This is an update on my The software awards scam post in August. Below is an updated list of the download site awards I ‘won’ for software that didn’t even run. 23 in total, and that is only the ones I am aware of.
The article got a surprising amount of interest, including front page mentions on reddit, digg, slashdot and wordpress and a mention in the Guardian newspaper (they were too mean to give the URL of the article). There were also some entertaining reviews posted on download sites. The page has so far had over 150,000 hits, 263 comments and has a Google page rank of 6. I hope this exposure will make a small contribution to ending this sordid little practice.
It has been quite instructive to be on the receiving end of the news, albeit in a small way. Much of the commentary was inaccurate. One ‘journalist’ from ZDNET Belgium/Holland even managed to get both my first name and last name wrong, which is quite a feat considering we had exchanged several emails. I don’t know how many other mistakes he made, because the rest of the article was in Dutch or Flemish. I wonder if the mainstream media is much better. Definitely don’t believe everything you read.
You should try having a firstname like “Stephane”. Many people confuse it with “Stephanie”, which is a gender change. I’m used to it now, it’s not offensive to me. It’s just entertaining how many people miss that, even in print!
As for quoting, I’ve found that sometimes it’s not all that accurate. In the last few interviews I did some of the information wasn’t 100% accurate. It was close enough.
I can appreciate their situation though. Try writing something someone tells you about a topic you’ve never heard of before. You’re bound to make some mistakes. That’s just life…
This is brilliant! Thanks for the informative article. I knew that download sites were very lax with their ratings, but I had no idea it was to such an extent that they didn’t even TRY them.
As a software developer it saddens me to discover that what I thought was for the most part genuine appreciation of my work is in fact nothing more than pagerank politics.
This is brilliant! Thanks for the informative article. I knew that download sites were very lax with their ratings, but I had no idea it was to such an extent that they didn’t even TRY them.