One person catching a lot...

[AssetDomains]

lol, unlucky Foz.

So back to the statistical analysis. Who can give me access to some data to test my theories? I've only got drop times logged for what I've caught / tried to catch.

I'd be happy to do a trade tomorrow when I'm back on the computer

 

[jonno]

Denys has been in this game a long time, he wouldn't jeopardise his reputation by cheating.

 

[Skinner]

Redemption, everyone elses data is worthless only data from those on the same servers would be relevant, because my logs can be seconds or minutes different, so my data wouldn't match yours.

If it helps from around 300 missed catches from multiple catchers giving around 500 data points over 60 days, there were very little of note.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I don't have any data personally. I was more interested in a chunk of data to see if there are any patterns in the drop times. Regardless of the server time and how in sync it is with Nominet.

 

[Retired_Member42]

Yeah. I e-mailed him to ask if any of my theories have been close Although I think he'll be too busy laughing at out theories to answer whilst counting his $.

 

[martin-s]

Well, after a minor falling out once upon a time, I do trust Denys. And he says it isn't multiple tags.

Given the statistics involved, I would imagine the chances of it being pure luck are pretty much zero. Ten coin tosses with a 1/2 chance would be pretty unlikely, but 10 catches with a 1/100+ theoretical chance must be mathematically impossible.

Being closest to Nominet and having the best optimised script in the world wouldn't be enough to be front of the queue every time either.

Therefore, Denys has clearly figured out some part of the Nominet drop process which isn't purely random. Which is bizarre, because random is pretty damned easy to achieve.

You'd have to imagine it's something like tick size. I.e. Nominet don't use fractions of a second, or something similar.

Kudos Denys.

 

[Retired_Member42]

Interesting that deductible.co.uk and decorated.co.uk were reg'd on the same date by the same person in 2003 and just dropped within 6 minutes of each other. The chances of these dropping so close to each other at random within a 24 hour period is slim. More likely that they were registered in the first place 6 minutes apart? Is there some connection between the reg time and the drop time? If so it's not random at all.

Who has stats for same registrant / same date against drop times?

 

[monaghan]

Unless anything major has changed, Denys's system is acceptable to Nominet, I queried this some time back when I was looking at how to develop DomainJunky further, it was designed to support multiple catch engines possibly in a similar way to Denys is doing with his system (I never bothered to complete the multiple catch system as everyone was flocking to Denys at the time).

I would suggest that you need to be on the ball all the time reviewing how the system is performing and frequently trying new ideas to stay ahead of the game. I wrote my system for fun years ago and sometimes I've caught loads other times catch very little.

The changes to allow 123-reg and such like the power to auction off domains is going to hit the secondary market far more than 1 player getting lucky for a few weeks!

 

[monaghan]

Interesting that deductible.co.uk and decorated.co.uk were reg'd on the same date by the same person in 2003 and just dropped within 6 minutes of each other. The chances of these dropping so close to each other at random within a 24 hour period is slim. More likely that they were registered in the first place 6 minutes apart? Is there some connection between the reg time and the drop time? If so it's not random at all.

Who has stats for same registrant / same date against drop times?

Interesting, none of mine have ever dropped in an obvious relationship to the registration time or the time of the suspended / we're going to cancel it emails (unless I've not found the pattern yet!)

 

[Systreg]

Interesting that deductible.co.uk and decorated.co.uk were reg'd on the same date by the same person in 2003 and just dropped within 6 minutes of each other. The chances of these dropping so close to each other at random within a 24 hour period is slim. More likely that they were registered in the first place 6 minutes apart? Is there some connection between the reg time and the drop time? If so it's not random at all.

Who has stats for same registrant / same date against drop times?

Not sure what time they dropped as I didn't have them loaded, but I noticed marketsurvey.co.uk and marketsurveys.co.uk both dropped very early this morning, must have been close together and they would have both been registered at the same time.

 

[Retired_Member42]

Yeah I saw those. Both reg'd by the same catcher at around the same time but I don't have the exact time either. Those two also had the same owner / reg date as deductible.co.uk / decorated.co.uk as did recalled.co.uk and a few others.

Hard to say without knowing the reg times. I don't think it's as simple as domains bought at 11pm drop at 11pm a year later or whatever but it does look like ones reg'd at the same time by the same person has some influence on the drop time which would mean that Nominet doesn't simply have a list of domains to drop at random.

 

[foz]

Criticizing (albeit questioning) a product or service that is in the public arena is not a vendetta. How you handle criticism Denys is plain to see. Most professional companies take it on-board, ignore or improve.

 

[Edwin]

Criticizing (albeit questioning) a product or service that is in the public arena is not a vendetta. How you handle criticism Denys is plain to see. Most professional companies take it on-board, ignore or improve.

It's a fine line, though. Some of those posts on this thread have gone as far as to suggest wrong-doing, and at that point it's no longer just "criticism" any more and shouldn't be seen as such.

Contrast:

- Supermarket X's soup seems very salty - criticism/opinion
- Supermarket X's soup contains ground up locusts - bald statement of wrong-doing (actionable)
- Supermarket X's soup must surely contain ground-up locusts, because I can't understand how it can taste so locust-y otherwise - veiled suggestion of wrong-doing, even if it's disguised as criticism (almost certainly actionable)

 

[foz]

Wrong-doing was not my thrust, if it has come across as so I apologise.

 

[SF]

I personally think Denys is very honest, if you look at his very sucessfull auction site hes always trying to detect shill bidders and people who are trying to cheat, Denys has always caught the best names for years even before his auction site, hes just a very good coder get over it

Seems sour grapes to those not catching cream, work harder on your systems

and if hes found a bug well done to him, hes had to put the work in.

You dint see him on here wasting his time, prob tweaking his code so he can catch even more

 

[Retired_Member38]

I personally think Denys is very honest, if you look at his very sucessfull auction site hes always trying to detect shill bidders and people who are trying to cheat, Denys has always caught the best names for years even before his auction site, hes just a very good coder get over it

Seems sour grapes to those not catching cream, work harder on your systems

and if hes found a bug well done to him, hes had to put the work in.

You dint see him on here wasting his time, prob tweaking his code so he can catch even more

I don't think you really understand the maths behind it. Tweaking code is not going to catch you the percentage of domains that he's catching.

I don't think its sour grapes... more just curiosity as to how he's doing it. I don't catch domains so have no dog in this fight but I'm posting here as I too am wondering what he's doing

 

[anthony]

I personally think Denys is very honest, if you look at his very sucessfull auction site hes always trying to detect shill bidders and people who are trying to cheat...

Detecting shillers is fine, as nobody want's to come up against them. However, do you think it's right to then expose them, as no other site I know of feels the need to do this?

 

[SF]

Fair enough Monkey but to be fair ive been catching domains much longer than most of the pecentage of this threads users and can tell you Denys has always caught the best names, and name after name.

 

[monaghan]

Detecting shillers is fine, as nobody want's to come up against them. However, do you think it's right to then expose them, as no other site I know of feels the need to do this?

Is this in the T&C's if so, then those breaking the rules know the consequences before starting.

 

[DaveP]

Just to clarify I never started this thread to slate Deny's or out of jealousy, I've even congratulated him in the first post. I started this thread out of curiosity and to spark debate of a possible loophole that I feel is at present crippling the commercial viability of .uk drop catching. I'm certain many here agree a level playing field is better.