, c: file is the path to the file. By default, the utility calculates the hash sum using SHA1, we chose SHA512







- But how to prove that the winner is not connected with the organizer, who told him where the prize is hidden?

- For this competition can not be with a limited number of prizes, but may be limited in time by hour, day or 10 minutes. Solve the organizer. He knows in advance the probability of the game. If the prize is 1 and the cells are 100, there will be about 1 winner per 100 participants (for more, see the distribution below). If the organizer tells someone where the prize is, he does not deprive others of the opportunity to win it, but only increases their costs for prizes. Knowing the probability of the conversion of views into participants and traffic per unit of time, one can calculate the minimum time of the competition on the basis of the budget for prizes. The organizer has the right to extend the time of the contest within reasonable limits, but there is no cut.







- Interesting, you can try. And what will be the prize?

- Everywhere news about the attacks of new viruses, extortionists. WannaCry, Petya / notPetya, Erebus ... Encryption attackers. Play 100 GB Cloud4Y BACKUP as a gift for 2 months?



- Yes. Let's try. Comments with cell coordinates on the map can be written under this article. One participant can specify the coordinates of only one cell. If more is specified, only the first attempt of the participant is taken into account. The minimum duration of the competition is 1 hour from the moment of publication, but not more than 24 hours.

1. The location of the prize on the grid was recorded in a video at 14:34 Moscow time on July 7, 2017. Video recording will be posted on the link.
2. Link to the comment left in the video
3. The SHA512 Hash Sum
   
   
   
   
   
   

Let's play?



UPDATE:

The competition will last until the publication of the message from the company on its completion. This corresponds to the described rules: not less than 1 hour and not more than 24. We do not plan to complete the competition until there are no winners, unless there are special circumstances for this.



Previously, contests with similar mechanics were conducted by the author in a social network without negative evaluations (only likes), a large number of comments attracted a much larger number of participants. Article rating at the moment reduces the views and does not allow to collect the planned number of participants. Therefore, each participant is allowed to make two shots (attempts).



UPDATE 2:

E9 was a winning one, unfortunately, in 24 hours of the competition no one chose these coordinates. We thank all the participants for their interest in our marketing experiment.



UPDATE 3:

Thanks ivan386 for a great idea . The winner is selected.