Worth the read. Enjoy.
alt info isn't illegal anymore on the mud kozlodoev :P
Cripple fight?
Yes, it makes sense.
I have decided to come up with a major reform proposal and post it (with Nicuramar's permission) so that we can discuss. I think there are some major flaws in the system, mainly due to the amount of moderator intervention required, which I will list clearly when I post the proposal.
There really shouldn't be any rules in my opinion which prohibit the use of multiple accounts. Name one that cannot be cancelled. Ratings? Make ratings like mud voting! Trash talking? Deal with the account that it's happening on separately!
You will find that many rules would require what you define to be 'illegal' knowledge, which I would rather call general knowledge. For example, without this 'illegal' knowledge, I wouldn't be able to find out if someone is giving MP info or joking when he says something like 'Kozlodoev is Pentheus!'
Besides, I find your argument really strange, I mean, there will always be ways for people to use their alternate accounts to break rules, and without that 'illegal' knowledge, we would not be able to deal with it. The only way to prevent it would then become allowing one account per person, which would again require that 'illegal' knowledge.
Of course unless you wish us to stop moderating at all, which I believe is too big of a sacrifice and would result in us becoming a rogue site.
No, I am not under the impression. I now realize, that these are in fact the site's rules. So now, I only object to those rules. The rules which require illegal knowledge to enforce are faulty and destructive. Furthermore, it allows selective enforcement of said rules(which we may or may not have seen in this instance), which is also a bad thing. That is all.
I am really not the right person to discuss changing rules with - You should take that to Nicuramar, I and Ecidon can not change rules, we can only enforce them.
It sounds like you might be under the impression that I have been snooping alt info through the website - I do not and can not since I have no such access, and I have no knowledge of Nicuramar having such a mechanism to track alts.
I do however believe that if you use your alts to abuse the system here, you should expect all the accounts involved to get in trouble. I mean, what was I supposed to do, turn a blind eye to rating logs with many alts because I'm not supposed to know these alts, or just block one account and let him keep inflicting damage with the rest?
It is truly bad taste for Fyng to be blocked without hearing his rebuttal, and I hated doing that. However considering that he has been abusing the system with many alts, and knowing his unstable nature, I could not take chances with him taking 'revenge' on the site and causing a hell lot of trouble after he has been discovered. If there was a way for me to let him keep commenting without being able to rate, I would have done it.
I don't mean to be taking sides in this particular issue, but I'd like to point out that at least at some point the alts to which Vermond refers of Fyng were made public by their mass nuking. Otr namechanged to his alt's primary name if I'm not mistaken (I'm not saying who in case I'm wrong, but I don't think I am). His actions don't rely on snooping out alt info - ie it's not like before I killed off my chars that he hunted down that I was Tiresias, Tireless, Fortitude, Gaam, and Avarice and punished them all. Most or all of the information he used was made public at some point.
Whether his use of it was ethical or appropriate, however, is not something I'm going to comment on. At the risk of sounding like I said I'm not going to say something then saying it anyway, I do think it was in at least slightly bad taste for Vermond to reply to Berzelius, then before a rebuttal could be offered, to postblock him. I understand that you can't ratings block without comment blocking, which mitigates the situation. But it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
All right, so it is punishable. Then the rule is wrong. It cannot be enforced without knowledge of alt info, and it will result in the spreading of alt info, at least to the mods. What I offered is a much more transparent version, which does not require any alt knowledge, is much more objective, andvciolations can be tracked a lot easier.
However, I think the worst bit was not the fact that they rated with many characters, but rather that they did it especially to influence old top 20 logs, which I believe is a great insult to the posters.
From the rules section that I wish many of you had taken the time to read:
8. Ratings
You are supposed to rate the log from an impartial viewpoint, keeping in mind that you are rating the log, not the poster (or the target in the case of playerkill logs). You are also not supposed to rate a log with more than one account. Failing to abide by these rules is punishable. As a reminder, please remember that there are other ratings than 1 and 6.
I think I proposed in the past that we autoblock anyone that no longer has a char, but we decided not to as: 1- it is hard to monitor 2- It would prevent old, inactive players from using the page.
Now, there is only one case where I would spend time to find out people's other accounts, and that is when their existence poses a risk to the website. This is such a case, the people in question have found a way to abuse the system and done so in the worst possible way, what guarantee do we have that they won't now that they're mad?
Even then, I did not need to spend any 'extra time' to find out anything, it is all pretty obvious from ratings. Neither did I publish anyone's alts, the characters posted in question were those who were used to abuse the system and were not in any way associated with any typists, or sorted in the order of one.
Hello. I, frankly, fail to see why Vermond finds it acceptable to operate on his knowledge of alt info. It has never been said it was punishable to rate your own logs with your alts (even if a bit childish), or to rate an enemy's log low with all your alts and it has been done since the beginning of the rating system. What is totally unforgivable in my view is that the moderators take the time to find out the alts of people just to ensure fair ratings. Each acount here represents a character on the mud, if an account exists for a character no longer on the mud, it should be deleted. But no investigations into who is who's alt should be conducted, otherwise the moderators appear extremely biased. Just like you get to vote with many chars on the mud when there is an issue to vote on, you should be able to vote with many chars on this page. To put my point into perspective, I have rated a total of 10 logs which I thought were exceptional and I think this is over all my alts (don't want to check right now). But this policing will not lead to anything good. Remove the deleted chars, don't act the detective dipshit role, posting alt info(even well known) on the page.
I have to wonder why characters who no longer exist are allowed accounts, particularly when they have new characters registered as well. Of course it's hard to police across the board, but when the mods see people using multiple names in an attempt to mislead people, they should squelch it right then. A bit of accountability goes a long way.
Who gives a flying fuck? I mean, really. It's going to happen on any website that takes user-based ratings into account.
People know what's good and what isn't.
This came out to be a bigger issue than I thought at first. This is frankly the worst case of abuse I have seen since I started moderating some years ago, and I have had to do the biggest user sweep. I believe it is best to share what is going on rather than let it be manipulated through rumours:
The following users (daeril, kelevra, exhalev, brubaker, berzelius, otr, azrylar, fyng) have been rating about half of the (11300, 11800, 9840, 8646, 11538, 12265, 11162, 10380, 1034 and this is probably just the peak of the iceberg) top 20 logs with many alts, sometimes with the alt being the same as the poster, in order to influence the list. Obviously, the list is quite biased now. To restore the fairness, I have to remove all logs that have been mis-rated by these two immature ****s, which would end up punishing the poster more than them and depriving us of the best logs, so obviously that is not going to happen. If you wish to congratulate them for their immaturity, go ahead by all means.
I have spent more than an hour dealing with their mess, and Nicuramar will probably have to spend a lot of time making the rating system idiot-proof. In order to prevent them from causing further damage, all of their accounts have been permanently banned from rating (and commenting since I can't rate-block them without it). If you see any other logs that have been rated by many people, please mail me with the log number. If any of you start thinking you're too smart and continue in the same fashion, I'm telling you beforehand that I don't see this as a joke and you will most likely end up losing all privileges from the website permanently.
Your comment has so much misinformation that I don't know where to start correcting it from.
'I only did that to counter the idiots like Brubaker, who spam rated it 1s with his alts' You are the only idiot that has spam rated logs with his alts as far as I am aware. Point out anyone else, and I will deal with it.
I think you are speaking of this log: http://logs.dyndns.dk/rate.php/11810 Yes, some people ran a campaign to rate it with 1s (After you actually mud-mailed people to rate it 6 ages after it was posted!) Ask Pablo and Kalmah, they got in trouble for it and I think I got some of them to get their votes to 3.
However, this is not the log that you rated with your alts, and it does not even need to be 'counter-rated' to be kept in top 20. You lied to me when you told me about that, which was why it was not removed at first - I only noticed that they were two different logs a few days ago, and dealt with it as soon as I could. I apologize to the people who mailed me about it earlier.
'You said you'd start enforcing that shit as it came along.' Yes, exactly that. It is very hard and time consuming for me to monitor old logs constantly to see if there's an idiot rating them with his alts, so yes, I won't do that, however I will check anything I receive complaints about, which is the case here.
'I also like how its simply a single case, picked out of the many that have rating violations on them' Oh please, show me another log that has the ratings of the typist's alts and it will be dealt with as harshly.
'Not to mention you did not give any warning or indication about it to me, or even the other Log page administrators, as I have spoken to Ecidon about it.' Now let's clarify something, Ecidon and I might sometimes work together, but we do not need to get verification from each other. Neither do I need to give you any indications when you are abusing the rating system blatantly. However, I actually talked to Nicuramar about this in order to find out how to prevent the abuse, and as far as I remember it was his idea to remove the log until we get a way to remove ratings. I am also quite sure that I asked you about your alts' ratings, and guess what, in response you told me the 'counter-balance' lie (see above).
Now listen, this is not a good medium to discuss about this, neither is the comm (yes I heard). To put it simply, if you must bitch at me about it, do it in private.
Not to mention you did not give any warning or indication about it to me, or even the other Log page administrators, as I have spoken to Ecidon about it.
My favourite part about this is how you chose to remove it only after you developed personal issues with me as a typist, and previously noted that since I only did that to counter the idiots like Brubaker, who spam rated it 1s with his alts, for example, it was fine. I also like how its simply a single case, picked out of the many that have rating violations on them, which you stated to me that you couldn't police because there were too many to touch. You said you'd start enforcing that shit as it came along. You're so transparent.
Wouldn't the 'Dave's Dad Theory' of large numbers have cancelled out the bias effect?
The poster rated it 6 with multiple alts to artificially keep it in the top 20 list. Since I have no way of removing ratings, and it is unfair for those just below the list to keep it there, I removed the log. I don't mind if it is posted again without the same abuse of ratings system.
It was 9840, Pentheus... removed for some reason. I'll mail it to you.
it was one hell of a nice novel
I noticed the Bap/Berzelius/Baklen log is conspicuously absent from the top 20 list, and it doesn't appear in a search for any of their names. Any word on what happened to it?
Or... Does he?!
Either that, or Murray has some sharp fucking teeth.
hmm that is a pretty big typo I would say..
'Murray lands a near-fatal blow you as the wicked blade drives near the heart.'
-Blow you? :S
That was sick.
Let's get drunk!
Good stuff indeed, nice read.
ok fuck all these crashes, PKers unite and you're getting all the finds you need.
Fucking A
Haha 3d crash!::PP
*crashed and came back once already
No, since it came back up already. But seriously, bastards... Reboot blows enough, but after you go and get a full set of gear and it crashes again... well that's just gay
Haha maybe its true!
'February first we can't pay our bills and the MUD goes dark'
-Aule
Remember that? :P
Delkin,
Trolling
Not enough couriers spawned.
Nameless broke the MUD.
It was a good short boot!
wow crash again?
Nice read.
Btw, nice fight man.
And here I thought Iwas hardbanned.
Args!
Yes mud is down.
Mud down for anyone else?
For possibly the first time ever, Gizmalin and I are in agreement.
Good fight all around. It would of been better if darkhour did some fireballs :), but in the end murray owned.
ahahah felk
My thoughts exactly. You're playing a fucking MUD.
Nice log... would have rated this a 6 if the porn star of Durmanhoth died. Seriously... porn star of Durmanhoth!? Grow up.
------(HP:54-EP:21)----- e
You aim at Murray's head, but miss by a mere inch.
Murray lands a near-fatal blow you as the wicked blade drives near the heart.
The Great West Road(w, e, s and n)
A simple arrow
Murray enters.
------(HP:-1-EP:20)----- s
Holy fuck!!! Was that what I think it was!? God damn Murray! Props to Daeman though.
Of course I did Flare. WTF is kk?
Murray, Elexar too?
enwbie...niice
you died like a enwbie
Felk, Darkhour, and Klardin... Who's Nameless? He was the guy doing shape all at the MT signpost and going 'psha' :P
I got a couple!! But those aren't as entertaining to read:)
You're a rockstar Daeman.
How about a log where you don't die in the end? :P
Emote should be changed for this log:)
Murray lands a near-fatal blow you as the wicked blade drives near the heart.
near-fatal?
No skills boosted, that dagger owned the crap out of me. He had to of had attack boosted.
Great fight.