Petition for a Community Vote

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
The poll question was quite misleading. It speaks of "judging" and "guilty." The common notions of these terms are not compatible with the secret and unaccountable form the Game Mods have taken. They are meaningless and circularly defined in the current situation: you are guilty if and only if the Game Mods judge you to be so. There is no s ...[text shortened]... the poll indicated that this would be the case, I suspect the results would be quite different.

"The game mods are a team of people appointed by the community"

You missed this out of your analysis of the concept statement.

The community helped appoint the game mods, as the representatives of the community... do you remember the following vote?

http://www.timeforchess.com/vote/result.php?voteid=3

I fail to see where there is any value in another vote now, just because some of the vocal ones (perhaps the large portion of the 18 who voted no to the concept) are upset that action is being taken as a result of the decision the community made.

Are you suggesting some sort of seperate group of users should be in place to judge cases once the analysis has been undertaken?

The fact is that if the evidence is made public in anyway, all the current tittle tattle about 'were they guilty or not' will continue as each user will interpret the evidence slightly differently, or come up with conspiracies and challenges both for and against the decision of the judges - be they the existing game mods or another group of users.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
The poll question was quite misleading. It speaks of "judging" and "guilty." The common notions of these terms are not compatible with the secret and unaccountable form the Game Mods have taken. They are meaningless and circularly defined in the current situation: you are guilty if and only if the Game Mods judge you to be so. There is no s ...[text shortened]... the poll indicated that this would be the case, I suspect the results would be quite different.

The poll question was:

The game mods are a team of people appointed by the community who will analyse games of suspected cheats. In cases where there is judged to be overwhelming evidence that cheating has occurred, the guilty party will have their account terminated.

I approve of this idea 160
I disapprove of this idea 18
I have no opinion 15

I find nothing ambiguous or misleading in the question. The question that you now pose has already been answered by the community most emphatically.

And during the time of the debate, there was never any suggestion that the game mods would work in anything but secrecy. In fact, without secrecy, the game mods could not possibly function at all. The game mod concept came about in order to take accusations out of the forums, and to install an effective process at RHP to counter cheating.

There most certainly is a standard of judging and guilt to which the Game Mods are subservient: Overwhelming evidence - and a conclusion by every game moderator and the site administrators beyond any reasonable doubt. It is most certainly not in the interests of Russ, Chrismo, or RHP to ban players on a whim.

The bar has been set extremely high. In every case leading to a banning (especially for section 3b) a great deal of work is done and a vast amount of evidence is collected.

Revealing evidence and subsequently having public trials-by-forum would certainly be very entertaining for those in the viewing gallery. But it could only lead to the further embarassment of the players in question, and provide a blueprint for existing and would-be cheats to avoid detection in the future.

Russ has made it perfectly clear there will be zero toleration of cheats. So good luck with the petition, Dr S. but you must know that you will be hopelessly outnumbered.

No matter how bitter or unpleasant it may seem, when the patient is on the road to recovery, you don't thow away the medicine.

Originally posted by Gatecrasher
The game mod concept came about in order to take accusations out of the forums, and to install an effective process at RHP to counter cheating.

The bar has been set extremely high. In every case leading to a banning (especially for section 3b) a great deal of work is done and a vast amount of evidence is collected.

If we are going down the route of zero tolerance on breaches of the TOS, why are there still people who are blatantly flaunting the TOS by harassing another user in the forums and accusing them of cheating, if this is the reason for the game mod concept in the first place?

Question directed at Russ.

D

Originally posted by Ragnorak
If we are going down the route of zero tolerance on breaches of the TOS, why are there still people who are blatantly flaunting the TOS by harassing another user in the forums and accusing them of cheating?

Question directed at Russ.

D

The obvious answer is that we are not going down the route of zero tolerance for breaches of the TOS. Gatecrasher said there was zero tolerance for cheating, not for other aspects of the TOS. This should be clear from the difference in punishments meted out for different transgressions (e.g., temporary forum bans for spamming, trolling, etc., and account cancellation for cheating).

I wonder just how many actual moves it takes to be deemed as a cheat. Is it one, five, ten, or a whole game?

And of those like Exy who blatently deny that they are cheating (albiet through friends here). Shouldn`t they be given a chance to defend them selves?

Originally posted by Paulie
I wonder just how many actual moves it takes to be deemed as a cheat. Is it one, five, ten, or a whole game?

And of those like Exy who blatently deny that they are cheating (albiet through friends here). Shouldn`t they be given a chance to defend them selves?

What makes you think Exy didn't have a chance to defend himself? Just because he didn't have an opportunity to defend himself in the forums doesn't mean he had no opportunity to provide the game moderators with evidence of his innocence.

Originally posted by Paulie
I wonder just how many actual moves it takes to be deemed as a cheat. Is it one, five, ten, or a whole game?

And of those like Exy who blatently deny that they are cheating (albiet through friends here). Shouldn`t they be given a chance to defend them selves?

One should be enough.

Originally posted by rhb
One should be enough.

So if I find one of your moves that matches up with an engine, that's it: you're a cheater?

D

Originally posted by Ragnorak
So if I find one of your moves that matches up with an engine, that's it: you're a cheater?

D

Using an engine for one move is sufficient to actually be a cheater. Matching an engine for one move is obviously not sufficient evidence to conclude that somebody is a cheater. The first point concerns what it is to cheat, the second point concerns what it takes to show that somebody is a cheater.

Originally posted by Paulie
And of those like Exy who blatently deny that they are cheating (albiet through friends here). Shouldn`t they be given a chance to defend them selves?

According to arrakis and Gatecrasher Exy was given that chance. This seemingly wasn't the case when Ironman et al. were banned. I don't know if this is a general change in the procedure or if it was decided on an individual basis. I really hope it's the first.

Originally posted by Nordlys
According to arrakis and Gatecrasher Exy was given that chance. This seemingly wasn't the case when Ironman et al. were banned. I don't know if this is a general change in the procedure or if it was decided on an individual basis. I really hope it's the first.

I think suspected cheats should be approached by the mods after they have been found to be cheating and should be given an opportunity to address the evidence against them. I'm not sure how someone would be able to prove their innocence, but i just feel that they should be given the opportunity to say something (if they wish). Kind of like the last rights before the execution.

Originally posted by rhb
"The game mods are a team of people appointed by the community"

As I wasn't here at the "appointment of" can someone either tell me who the "game mods" are or where the list is.[if there is one][I have looked around for info on this]

Shouldn't they have mod or something stuck next to their avatars.

That would also help if anyone wanted to grass up a mate for something, they could pm the mod. haha

Originally posted by marinakatomb
I think suspected cheats should be approached by the mods after they have been found to be cheating and should be given an opportunity to address the evidence against them. I'm not sure how someone would be able to prove their innocence, but i just feel that they should be given the opportunity to say something (if they wish). Kind of like the last rights before the execution.

For cheaters this would do no good, but if the mods suspect multiple account violations then talking to the said individual might be useful. There are usually several examples of why people/accounts would have the same IP adress other then being the same peron. Although I heard the mods don't use IP adresses to determine this (which is hard to beleive).

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
As I wasn't here at the "appointment of" can someone either tell me who the "game mods" are or where the list is.[if there is one][I have looked around for info on this]

Shouldn't they have [b]mod or something stuck next to their avatars.

That would also help if anyone wanted to grass up a mate for something, they could pm the mod. haha[/b]

http://www.redhotpawn.com/comhub/volunteers.php

List of Mods 😉

Originally posted by bbarr
What makes you think Exy didn't have a chance to defend himself? Just because he didn't have an opportunity to defend himself in the forums doesn't mean he had no opportunity to provide the game moderators with evidence of his innocence.

But will we ever know?

The only answers anyone ever gets on a banning question, is the old "Overwhelming evidence" qoute.