Hypocrisy, this community, and why it is important.

[squibbles]

Ever since I've been a part of this community, "the importance of an accurate rating system" has been touted as one of the most important parts of NUMA. We despise multiaccounters and the deception that they inherently must commit, and we actively seek them out in an attempt to remove them. We supposedly hate being deceived, and that is perfectly understandable.

Except that we're the goddamn biggest fucking hypocrites that I have ever laid eyes on.

Not two weeks after the 2nd greatest multiaccounting scandal (E_S obviously being the most) in the time that I've been here, the community decides that to win 'that competition' on 'that blog', it is appropriate to abuse the system, voting multiple times. Some people voted twice. Some people voted three times. ONE PERSON VOTED APPROXIMATELY 45 TIMES.

Not a problem, right? We can just keep an eye on that person and make sure that they don't do the same thing on NUMA, yeah? Anyway, they're new, they'll be gone in a couple of months, probably.
Yeah, except it was a very much established and respected member of the community.

Shit.

What makes it worse is that I seem to be the only person (apart from TS, and subsequently Spoon, when I mentioned it in IRC) to find this at all disturbing. Every other member was hailing this individual as some kind of hero, one who had prevented the inevitable atrocity of us...losing a competition with no prize, no recordable gain and no purpose. Following this incident those commenting in and reading the thread seemed to intensify their efforts, finding other loopholes which could be exploited.

[10:55] * *name* incognito voting
[10:55] <name> Who's with me!

[10:38] <person 1> vote on different browsers!
[10:38] <person 2> WOOOO!
[10:38] <person 3> I voted twice on the same browser
[10:38] <person 1> are you sure it took it both times?
[10:38] <person 3> yeah
[10:38] <person 3> Two different links
[10:38] <person 4> I have voted twice so far.
[10:38] <person 3> http://polldaddy.com/poll/3168770/
[10:38] <person 3> http://www.diygamer.com/2010/05/nninja- ... ournament/
[10:38] <person 4> One on Opera, on my other computer, and once here, on Chrome.
[10:39] <person 4> I'm going to vote in IE as well, on this compy.
[10:39] <person 5> I voted about ten times. There was a weird multi-vote period earlier.
[10:39] <person 3> Can you just clear cache/cookies and vote again?
[10:40] <person 5> kk, believe so.
[10:40] <person 5> For a while, anyway.

(yes, I know that hiding the identity of these people is semi-futile, since anyone can look up their logs, and one person actually identifies someone.)

Now, back to multiaccounting. While the efforts that some are taking to eradicate the dishonesty from the internet are admirable, albeit often somewhat overzealous, this essentially takes all the work that you have done towards it and throws it down the figurative toilet. This is especially disappointing since literally every person in that discussion is an established member of the community, ranking from regular power free members up to, quite literally, an admin in the community. An admin.

This has serious ramifications. It is bad enough that well known members are doing this, but when the leaders who are preaching "the importance of an accurate rating system" are the hypocrites, a message is sent to the newer members of the community. A message that reads "Voting abuse is acceptable".

Thus I get to the reason that this is in 'This Community', not 'Nmaps.net'. If we want to take the issue of rating abuse on NUMA seriously, the whole community needs to change it's attitude, because while we may be saying one thing, our actions suggest an entirely different course of action to be appropriate. As I said on IRC:

<squibbles> it's only an issue when it inconveniences us.

[Spawn of Yanni]

This entire competition thing was taken in fun, dude. I'm pretty sure everyone said the exact same statement ("Trust the Metanet community to excel when it comes to voting abuse") when people started doing that. The NUMA rating system and this one competition thing that was brought up as an aside by dudes we don't much keep in touch with anymore are not parallels. It would be cute if they were, but they are not. NUMA is what we (as generic members of the community) interact with on a pretty much day-to-day basis. Multiaccounting and voting abuse in there brings the entire website down. The same is not true for voting in a competition on a site no one here has ever heard of.

[edit:

a competition with no prize, no recordable gain and no purpose.

said it yourself, dude. ]

You want a parallel? Shooting burning arrows out of our castle windows at that obscure silhouette in the distance may well not be the most honorable thing we've done, but shooting burning arrows inwards into our own freaking castle is pretty much disastrous. The two acts themselves are not parallels. They are certainly comparable! But not in a significant manner.

Of course it's hypocritical. But it's the sort of thing that lies on the "all in fun" side of the line. If you -- quite honorably -- want to stand back and shake your head in shame, that's definitely the higher ground, but you should prolly take a step back and see that we're not exactly stooping that low anyway.

As an aside, keep in mind that our little match-up has 4 times the total number of votes than the next one does, all while the Minecraft community (apparently) isn't fully aware of the existence of this contest. Doubt we're alone!

As another aside, considering they claimed they have IP checks, I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up removing all votes that came from the same IP after it's done.

[squibbles]

I'm not saying that the problem is the way we voted here at all, though. My issue is that we're sending mixed messages to the newer members of the community. When we get to the crux of the multiaccounting issue, the problem is the dishonesty, and we claim that this dishonesty is the ultimate obstacle to a fair rating system.

If we want to eradicate this dishonesty, being equally dishonest ourselves in a fairly similar situation is...well, pretty much exactly the opposite of what we want to do. Newer members look towards the older ones for examples of what is appropriate, and this isn't what we should be showing, I think.

I mean, sure, having a bit of fun is one thing, but this is overstepping the mark.

[Spawn of Yanni]

Who are the newer members we're corrupting? It's very fair to cater to the hypothetical clueless ten year old who wanders in here but along that same vein, I shouldn't be screwing around with site headers for special occasions, or we should rule out any chance of a Tetris Takeover in the future on the off chance that someone walks in and sees that as representative of how we act. When it comes to existing members, I think - especially with the new admins - we make ourselves clear on where we stand with the specific issue of NUMA voting abuse. If we decide to have some fun at the expense of the poor dudes at DIYGamers and somehow manage to push a few new IRC-goers into thinking that multiaccounting on NUMA is cool, that is unfortunate but the blame surely does not rest solely on the guys here having a good time.

Edit: Mind, I'm not going to pretend like I'm signing off on voting abuse anywhere else as long as it's not us. S'just that there's no need for this one contest thing to get blown out of proportion.

[squibbles]

You're comparing apples and oranges here, though. The issue isn't pulling shenanigans or having fun, it's expressing one thing and then acting in a manner which undermines that statement.

And if the blame isn't on those who are doing it, then who does it fall on? I know I might be looking like a bit of a try-hard golden crusader here, but I think that someone has to step up and point out something inappropriate, which I'm pretty sure this, is.

[Donfuy]

I think people are going to start posting pics on the maps.
Pics of themselves.
Nude pics of themselves.

[Spawn of Yanni]

The only people affected by this are the absolutely new members who happen to be sponges to anyone with a red username. If they are affected by this one event, and do not get the hint over the course of their stay here that multiaccounting is not cool on NUMA (this hypothetical person already cannot possibly exist), then the blame lies partly on us for our shenanigans, and partly on them for admittedly being ignorant of their surroundings. But that's a huge aside, because, like I just said, such a person does not exist.

In terms of expressing one thing and then undermining it; if existing mappers on NUMA see this as a hint that they should be allowed to multiaccount, the blame lies entirely on them. If they were to walk up to an admin after being caught multiaccounting and say "but we did it that one time for that contest", with the knowledge of all the anti-voting-abuse-speeches from everyone and their uncles, they'd probably deserve a longer ban.

We aren't a community of generalisations and grander scales. Simply put we aren't, in any given instant, big enough for that. It's entirely possible to treat this one contest thing as its own incident and keep NUMA voting as its own issue. The only reason someone would interpret this voting thing as an a-okay for multiaccounting on NUMA is if they were looking for a reason to do it in the first place. In which case they should probably be banned anyway.

[Rose]

What makes it worse is that I seem to be the only person (apart from TS, and subsequently Spoon, when I mentioned it in IRC) to find this at all disturbing.

I wouldn't say I find this particular instance to be disturbing, but the general hypocrisy of the community is something that has been brought up before; I do agree it's a little annoying :/

[otters~1]

go tannr!1!!1!

[Tunco]

What makes it worse is that I seem to be the only person (apart from TS, and subsequently Spoon, when I mentioned it in IRC) to find this at all disturbing.

If you wouldn't had said it most of the people wouldn't even going to realize it and no, most of the new comers are spammers and people with bad maps, they leave after a week or two, or they forget about the game complaining they don't get any rating, so it wouldn't effect them seriously. I beg to differ, most of that people are stupid and annoying, in my opinion. I'm not sure.



(look above for grammar master)

[mintnut]

Pah! Squibbles; I seem to remember you claiming that originality was the most important thing to consider, and yet, look at this picture of the singer/songwriter 'The Tallest Man On Earth' circa 2006:



Seriously though, I think the difference is, that this online poll is not srsfkbsns unlike n maps, innit?

[sidke]

Seriously though, I think the difference is, that this online poll is not srsfkbsns unlike n maps, innit?

trudat

random online polls ain't got squat on srsfknbsns

[a happy song]

Seriously though, I think the difference is, that this online poll is not srsfkbsns unlike n maps, innit?

trudat

random online polls ain't got squat on srsfknbsns

Indeed.

Random online poll is just silly fun.

Numa voting is an inherent and "important" part of our community.

There's no hypocrisy involved here, and Squibs is just going to give himself a brain damage with all this rants.

[squibbles]

What. The. Fuck?
I...I am stunned by that photo. He even has the same chin as me. And skin tone. And posture. And body shape. O________.

Anyway, on topic, I think if you actually read the 'DIY Gamer Tournament' thread you'll find that some members are in fact taking this poll quite seriously. :/

[kkstrong]

Both of those quotes are me, which should somehow skew the direction this rant takes.


(And I stand by it too, it is inherently different)

[rocket_thumped]

Random online poll is just silly fun.

Numa voting is an inherent and "important" part of our community.

This helps us as a community if we win. And It's nice to see us all pull together as a team to help add some exposure to the game and community we love.

[origami_alligator]

Using multiple browsers to place votes is not the same as making multiple accounts to place votes. Unless you specifically use one browser for one account.

Edit:
To further clarify, the intent is not similar and I think that is what we should truly be looking at. Although this analogy is a bit extreme, murder cases are always about what the intent of each party involved was. The definition of the intent of the murderer can determine whether they walk free (self-defense) or if they get life in prison (premeditated with a deadly weapon) for essentially the same thing.
Thus we have essentially the same thing: votes are being placed in an effort to inflate the perceived value of something. The difference I think lies with the intent of the voting. For this DIY website, our intent is to make N seem like a much better gaming experience than this minecraft game of which I have never heard of. For NUMA, the intent of the user is probably for their own reasons: to give themselves better map ratings, to snipe, or other similar reasons.

I think the intent toward DIY is much more acceptable than the intent of a user abusing the systems of NUMA.

[kkstrong]

By the same logic, the overwhelming majority of us are cheating by saying that N is better than Minecraft, even those we haven't ever played Minecraft.

[origami_alligator]

By the same logic, the overwhelming majority of us are cheating by saying that N is better than Minecraft, even those we haven't ever played Minecraft.

Do you believe the Minecraft community is playing N right now to make a fair, balanced choice? Obviously this doesn't make it right, but if nobody is making a fair vote because they are not familiar with the other game then it is fair to say that this contest is simply about who has the larger community.

[Kablizzy]

Could've sworn we were better than that. Egg on my face.

[Luminaflare]

Could've sworn we were better than that. Egg on my face.

We were Blizz, we were...

[otters~1]

I don't think I personally am being hypocritical, because I don't give a fuck about the NUMA ratings system. Person 5, btw.

[Chase]

I feel no shame in clarifying my identity as discovering this flaw here. And your argument is invalid, others may have done it, but I don't make maps, nor rate them. As such it doesn't matter what I do.

This was for fun, chill out.

[Tunco]

Seems like the votes come from same IP are deleted and from the poll and we still win. Owned, squibbles.

[CoffeeFreak]

Seems like the votes come from same IP are deleted and from the poll and we still win. Owned, squibbles.

You're missing the point here. The point isn't about whether we won or lost by cheating the system, squibbles here is trying to point out that we're bigger hypocrites than we think we are, by using this as a mere example.