Question: I had everything I needed to qualify for Level 2 in the contest - the 20 required questions with 2 upvotes each, the votes, and even the sharing.

I posted a picture on my website with the text "Ask and answer questions about Macs! Click to see more!", which my users quickly ate up. They click on *anything*.

The links were tracked with a URL shortener, which let me see exactly how many clicks I had. After a short amount of time, my quota was filled (I looked at the URL shortener's stats and I saw for each of the 11 {just to be safe} ads, at least 15 clicks on each one). One of my users even signed up and made an account.

Thus, I was feeling pretty confident that my place was secured. Knowing that the site had probably some lag, I wasn't surprised when the share progress bar told me I had 7 - it was 5 a few minutes ago. I knew, thanks to the shortened URLs, that I was in the 'way past safe' category.

This all made it a complete surprise to me that I didn't get into Level Two. See <http://thenewipadishere.com/>; as of now, I'm still not listed.

Is it possible for a moderator or someone at Stack Exchange to take a look at the links I posted and investigate whether they should have been counted towards the contest?

Answer: 
Your mission progress counts seven out of ten shares; these are the seven posts that meet the sharing requirements:

* [How can I disable animation when switching desktops in Lion?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17929/how-can-i-disable-animation-when-switching-desktops-in-lion)
* [How does iMessage know that the recipient is an iOS 5 device?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/27274/how-does-imessage-know-that-the-recipient-is-an-ios-5-device)
* [Does iChat block content in China?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/does-ichat-block-content-in-china)
* [Is there a keyboard shortcut to move the position of the Dock?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46046/is-there-a-keyboard-shortcut-to-move-the-position-of-the-dock)
* [Is it possible to drag the Dock around the screen?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46143/is-it-possible-to-drag-the-dock-around-the-screen)
* [Can I move the top menu bar?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46165/can-i-move-the-top-menu-bar)
* [Can I use Adblock/Adblock Plus to block ads in games that are not in a browser?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46175/can-i-use-adblock-adblock-plus-to-block-ads-in-games-that-are-not-in-a-browser)

To be sure that there's nothing wrong here, I looked at the server access logs, which record *all* requests to your shared URLs, not just those that eventually counted as a valid referral.

In looking at the logs, I made these two observations about a vast (!) majority of the requests:

1. They came in bunches. The requests didn't come naturally in a "hey, this looks interesting, I'll check it out" pattern; instead they look like a "here's a bunch of links, all of which I shall now click within quick succession, maybe even twice for good measure."
2. They either came very obviously from you, or the reqesting IP address belonged to one of these groups:

	* registered to an institution that you seem to have ties to,
	* registered to dedicated hosting providers,
	* well-known proxy.

I am therefore inclined to consider the assumption that you didn't meet the sharing requirements to be correct.
Some things to note:

* As mentioned, links must be in the correct format (ending with your
user ID, 6730).
* You must have 10 unique links. Posting a link to the same post
multiple times can only count towards one share.
* To count as a share, each link (or all links to a specific post
combined) must be clicked by at least 5 unique IP addresses. Even if the URL shortener reports that a link has been clicked many times, it's possible that it has been clicked multiple times by the same person.
* I'm not 100% sure, but it's my guess, that links to closed or deleted
questions aren't counted.

In general, the link tracking systems here are pretty reliable. They're not a new feature and are used for things other than contests.  

Realistically, it is more likely that the URL shortener is reporting a different metric than Stack Exchange is recording (or misreporting altogether) than it is that Stack Exchange's tracking isn't working.

Moderators have no more access to link information or influence on contest results than you do; Stack Exchange will have to be the ones to investigate further.

Sorry that things aren't working out as expected!