Each band on our charts has a vote link. Each time a fan clicks the vote link for a band, the band's vote count will go up accordingly. Bands will usually have a vote link on their official website and other music sharing sites. A vote link is also present next to each band's listing on our charts so that our visitors who are unfamiliar with certain bands will be able to vote without having to go off site to hunt for vote links.

A fan may only vote for a band once per 24 hours. Any additional votes from the same person for the same band within a 24 hour period are ignored.

Votes on HellWire are refreshed every 15 minutes. This means that if you vote for a band, you will see your vote added at the next 15 minute interval when the charts refresh.

On the first day of every month, ALL of the votes for ALL of the bands are reset back to zero. This way, we start over with a clean slate every month to allow fair competition with any new bands. All bands' previous stats are kept on record and are accessible through the account management area.

Visitors to our site may post ratings for the bands if they so desire. A rating is a score between 1 (lowest) and 10 (highest) reflecting a fan's overall opinion of a band.

On the charts, each band's average rating will be displayed.

Currently, visitors are only allowed to rate a band once per week and are required to submit a review with comments for the band along with their name and email address.

To rank the bands on our charts, we use a formula that scores each band based on their votes and average rating (votes and average ratings are discussed in the previous two questions).

The formula works like this:

Score = VOTES x (AVERAGE RATING x 0.2)

Using the above formula, bands are ranked in decending order based upon the Score.

If you're not a math fan, the formula ends up working like this:

With an average rating of 10, the Score works out to double the amount of votes.
With an average rating of 5, the Score is equal to the amount of votes.

This way, a rating of 5 has a neutral effect and ratings above that are rewarded. Ratings below 5 will cause a progressively steep "punishment":

With an average rating of 3, the Score works out to 60% the amount of votes.
With an average rating of 1, the Score works out to 20% the amount of votes.

For those worried about "punishment", we should note that very few bands ever carry average ratings below 5, and we've yet to see any below 4.

There are three things that you'll need to check to make sure your band shows up on our charts.

1. You must have a link to us on your band's website (your "vote link") so that your fans can vote for you. Make sure the vote link is set up properly! You received the proper vote link in the e-mail that was sent to you when you signed up. You can also check it by going to the login screen and chosing "Display Link Syntax" from the drop box before you log in.

Confused? Just use this format:

http://www.hellwire.com/charts/in.php?id=YOUR_ID_GOES_HERE

Of course, change the YOUR_ID_GOES_HERE to the username you chose when you signed up. You MUST link to this special address in order for your votes to be counted.

2. You must have a sufficient score to be listed on the charts. The HellWire charts display our top 100 bands, but since we have over 100 bands in our database, some bands are hidden from view. A new band that sends in just one vote will receive an automatic Score of (2) and should be listed somewhere on the charts, since there are usually some bands at the bottom of the charts who are not sending in any votes at all (and thus have Scores of zero).

3. Next, the charts must refresh. This happens automatically, once every 15 minutes. If you're sure your vote link is set up properly and you have sent in at least one vote, just check back later. If you look at the very bottom of any of our chart pages, you can see when the chart was last refreshed and when the next refresh will be.

Please see the above question.

Three possibilities:

1. You've already voted for this band in the current 24 hour period. The charts will not let one person vote more than one time for one band in one day.

2. The charts have not refreshed since you voted. The charts refresh every 15 minutes, at which time the vote counts are updated.

3. The voting gateway identified the vote as a "cheat". If you clicked the vote link from somewhere outside of the HellWire site, you were brought to a gateway which authenticates the vote. The gateway requires that you are using a browser with cookies enabled and that you click the "Vote for [Band Name]" button within 2 minutes.

Three possibilities:

1. You've already posted a rating for this band in the past 7 days. Ratings are different than votes. Really, you should rate a band one time and post additional ratings only if your opinion changes.

2. Your browser does not allow cookies. You must have a cookie enabled browser in order to post a rating. This is for tracking purposes only.

3. You tried to post an unfair or defamatory rating. Currently, it is not possible to give a band a rating of (1)--we feel that no band deserves the lowest possible rating. In the past, extremely low ratings have been used to sabatoge the charts and so we are taking measures to prevent this sort of abuse. If you actually believe the band deserves a very low rating, you may give them a rating of (2)--that will be sufficient. Please make sure you substantiate the low rating with something more than the best one-line insult you can come up with. We routinely remove ratings that we feel are unfair to the bands.

Click here to go to our banners page!

**Our script automatically downloads your banner to our server.

When you enter in your banner address, our script checks it's size and dimensions, and then if everything is okay, it copies it over to our server where it is permanently hosted for the charts. At that point, the banner address is automatically changed over to an address on our server (hellwire.com). If you test the new address, you should see your banner there, safe and sound. This does two things:

1. It saves you lots of bandwidth! In other words, we pay for the cost of potentially thousands of people downloading your banner every month. That's a good thing, especially if you're using a free site that will shut you down if you exceed a certain bandwidth quota.

2. It ensures us that there will be no broken banner images on our list. That's a good thing too!

If you need to update your banner, just edit your account and put in your banner address. Our copy of your banner will be refreshed and everything will be peachy! Geeze, quit worrying so much, alright?

Only the top 5 bands will have their banners displayed. The rest will have text links.

Also, some bands have not provided banners, and so even when they make the top 5 listing, no banner will appear.

This is an incentive to send in more votes and rank higher, as those top 5 bands will pull in an increased amount of visitors--people like to click banners!

Is this the "new" icon you speak of?

In January of 2003, we began placing this icon next to all band listings that were new to the chart. New bands will get to keep this spiffy little icon in their listing for one week, after which, it is gone forever. The idea is that it will help new bands to catch up in the charts if they're coming into the month a little late. If not, then it is sort of an unfair advantage, but we're not going to make a bunch of flashing icons for everyone else that say "old"--just forget about it!

If you signed up more than a week before January 2003, then regrettably, your band never received this marvelous, glowing wonder of an icon. Instead, you've enjoyed the rich rewards of being a seasoned veteran on HellWire. Let the newbies have their toys!

Yes. Go to the account login screen and choose "Display Stats" from the drop box.

You will be shown all the stats for your account here. To see how many visitors have clicked your link this month, look under "This Month" next to "Visits". On this screen, you can also check your daily, monthly and historical totals and averages. How interesting!

Yes. Please read the above question.

The best way to deal with a fantasy is to role play a little bit. See if it fits, see if it's comfortable for you. Get the idea? Go to: http://mail.hellwire.com

Don't worry, we won't tell.

If you don't record any multi-platinum albums in the near future, consider writing a novel. We'd love to read it.

Honestly.