Hi @glenalbrethsen, the "manual review" bit is a quick manual review of the comment histories of all winning placements - we use a formula to determine the winning placements, but then we do go through the comment histories of each winner to make sure we aren't rewarding a spammer. I wouldn't see we review every single comment, but we certainly do take a long enough look at the comments of each winner to determine that they are a legit commenter.
I have been going back and forth on how much to publish as far as the numbers of comments and what not - # of Curie upvoted posts commented on is only one part of the scoring metric, and I didn't want to over emphasize it by reporting just that stat as I did in last week's post, but I also didn't want to reveal the secret sauce of the other metrics we are looking at to prevent people from gaming the contest. Now I am flipping back the other way, I think I will report more stats in next week's post.
Hey, @carlgnash.
Thank you for the information. It's good to know.
I'm glad you're going through some of the history but not needing to look at everything. That would be a lot of man hours that you probably need elsewhere. I imagine you get a get good idea of what's going on with comments within the first 3-5. :)
I'm in favor of doing whatever you need to so that this contest isn't gamed. I just thought you were reporting some numbers because that's when I stumbled upon this, but it's okay. I'm trying to keep track of some of my numbers just so I know what I'm doing. People who want to game things will do it on their own—they certainly don't need any inadvertent help or encouragement.