Is it who's hot? Or who's got the bot? Salon takes a look at some of the questionable voting tactics employed against our feeble polling software during the 2007 FishbowlDC Hottest Media Types competition (despite our pleas).

A particular interesting nugget:

[P]erhaps it's going too far to suggest, as one of the contestants did, that the poll functions as a perfect metaphor for Washington life, in that everyone knew that the only way to get ahead was to play outside the rules.

We feel pretty confident in the new PollDaddy.com software that we've started using, which means that the 2008 FishbowlDC Hottest Media Types contest will be the most honest yet (perhaps the first?!?).

So hit the gym. Cuz it'll be your body, not your bot-y that gets you the trophy next year.

>UPDATE: Hottest Male, Off-Air Winner Kriston Capps writes:

Salon decided to write a story about how Catherine and I won our respective categories in the Mediabistro FishbowlDC Hottest Media Types contest—namely, by cheating. But only by passive cheating. It's a critical distinction that you'd totally understand if you lived in the District. In any case, it's a fun article, to which lolcath and I respond here. Now I only need to figure out where this award goes in my CV.

And Capps and Hottest Female, Off-Air Catherine Andrews send their bot-loving friends this thank you video.

>UPDATE: And, finally, we have no idea how we managed to miss this priceless thank you video from Andrews.