[Rules/MED] Cheaters should be stripped of medals [Rejected]

[stahrgazer]

One small coding issue is that the bronze, silver, gold, and soon to come diamond medals are all issued automatically based on statistical information. So, as an example, if you strip a players team medals, currently they will all come back once he wins another game. So, it's actually not enough to strip a player of medals. You also have to strip him of victories or create a mechanism that causes the count to reset.

It seems fair that a "victory" that was gained through cheating should not count as a victory at all.

After a reasonable amount of time for the "appeals" process or while an appeal is pending, obviously, the stripping shouldn't occur. But once an appeal has been rejected or whatever term is used if the mods feel that they really did prove the case of cheating, then at least the "victories" gained in the proven games should be undone.

If that's too hard to figure out (how many specific games were probably won through cheating), then some set, predetermined, "global" percentage of games could be backed away. I'd suggest 25%. While a cheater may not have cheated on 25% of their games, stripping 25% of their victories is likely to lose them some of those medals and maybe the "excessive" nature of a 25% "victories reset" would be an additional discouragement from cheating.

[Fuzzylogic99]

[

Concise description:

• Add stripping cheaters of their points]
  
  Specifics/Details:
  
  • The obvious reason cheaters cheat is to get ahead.If a player is above 1200 points and is caught cheating they the mods have the option of stripping them of their points and making start back at 1200.This is only used if the player has been caught cheating two times or more ]
    
    
    How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:
    
    • help reduce cheating and unfair play]
      [*gives the mods another tool to help deal with cheater[/list]

[TheForgivenOne]

As of now, only Admin's have this ability. And this is only going to hurt other users, because of instead of playing against someone ranked a Colonel/Brig, they are playing a Corporal. They end up losing a lot more points then normal.

[BoganGod]

Good point TFO, have never thought about this issue from that perspective. A point strip could even benefit teammates of a point adjusted player.

[Symmetry]

One small coding issue is that the bronze, silver, gold, and soon to come diamond medals are all issued automatically based on statistical information. So, as an example, if you strip a players team medals, currently they will all come back once he wins another game. So, it's actually not enough to strip a player of medals. You also have to strip him of victories or create a mechanism that causes the count to reset.

It seems fair that a "victory" that was gained through cheating should not count as a victory at all.

After a reasonable amount of time for the "appeals" process or while an appeal is pending, obviously, the stripping shouldn't occur. But once an appeal has been rejected or whatever term is used if the mods feel that they really did prove the case of cheating, then at least the "victories" gained in the proven games should be undone.

If that's too hard to figure out (how many specific games were probably won through cheating), then some set, predetermined, "global" percentage of games could be backed away. I'd suggest 25%. While a cheater may not have cheated on 25% of their games, stripping 25% of their victories is likely to lose them some of those medals and maybe the "excessive" nature of a 25% "victories reset" would be an additional discouragement from cheating.

This does seem like a fair set of principles to move forward on. This thread has been in limbo for a while, so I'd like to hear if any objections have gone unadressed.

[TheMissionary]

I didn't read everything. However, wouldn't it be reasonable to have a player start from scratch again if they have to get their premium stripped? Realistically, if someone gets premium stripped, they are doing something bad enough they should just get reset completely.

[chapcrap]

MERGED Cheater Penalties

[Metsfanmax]

This has been idling long enough, and I am ready to submit it under the following condition: anyone who is busted for cheating and banned/stripped of premium is also reset on medals. What is stopping me from submitting it is the technical limitation that chap mentioned. How do we get around this? I don't think stahr's solution is very clean.

[koontz1973]

What is stopping me from submitting it is the technical limitation that chap mentioned.

Where is the post?

[Metsfanmax]

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=170171&start=240#p4051616

One small coding issue is that the bronze, silver, gold, and soon to come diamond medals are all issued automatically based on statistical information. So, as an example, if you strip a players team medals, currently they will all come back once he wins another game. So, it's actually not enough to strip a player of medals. You also have to strip him of victories or create a mechanism that causes the count to reset.

[koontz1973]

This has been idling long enough, and I am ready to submit it under the following condition: anyone who is busted for cheating and banned/stripped of premium is also reset on medals. What is stopping me from submitting it is the technical limitation that chap mentioned. How do we get around this? I don't think stahr's solution is very clean.

Firstly, the way to implement it would be down to the coders so let them figure the way round what chap mentioned. For all we know, it could be done by a very simple line of code or a huge amount of work. We just do not know. But yes, stahrs idea, while it has merit probably is not the best way forward. I say it has some merit as it would allow everyone know the penalty from the get go. The longer you are on the site and the more wins you have, the less excuse you have, the harsher the penalty would/should be.

I would submit it with the understanding that this is the idea and what should be done is implement it as said but give stahrs idea as a back up.

[Metsfanmax]

No, I will not submit it without a concrete suggestion because whatever method is used to solve this problem will have a substantial impact on the resulting player. There is no way to just "get around" this with no side effects. We need to decide what should happen to the player afterward. Can they re-earn those medals? If so, do they need to start from square one, and all previous victories do not count?

[koontz1973]

No, I will not submit it without a concrete suggestion because whatever method is used to solve this problem will have a substantial impact on the resulting player. There is no way to just "get around" this with no side effects. We need to decide what should happen to the player afterward. Can they re-earn those medals? If so, do they need to start from square one, and all previous victories do not count?

I thought that was the point. Strip the medals and then let them earn them back. Sorry, that was my misunderstanding. When I said let the coders figure it out, I meant that they should be the ones to work out how to implement it from the concrete suggestion we already had. So from what I gathered up to now is this, cheaters lose medals, they would then have to earn them back via the normal way, not through winning one game like chap said would happen.

bronze, silver, gold, and soon to come diamond medals are all issued automatically based on statistical information. So, as an example, if you strip a players team medals, currently they will all come back once he wins another game.

This is what I meant by letting the coders figure out how to do it. Stripping wins or resetting the medal count for that player, I would not have a clue if either or both could be done. Can it be done for one medal or would it happen for all medals. Again, let the coders figure it out. I think the suggestion is solid.

[Metsfanmax]

No, I will not submit it without a concrete suggestion because whatever method is used to solve this problem will have a substantial impact on the resulting player. There is no way to just "get around" this with no side effects. We need to decide what should happen to the player afterward. Can they re-earn those medals? If so, do they need to start from square one, and all previous victories do not count?

I thought that was the point. Strip the medals and then let them earn them back. Sorry, that was my misunderstanding. When I said let the coders figure it out, I meant that they should be the ones to work out how to implement it from the concrete suggestion we already had. So from what I gathered up to now is this, cheaters lose medals, they would then have to earn them back via the normal way, not through winning one game like chap said would happen.

bronze, silver, gold, and soon to come diamond medals are all issued automatically based on statistical information. So, as an example, if you strip a players team medals, currently they will all come back once he wins another game.

This is what I meant by letting the coders figure out how to do it. Stripping wins or resetting the medal count for that player, I would not have a clue if either or both could be done. Can it be done for one medal or would it happen for all medals. Again, let the coders figure it out. I think the suggestion is solid.

Re: bold. The point I am making is that these are actually very different solutions. The most non-invasive solution is to simply remove the medals and start the effective medal count at zero from where they were at the time of the bust. This is algorithmically not the most trivial, but surely can be done. Stripping wins is actually a far more serious punishment (and this leaves aside the technological issues associated with 'deleting' game results). I wouldn't want to submit this with 'strip all wins' as a potential solution for the coders to implement, unless all involved view this as an acceptable approach. There have been concerns already in this thread about making sure the punishment is not so harsh that people will not want to come back to their account, and I fear that stripping all wins crosses that line.

[koontz1973]

Then do as you said. Reset the medal count to 0 or to any number that it needs to be. The worst
that would happen is for the coders to say it cannot be done and send it back.

[Foxglove]

Isn't this entire 20 page suggestion and discussion basically a policy choice that needs to be made by the admin? This seems crazy to me. Why would development effort be expended to implement harsh, punitive measures against the tiny handful of people for whom this would be applicable?

There are 10s or 100s of useful, interesting, and inventive game play suggestions that could be developed instead.

[Shannon Apple]

In the case of a cheater or two that got to conquerer through shady means, they were stripped of that title and lost their medal (ie Kiron). I think that's enough punishment. They lost the medal that they cheated in order to achieve. Okay they are also banned, but these cases are so damn rare. I agree with Foxy. It is up to the admin team. Certain actions may call for harsher punishments than others and no amount of rules can be written to deal with every single scenerio. It has to be a case by case basis.

I don't believe in punishing people so harshly that they'll leave the site completely for stupid things that they do, especially if they haven't been permbanned. Cheater or no cheater, their medals still had to be earned and I think people are taking the biscuit here bigtime. Sure, I hate cheaters as much as the next person, but losing their premium and being named and shamed should be enough. 9 times out of 10, I'm sure they'll have learned their lesson. Talk about having the pitch forks out!

IF and I mean "IF" they implemented harsher punishment, it should come in the form of a points reset. Points may be earned back, but then they have to do it through fair means. Stripping medals is going too far and a waste of resources imo.

[patrickaa317]

Put a giant asterisk next to their name. No need to strip medals. Especially the ones unrelated to their cheating (i.e. tourney organizing)

[Gweeedo]

Is there a medal for cheaters? If so How can I acquire such a medal?

[friendly1]

stripping victories seems like a separate suggestion. If TPTb already have the power to strip medals, it should be employed.

Well, I'm not sure the admin agree.

In any case, it can't be employed separately. If you read what I wrote earlier, you would understand that if you wanted the bronze, silver, gold, and diamond medals stripped, something else must also be done in order for them to remain stripped. Otherwise, they will re-appear. Now, if you wanted other medals (GA, GC, TA, etc.) stripped, that is different. But those medals are (mostly) not really the medals achieved through cheating.

Fair enough. Would it be fair to say that this is tied to a point reset then?

Medals are derived from victories. You can't strip medals and not touch victory counts. Point reset is different subject.

Actually I don't believe it is a terribly big deal to strip or reduce medal counts while not touching victory count. A little bit of coding, but you simply create a subgroup to which named individuals are added. Rules for that subgroup change victories required for medals to a different count.

So if for example you wanted to "lightly" penalize, you could have all medal counts be 10 percent higher for "convicted multis".

Or maybe more extreme, 50% higher count.

I'm not advocating any penalties, or where they should be set, but assuming this is just SQL calculations or similiar, the coding to apply it is minimal. There would be more coding of a slightly more complex nature if you wanted to automate additions to this group so admins/C&A or whomever could have an interface that you enter the username and it's automatically added to the group. I'm assuming that would also be a requirement as whomever is maintaining the DB isn't going to manually add names.but that also is not really difficult, the whole thing could be built in less than a day.

The questions of

1. Choosing to do this
2. Choosing whether to backdate its effect
3. Choosing what level of penalty
4. Choosing the qualifications (ie is this only applicable to Multies? How about farming? How about those who receive suspensions for other violations?)

are all administrative decisions, and administrative life is much easier leaving the system as is. I'm not sure the time, effort, outcry, and loss of people/revenue are justified implementing this. My opinion would be the admins would have to feel very strongly that some action is justified for this to become a suggestion that is seriously considered for implementation.

And maybe I'm wrong about the coding side. I'm not familiar with the build so I think it's unlikely but please remember it's only my assumption, not a concrete fact.

[Metsfanmax]

stripping victories seems like a separate suggestion. If TPTb already have the power to strip medals, it should be employed.

Well, I'm not sure the admin agree.

In any case, it can't be employed separately. If you read what I wrote earlier, you would understand that if you wanted the bronze, silver, gold, and diamond medals stripped, something else must also be done in order for them to remain stripped. Otherwise, they will re-appear. Now, if you wanted other medals (GA, GC, TA, etc.) stripped, that is different. But those medals are (mostly) not really the medals achieved through cheating.

Fair enough. Would it be fair to say that this is tied to a point reset then?

Medals are derived from victories. You can't strip medals and not touch victory counts. Point reset is different subject.

Actually I don't believe it is a terribly big deal to strip or reduce medal counts while not touching victory count. A little bit of coding, but you simply create a subgroup to which named individuals are added. Rules for that subgroup change victories required for medals to a different count.

So if for example you wanted to "lightly" penalize, you could have all medal counts be 10 percent higher for "convicted multis".

Or maybe more extreme, 50% higher count.

It is likely that this will hardly penalize some people, because they are well above 10% of the threshold for the medals they already have.

[friendly1]

Really? So every single multi has 1100 in every war category and has diamonds across the board?

How 1500? That's 50%?

Or if you really want teeth how about 2500 at 150%?

As they are already being punished by being named, having premium removed, etc just where exactly do you see a level that would not be unfair when applied to all multis? I'm not sure that level exists anywhere... which is why admins would have to choose (if they did want something like this enabled) how big an impact or how much bite this has.

[Metsfanmax]

Really? So every single multi has 1100 in every war category and has diamonds across the board?

No, my point was that if you have just 10% more than the bronze level in every category, there's a possibility that you wouldn't have any medals stripped at all by this change.

How 1500? That's 50%?

Or if you really want teeth how about 2500 at 150%?

As they are already being punished by being named, having premium removed, etc just where exactly do you see a level that would not be unfair when applied to all multis? I'm not sure that level exists anywhere... which is why admins would have to choose (if they did want something like this enabled) how big an impact or how much bite this has.

So if your argument is that a punishment for people who are busted is that medals are now harder to obtain, that's fine, but it does not really fit with this thread.

[friendly1]

That's a fair point. I wasn't trying to argue in favor it, more wanted to clarify that I believe it's possible as it seemed to be ruled out earlier in the thread as not being possible to do.

Cheers

[Symmetry]

Isn't this entire 20 page suggestion and discussion basically a policy choice that needs to be made by the admin? This seems crazy to me. Why would development effort be expended to implement harsh, punitive measures against the tiny handful of people for whom this would be applicable?

There are 10s or 100s of useful, interesting, and inventive game play suggestions that could be developed instead.

While I think your point has merit, I disagree. I never intended this to be the number one priority as a suggestion. I intended it as a suggestion. In the suggestion thread.

I don't think taking away awards that are meant to recognize achievement from accounts that have cheated to get them is particularly unreasonable or harsh.

If anything, although you are right to say it would be punitive on those accounts that cheated other people, it would restore value to the medals earned legitimately by other players.