Ff abuse discussion

[EdgeOfChaos]

Since everything else has been closed or posts being deleted, I'll make something here @AmnoN

This is something that you should understand as a former mod, but I guess that it is a bit beyond you - last I checked, retaliating with a bannable action is not an excuse. Instead of "stirring the pot", maybe try to use some of that "experience" to try and help others understand the rules.

Despite the saltiness, I will actually reply to this.

I don't consider saying a moderator made a poor choice "stirring the pot", though I realized I typed out the stuff before when I was a bit upset, so as a former mod/and former oversight, let me use my "experience" and explain everything that I think went wrong in this entire situation.

1: the primary issue: handling things with the wrong priority

If his stats weren't a red flag (at the time, 1 win and 99 losses with his two accounts), there were topics open for the accounts. One of them was and still is open for two weeks. That's two weeks of continued game ruining that could have been avoided. Why wasn't this ban request taken care of, while the FF abuse one was handled in 1 hour and 50 minutes or so? Yeah game ruining accusation is harder to look at, but it is more important too. https://entgaming.net/customstats/legio ... ersephone/ apparently that's either his account or a friend he ruined together with.

Note that after you said you'd be looking into his games, he seems to have started playing legit and won 2 games as well as playing legit dota.

All I'm saying is it looks really shitty when you're enabling a game ruiner and banning the people who mess with him. Like trolling a game ruiner is more serious than ruining 100 games.

2: why does it matter?

All four of them agreed to the !ff. It's not like they trolled the remaining player by ffing when he didn't want to, which seems like the primary point of the !ff abuse rule. They ff'd, so what? Who is the victim here? The only victim is a troll who wants to only lose games.

While on this topic, it is pretty terrible that !ff does not require the team to be unanimous (only requires 4/5) since people ff for all sorts of stupid reasons and I have lost several games we would have won due to people getting tilted and ffing.

3: ban duration

Technically they violated the rules, this is true. Why ban 5 days for a victimless abuse though? This is the same duration for team killing: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=133597 do you really think that teamkilling people who want to play is the same severity as an entire team deciding to forfeit a game that they otherwise would have won?

4: denying their appeals

I mean, they appeal and they say you made the wrong choice, it's clear they expect a second moderator (i.e. not you) to handle it. Perhaps you discussed this with the other moderators on discord and they told you to close it, but even then you should get them to do it to avoid even the situation. Because it seems wrong that a moderator can ban a user, the user appeals and says the ban is incorrect, and the original moderator comes back and says "nope, it was right" and closes the appeal.

And sure a lot of drama was brought to it. But in this thread at least: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=133599 it looks like actual discussion was taking place, so why was it locked to begin with?

Also not directly at anyone in particular, just something i've noticed in general... the copypasta about quoting the rule violated etc. is useful and good, but only if they are actually admitting to a violation and asking for leniency. If the user appeals and says the decision was wrong, then they do not believe they violated a rule so asking them to quote the rule they violated is silly. Stop posting it where it doesn't belong, it makes no sense and just makes the users think you all are robots or something.

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Let me give you Sylvanas's summary too:

So let's sum this up. The forfeiting team members were all okay with the issue of the vote (they even made sure everyone agreed before inputting the 3/4 required votes). As for the other team, why wouldn't they agree with winning a game they thought they had lost? So everything indicated that this "offense" would go ignored, since no one could possibly take offense to it, especially not to the point that they'd go make a ban request over it.

This isn't what happened. The only person that could be bothered by this turn of events, a repeat game thrower, considered that his game throwing was harmed by it, so a ban request was made. That was the critical moment, the key element that caused things to unfold the way they did: a game thrower was angry at what had happened, because it made the game throwing business a tiny bit more difficult for him and we can't have that now, can we?

In the end, the rules were followed and the offenders were banned accordingly. This is good. We should all be happy that everything went according to what the rules tell us, because the rules are great and true.

The last part is sarcastic. No, all is not good. You strictly enforced the rules without thinking, and in doing so managed to help a game ruiner with his quest to become 0 ELO.

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To respond directly to this:

retaliating with a bannable action is not an excuse

Usually when there's more than one bannable action, the idea of "who started it" is at least considered in giving bans and duration. There are so many ban requests, especially for flaming or votekick abuse, where one person starts flaming hard and the second one flames back, second player reports first, and the ban request is denied because they started the flaming.

If this analogy is a bit beyond you, I'll spell it out more clearly: the game was already ruined because of the player's trolling behavior. The players you banned just ruined it back. Maybe both of them were in the wrong, but one of them is clearly more wrong.

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maybe try to use some of that "experience" to try and help others understand the rules.

In all my "experience" at ENT, I haven't ever seen a ban like this, though maybe I am not "experienced" enough. The rules on ENT allow a huge amount of interpretation, intentionally so, and so the effective rules change with the moderators (this is a nice way of saying "the rules are whatever you want them to be"). Well, different people become mods and there are a lot of mods each with their own idea of how the rules should be enforced, mostly the same but with slight differences, but at core, the purpose of the rules should be so that players can have fun playing the game as want, without intentionally ruining the fun of other players. I can't help people understand the rules when they do not seem to follow this guideline, and instead become a holy text to be applied no matter what the situation is.

[blazeitup]

3 people go into a game premade and instantly FF, for win/elo transfer. This is ff abuse, nothing else. If people want to surrender they can surrender lol. If you want to ff a game because you need to go, you wasn't happy with the rolls, or just didnt like the mentality of the opposite team you are free to FF. And you don't need permission of all 4 players of them team, you need 3.

But then again, you spam these posts about this ff abuse but you don't share the game replay... How about you get to it?

[Zeratul]

This is the topic in question (or at least, the ban request where it all started): viewtopic.php?f=24&t=133595

I can agree with you on some points Edge, but i want to elaborate since we clash on the main point:

[*]The rule violation is cut and clear imo - From a teamplayer's perspective, mb all !ff doens't seem wrong given the fact all 4 wanted to forfeit; From an enemy point's of view (charnel or not), there's a rule violation: You are wasting people's time by forfeiting for no reason (It is one thing to forfeit when game result is defined, and another to forfeit due to a missed warrior send, shit rolls, etc.), however most of the times they won't report cause the easy win + free elo compensates the wasted time (If i waited 30 mins or more in a lobby for a game to start, just to have a bunch of kids !ff right at start for no reason, you can be sure i'd report them - Mb it woulnd't end in a ban for them, but this is one of many examples where the enemy might not appreciate the !ff).

Now from a moderator's point of view (and given the fact we're both ex-moderators, you should be able to see it from their side as well, just like i did) - Whenever there's a rule violation, you follow procedures/guidelines: You play it till the end (or leave and be autobanned) - your choice after all - report them once game ends, and let the moderators handle it --> Never but never violate the rules yourself expecting leniency/acceptance due to having another player possibly violating the rules themselves: This should be clear for everyone (moderators and non moderators) - You don't get to break the rules yourself, just cause someone is currently doing the same, simple as that.

[*]Regarding the ban duration, !ff abuse usually goes from 1 to 5 days if i recall correctly (for first offenses), and it will depend on context/intention/game result at the point where game was forfeited: In this case, game wasn't lost or won for either side, and the intention was clear: They believed the other player was trolling/teamkilling/losing on purpose, so they forfeited to mess with him: if it looks funny? Sure it does, i'll give you that; However it is a deliberate/intentional rule violation, and so the 5 days were given to make them aware/serve as a lesson (that's my opinion on it & how i see it: The 5 days were given, to get their attention for 2 points - 1) !ff for no reason isn't acceptable, moreover if its for trolling and 2) Violating rules to counter another player violating rules is a nono (As nabo sensei always said "2 wrongs don't make 1 right")

The 2 points before is where i disagree with you, now where i do agree is:

[*]The way the request(s) were handled: Given the fact theres 1 brq (persephone) opened for 2 weeks, and the mentioned OP from this new brq seems to be related (or is the same person), both the !ff abuse & the other(s) brq should have been solved at the same time, to avoid exactly the image that everyone is painting atm (aka Mods are letting players violate rules, but ban ppl that !ff games to counter them): I don't believe it was Amnon's intention, but ultimately it is the (most reasonable) interpretation people got (As an ex-moderator, I/We know how some brqs can be time consuming, and you can see Amnon has been spending time reviewing past replays of this player, so i knew, or expected that this was happening - but as a non-moderator, i can see why people saw it that way)

[*]The way the appeal(s) were handled: Not sure what was posted on the deleted responses (as i dind't follow through every post, after giving my 2 cents on it), but mb Amnon should have waited for a 2nd moderator's opinion on the appeal before processing - specially given that both of them requested a 2nd opinion on the appeal (given that the OP's disagreed with the decision): He could have processed it himself afterwards, but definitely should have waited for the 2nd opinion first (to ensure the rule violation was approved/acknowledged by a 2nd moderator), and it would have avoided all this QQ.

[kasper699]

just going to throw this out there. it was a mega game ( it would only take 30 mins to fill if people keep checking the tolls stats and see he lost 33 games in a row and never won a game but his 1st account was better 0/63 till he won a game)

yeah i am still waiting on the mods to review his ban request for the game before this game in question. but its locked and its been over 30 hours! where we get banned in under 90 mins.

there is 3 pages of ban requests but how do some of them get swept under the rug but others get acted on straight away?

illuminate?
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[Zeratul]

there is 3 pages of ban requests but how do some of them get swept under the rug but others get acted on straight away?

It depends on a lot of things: Usually they try to review from oldest to newest (or that's how it used to be), however some ban requests do take more time to review/process than others (and some are just a headache by reading them - Wrong information(s) given, unable to interpret what exactly is being reported, etc.):

When i was a moderator, there were times where i had like 10-20 mins left before heading off, and given the time, i would most likely pick 1-2 quick brqs that i could process during that time (or pick 1 that i would be sure i could finish in the time i had left): Again don't forget what they do is voluntary, they spend their time ensuring you have a platform to play on (and try to maintain the forum in order), however that's not as easy as it sounds, specially during summer time, where moderators take their time off for vacations/holidays, etc. and usually during these times (summer/winter breaks), there's more activity from players (And truth be said, whenever there's more active players, there's more rule violations, thus more ban requests).

[Yarragon]

Edge has summed up this topic pretty well, so props to him for being a voice of reason here.

While I feel this particular rule should be left vague, intent behind things is important. You were bringing attention to someone who, in a "competitive" setting was purposefully losing games. It was clear that he had multiple accounts that had more than 30 losses, and as soon as he won a single game he stopped using that account. I have joined a few games, and been keeping track of "Charnel."

Let's look at this for a moment:

User prior to Amnon saying he would be keeping track of the user had a score of 0-33, something EXTREMELY difficult to pull off without intentions.

Case after Amnon says he would be keeping track: User is now 1-33, and warned by a moderator, here is the game in question.
https://entgaming.net/findstats.php?id=11259956

He proceeds to lose 4 more games in a row... but here's the interesting bit. Starting with this game, #56 - He begins playing better miraculously. Suddenly he's not losing every single game anymore. https://entgaming.net/findstats.php?id=11263418

Note the time he starts winning also lines up slightly with Amnon warning him? A bit strange. The only games he has lost since were when he was playing a 3v4, or was against a team that was relatively stacked in context. Also note Persephone (the account believed to be the same user) has not played a single game since getting his first win.

Back on topic: The issue here is not the rule being left vague. It's left vague as defining what "abuse" of the feature is can be difficult not only from a moderation perspective, but from an implementation perspective. ENT has no possible way of detecting how the game is going until it is over, and cannot track whether a team is actually winning or losing. Therefor; it is left to the moderator to review any case in which abuse of the feature comes up. I suggested a while back adding a similar feature to Island Defense but there isn't a way for the bot to recognize what player is on what team over there for !drawing. They actually need to go and design it to implement it. viewtopic.php?f=279&p=505831#p505831

So, the question remains. Is it considered abuse, when used in agreement with the entire team, to bring attention to a known game ruiner, who very clearly was doing it intentionally? Was Amnon right in his judgement? As per rules, he was. But given the whole context, probably not.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to bring those things forward as well as give a bit more insight into the rule and how it's handled.

Posted this on the suggestion, hopefully it won't be deleted as off topic.

[blazeitup]

If the same person has 0/63, and now 0/33. Why isn't he IP banned for life for intentionally throwing games? Why is there discussions about ff abuse and not this? If it is like you say, he ruined 100 games on purpose, e.g 700 players was effected by this single person. Nobody would care twice if this maggot was never allowed to ever set foot here again.

And as for this will be monitored by AmnoN as he wrote; just check IP and look at previous accounts and compare how he play now and before he made these troll accounts. It's not like a random player shows up at ent one day and decide "here I'm going to loose 200 games". It's obvious he has history here previous to these accounts.

[Yarragon]

Responding to @zeratul here rather than under the suggestion thread, as it's off topic.

When I posted earlier today the player still hadn't been banned. But thank you for pointing it out that Amnon got around to it. Also, Blaze I didn't realize it was over 700 people he had affected.

[Zeratul]

Im gonna be nitpicky (and still offtopic), but he was already banned when u replied both times

by AmnoN » Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:14 pm
by AmnoN » Fri Aug 24, 2018 2:49 pm

by Yarragon » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:31 pm
by Yarragon » Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:41 pm

[Yarragon]

Im gonna be nitpicky (and still offtopic), but he was already banned when u replied both times

by AmnoN » Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:14 pm
by AmnoN » Fri Aug 24, 2018 2:49 pm

by Yarragon » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:31 pm
by Yarragon » Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:41 pm

Huh... My mistake then. I was simply looking at the requests that were posted, I didn't look into the actual account or see the second topic Amnon made by his own.

I can admit when I'm wrong on a point. But I do feel that my statements still carry the meaning I had implied in them.

[blazeitup]

63+33 = 96 games, say 100 for easy math. 8 players each game. 700 players (+him being 100) effected by 1 guy folding games on purpose and the first players who acts up against him gets banned.

[Sylvanas]

Bam. Dodged, 1 year.

All he deserves for putting himself under the spotlight. Things might not have evolved the way the should have, but this is still a nice end.

[Yarragon]

Woo, go us for getting that fucker looked into.

[Sylvanas]

I mean this is probably the only known case of a ban request initiating a chain of events leading to op getting banned for a year. He focused so hard on getting those guys banned in retaliation for giving him a win that he forgot how much of a shady fucker it made him look like.

[FalenGa]

First of all, as i said in a previous post, no reports = no bans. We can't monitor every single player out of the several hundreds for violations like this. And it's not like every low elo player is intentionally throwing.

You reported the guy, we took a look at it, and he is now banned.

Second, in the game in question the abuse of the !ff fuction was definite, no questions there. Yes, the only person who was "negatively" affected by this was the thrower/reporter, ironically.

However, as Amnon said, we do not want users to take things into their own hands by breaking one rule in order to "punish" someone who they deem a thrower/ruiner/teamkiller/etc. We want them to continue playing the game, votekick him if it's valid and possible, and report him once the game is over. Hence, the bans.

Now, we could argue durations, but that's up to the moderator's discretion. Afterall, we do not ban to punish users. We ban them in the hopes they will appeal and learn our policies/rules. And given abusing the !ff and giving away a certain win is fairly serious ( despite such obviously rare occasions as this ), 5 days doesn't sound so bad. We want them to notice the ban and appeal for it.

Some rules seem vague, true, but we expect users to use common sense while reviewing them. Listing every possible scenario that is prohibited is not only time consuming, but also counter productive. Noone would actually read the rules page if it was 5 pages long. We try to keep it as short and simple as possible, while conveying the message we wish to deliver.

There's always room for improvement, so if you come up with a better phrasing for any rule, while keeping the actual meaning, you should always make a suggestion for it.


Edit* By the way, Charnel and Persephone are two different users, friends who like to throw games together.