Despite leaders having run thousands of Exchanges with millions of participants over the years, there isn't strong evidence to suggest that individuals can successfully "game the system." There are several tools in place from how Exchanges are run, how thoughts are presented for rating, how leaders choose to moderate the incoming thoughts, etc., that prevent one person from having undue influence on the results. A few examples include:
- The thought sorting algorithm prevents participants from returning to the Exchange and rating the same thoughts repeatedly.
- There is a moderation setting to filter out duplicate thoughts shared by the same participant so that thoughts cannot be copied and pasted over and over.
- Leaders and participants all have the power to report thoughts that need closer attention.
- The Differences tool in the Results Dashboard allows leaders to identify groups of participants with similar starring behavior and consider why that behavior might exist.
- Accounts with the Contact Upload/Data Integration feature are able to generate unique participation links for each invitee. These links do not completely prevent participants from sharing access to an engagement with individuals who are not on a predetermined list of participants, but it means that people using the same link can only participate in the engagement once between them.
- Accounts with the Contact Upload feature can choose to limit participation in an Exchange or survey to those who enter a pre-approved code (such as employee number or student ID).
On top of all of this, in special cases, our team can conduct advanced, manual investigations into participation patterns when there is reason to suspect that someone has tried to game the system and, in any case where gaming is found, thoughts and ratings can be excluded from the final analysis - though this is exceedingly rare and treated with the utmost caution to preserve genuine participation and the integrity of the Exchange.