Greasy Fork

Hi everyone,

I'm starting this thread today to discuss an issue that has been severely damaging our community ecosystem recently—certain authors maliciously dominating the script rankings through an absurd amount of botting.

The Abnormal Data: 4,000-5,000 Daily Growth

Anyone who has paid even a little attention to the recent leaderboards has probably noticed some extremely unnatural growth curves. Take Script/Post ID: 566456, which I've been keeping an eye on, for example. The daily data increase for this script is currently stable at around 4,000 to 5,000.

We are all developers and scriptwriters here, so we all know what's realistic. Given the current size of our community, unless a script has received massive, viral promotion across the web, is it possible to organically generate 4,000 to 5,000 views/installs every single day like clockwork? This isn't just "data optimization" anymore; this is blatantly insulting everyone's intelligence.

The Failure of the Reporting Mechanism and Moderation Doubts

Faced with such obvious stat manipulation, I followed normal community procedures and submitted multiple reports against this ID. Shockingly, every single report was unsuccessful—they were either outright rejected or completely ignored.

This forces me to place a huge question mark over the current moderation mechanism:

Where is the baseline for moderation? If faking thousands of hits a day isn't considered a violation, then what exactly counts as botting?

Is there favoritism or a double standard among the admins? When multiple reports against such a blatantly anomalous ID are ignored, it's hard not to suspect that there might be indulgence or even deliberate shielding of certain specific accounts behind the scenes.

Driving Out Honest Developers

The original purpose of the ranking system was to give exposure to truly useful, high-quality scripts. If the platform tacitly accepts this unspoken rule of "he who bots the most wins," who will bother sitting down to thoughtfully design logic, fix bugs, and push updates? We might as well just compete on who can write the best view-botting script or who buys the most proxy IPs.

I'm posting this, on one hand, to publicly demand an explanation. I hope the management team can directly address whether the data for ID 566456 is considered normal. On the other hand, I want to ask the community: am I the only one noticing this leaderboard hijacking? What do you all think about this behavior?

Looking forward to your discussions, and I hope the platform can restore a fair creative environment for everyone.

While I agree there are many scripts out there that are faking install numbers, the issue is that there is no way to prove that it is the author of the script themselves that are doing it. I believe at least some of these cases are the developer of the "fake install counts" bot targeting scripts they don't own in order to hide themselves better, or to confuse moderation, or just to cause chaos.

So yes, I think it's likely fake numbers, but I don't want to have scripts deleted just because someone other than the author decided to do this for whatever reason.

There are detection methods on the server, but this is basically an arms race. I put in countermeasures, and they work until they don't.

It's completely illogical for others to accuse him of malicious competition by artificially inflating his install count every day. Would any competitor willingly give away their money daily? Therefore, it's highly likely that the author himself is inflating the install count. Furthermore, is this author only posting one script like this? Four out of the top six on Sleazyfork are scripts by this author. I believe this is not a coincidence; it's the inevitable result of the author operating bots to inflate the numbers. Administrators can investigate posts with IDs 566456, 565330, 568073, and 569757. The author's contact information, domain, and description content in the script descriptions all belong to the same author.

These scripts are now running out of steam every day; just look at the daily install counts of these two scripts.

Therefore, it's highly likely that the author himself is inflating the install count.

Highly likely, but I can't be sure, so I'm not going to risk banning an innocent user.

The author's contact information, domain, and description content in the script descriptions all belong to the same author.

It would be against Greasy Fork's rules to create multiple accounts to evade bans and such. If you create reports saying this and providing why you think it's the same account, I will review it.

I have adjusted the countermeasures against fake install counts. We'll see in the coming days if it makes the problem go away.

against

I have seen your actions, and I am very grateful for your control.

I have adjusted the countermeasures against fake install counts. We'll see in the coming days if it makes the problem go away.

Yesterday, I posted a free script on the Tianya Community, which may have infringed on the interests of several other paid authors. They created multiple accounts and posted the same descriptions and code as me, then accused me of spamming and abuse. I don't understand why I, an innocent account who never created multiple accounts and posted the same scripts and descriptions, was falsely accused and had my account removed. I sincerely request that the administrators investigate this matter.