Why "next"? Because my first article about the found method of bypassing the Habr rules, the UFO that arrived forcibly hid in the drafts, where it remains to this day.
But that method could be used destructively, so I completely agree with this decision of the UFO. And the article itself was intended primarily to attract his attention (practically caught with live bait), tk. my request to support the site about a potential vulnerability was ignored.
But the current situation is completely different. There is no vulnerability for the resource, but there are certain features of calculating the rating for users and companies, which can sometimes be exploited in their own interests.
Therefore, this article is primarily intended to prevent malicious (and constant) exploitation of this feature, since for ordinary users, this can cause certain inconveniences.
Features of the rating
The exact formula for calculating the rating on Habré is not known to me. But by indirect indications, we can conclude that the already wound up rating does not "stick" to the blog, for example, if you add the company's blog to a high-rating publication.
Due to this peculiarity, there is an assumption that the rating calculation formula takes into account only the actual voting of readers without taking into account the "old" votes that were given for the publication earlier.
In principle, this is a normal algorithm, since does not allow "wind up" the rating by editing the list of blogs for not very old publications. Although, on the other hand, if you have already managed to catch the minuses for the article, then most likely they will also not go anywhere, even if you hide it in drafts.
How to abuse?
This feature is very easy to abuse. It may seem like a good idea to some to publish a well-shot article several times. And also several times to catch the plus signs for her in karma and in increasing the rating.
And if we develop this situation to the point of absurdity, then a “brilliant” idea may come to mind to publish old articles over new ones with some frequency (for example, every month), thereby keeping the rating at a high level.
But fortunately, the
But if you try to cheat and hide previous publications so that the repetitions of posts are not striking, then such a trick will work for a while. If we assume that the rating for past articles does not disappear anywhere even after they are hidden in drafts, then a new publication will bring a new portion of the rating (although this will be an actual repetition of previously published material, the calculation formula will not know anything about it).
How NOT to abuse?
The self-evident "not to do this" will be too simple. Sometimes there are real situations when you need to re-publish. And there can be many reasons for this, ranging from reworking old material for a certain event or accidentally clicking on the "Publish" button instead of "Draft" (after all, after that, it is no longer possible to change the publication date and position in the feed).
Dear Authors! Please don't forget about your readers! At least write that this is a re-publication for some reason, so that attentive site visitors do not have déjà vu when reading a "new" article.
And an even bigger request, if you are making a second post, then, if possible, do not hide the previous version in drafts, especially if it is saved in someone's bookmarks. And it can be extremely offensive when you remember that you saved useful material as a souvenir, but it is no longer in deferred publications.
PS
I deliberately do not give examples of such publications, because firstly, I like the articles themselves and I have no goal of substituting specific authors or company blogs. And secondly, I sincerely believe that the authors did not have a goal to wind up the rating in this way. After all, accidents sometimes happen really by accident.