Cheating

 So many things are allowed on topwebcomics, many things some people would prefer not.  Still, some people take it upon themselves to try and push their favorite webcomic to the top.  The only thing it does is get that comic removed....

What are you allowed to do?

You're allowed to put up frequent incentives to encourage people to vote for your comic.  

You're allowed to put up the next panel, the next comic, the next week's worth of comics, whatever as incentives to give those who vote for your comic a reward for voting.

You're allowed to have your characters play dress up, or, depending on the rating of your comic, dress less, whatever, comic owners know their fans, some comics would drive down their votes this way, others obviously get more votes this way.  Personally I always think about the Marvel swim suit issues, some people don't like sex appeal in any form, but all you can do is avoid the rating R comics if you're uncomfortable with it.

Ok, so all of that is pretty straight forward, lets go into some of the more sketchy areas, which ARE (that means yes, you can do these).

You're allowed to ask your art class to vote for your comic, or your brother's art class, or your cousin's friend's art class.  No they haven't read your comic, yes the votes are legal and allowed.

You're allowed to post on forums a link to your vote page, combine it with a cool incentive comic, and you've got a winner!  If the forum doesn't allow such things, don't blame me if you get bannedby that forum.

Ok, what about multiple computers? Yes, you're allowed to vote from home and from work and from school.  

I would prefer you NOT repeatedly disconnect from your dial up internet to try and get new ip addresses, but I can't really stop you.

You ARE allowed to vote from multiple machines in a computer lab.  Why? Because I can't stop you.

OMG, really? Yes, as long as a human is voting, I don't really have a problem with it.  I can't stop it, so I'm not going to make it against the TWC rules.

So where do things go wrong?  What are people not allowed to do.

People can't write a program to vote for a person.

Thats the one real law, thats the one thing that I've spent extensive amount of time writing code to track.  I don't automatically void risky votes, but I do track enough information to be able to often figure out if someone is writing a bot program.  

Someone recently was using a bot program to get someone at #6, I've removed the comic.  Please don't do it to help out your favorite webcomic, instead pass info about the webcomic, tell people about it, offer the author some help, whatever.  Cheating isn't helpful to the community, it doesn't help get new people into the world of online comics, and it doesn't reward artists for good work or effort at promoting their webcomic.

Thanks