According to Slate, an attempt to get a nobody elected to the NHL All Star Game has exposed gross incompetence on the part of the site administrators and league officials:

How did the Rory Vote-O-Matic work? According to Touesnard, online security at NHL.com was pathetic. The league tried to counter automated scripts by making voters decipher words embedded in distorted images—a system known as CAPTCHA. But the NHL used only 51 different picture files and each one had a predictable name, like “1.gif.” All the Rory hackers had to do was create a table that linked up each file name with the appropriate pass phrase. Touesnard coded up the Vote-O-Matic in just a few hours.

Incentive centered design problem for online voting, anyone?

My favorite tidbit:

Some have even gone so far as to suggest the whole thing was orchestrated by the league’s viral marketers, who have been pushing a fan-centered brand under the slogan “My NHL.” But it’s hard to imagine how anything positive could come from such a parade of scandalous incompetence.

Having viral marketers is stupid enough on its own.  Then giving them positive credit for something they didn’t start and subsequently blatantly mismanaged?

Categories: Business and Economics, Community, Governance, Incentive Centered Design, Information Economics, Information Markets, Marketing, Social Software, Users as Partners